Overview
As a WAF customer, you should become familiar with how the service is billed to ensure a predictable invoice each month. This article explains the different components of your WAF bill.
There are two main components to your WAF bill: your base monthly subscription charge and any overages you incurred over the billing period.
Base Monthly Subscription Charge
This is the line item in your WAF invoice that outlines what WAF package you have (Essential, Professional, or Enterprise). This is what entitles you to features and included units of our other billable metrics. Note that included units are measured by the consumption vectors outlined in the “Overages” section.
To learn more about the different packages – features, costs, and included units, check out this article.
Overages
There are a total of four different overage charges you may see on your monthly WAF invoice. They are as follows: WAF requests, custom WAF rules, WAF sites, and custom page sets.
WAF Requests
WAF requests are requests that successfully pass the WAF and reach the origin. It is important to note that these are legitimate requests; requests that were deemed malicious by the WAF (e.g., DDoS attacks) do not get counted towards your WAF requests included units or overages.
WAF requests are billed by a total count through the billing cycle. If you have incurred an overage, you’ll see a “WAF requests” line item on your invoice with a total count of requests incurred over your included units you are entitled to through your subscription.
Custom WAF Rules
Custom WAF rules are any WAF rules other than IP block/allow rules. These include tagging rules and advanced rules should your subscription entitle you to those features.
Custom WAF rules are billed on peak usage. This means that you will be billed on the highest concurrent count of rules throughout the billing cycle. Keep this in mind when you are looking to make changes to your rule set – it is better to delete rules first before creating new ones to keep your concurrent count low.
Example 1:
- Week 1 of your billing cycle, you have 10 custom WAF rules
- Week 2 of your billing cycle, you create 5 more custom WAF rules
- Week 3 of your billing cycle, you delete 1 custom WAF rule
- Week 4 of your billing cycle, you delete 2 custom WAF rules
In this example, you can expect to be billed for 15 custom WAF rules on your invoice, as your highest concurrent rule count was 15 (on week 2).
Example 2:
- Week 1 of your billing cycle, you have 10 custom WAF rules
- Week 2 of your billing cycle, you delete 1 more custom WAF rule
- Week 3 of your billing cycle, you delete 2 custom WAF rules
- Week 4 of your billing cycle, you create 5 custom WAF rules
In this example, you can expect to be billed for 12 custom WAF rules on your invoice, as your highest concurrent rule count was 12 (on week 4).
If you did not exceed your included custom rules count entitled to you through your WAF package, you will not see a custom WAF rules line item on your invoice.
WAF Sites
WAF sites are defined as sites that are running our WAF service.
WAF sites are billed based on length of time the site is provisioned for. On our pricing sheets, you’ll see a monthly charge per site overage. This assumes that the site is active throughout the entire billing cycle. Sites provisioned in the middle of a billing cycle will not render the full monthly charge when first invoiced. Subsequently, sites that are deleted in the middle of a billing cycle would incur a charge for the length of time the site was active during the cycle.
Custom Page Sets
Custom page sets are customized challenge pages our WAF will display on your sites should a request trigger a WAF action. One page set consists of six unique pages. To learn more about the custom page set feature, check out this article.
Similar to WAF sites, custom page sets are billed based on length of time the set has been provisioned. Note that even partial sets will be billed as a full custom page set. On our pricing sheets, you’ll see a monthly charge per set overage.
This assumes the page set is active throughout the entire billing cycle. Sets provisioned in the middle of a billing cycle will not render the full monthly charge when first invoiced. Subsequently, sets that are deleted in the middle of a billing cycle would incur a charge for the length of time the set was active during the cycle.