The AWS Network Firewall alternative — same egress control, no per-GB tax.

On the core firewall job they are at parity. Both do stateful L3–L7 filtering, domain/FQDN allow-listing and destination NAT, and both deploy in the AWS-recommended centralized inspection-VPC pattern to inspect egress, ingress and east-west traffic. Wherever AWS Network Firewall can be deployed, Enforza can be deployed. We show that parity openly — and we're equally open about where it ends: AWS Network Firewall has a signature-based IDS/IPS engine and Enforza deliberately does not. The difference on the core job is the cost model and the surrounding workflow, not whether the firewall does the job.

In five places, and we say so plainly. AWS Network Firewall has a managed, Suricata-compatible signature IDS/IPS — Enforza does threat hardening (anti-scan, SYN protection, JA3 fingerprinting) but has no signature engine, by design; it gives you the deepest AWS-native integration (VPC routing, Firewall Manager across Organizations); it is fully AWS-managed and auto-scaled, so there is no VM for you to run; it ships AWS-curated threat intelligence and managed rule groups; and it bills through a single AWS invoice with one AWS support relationship. If those matter most to you, Network Firewall may be the right call.

For the common job — filtered, FQDN/SNI-based egress out of your network — yes. Enforza runs as a single Linux VM in your AWS network and you route egress through it, giving you SNI/FQDN filtering, secure NAT and threat hardening in one appliance. It is not the same product as AWS's managed service: AWS operates the endpoints for you and integrates with AWS-native tooling, whereas you run the Enforza VM and gain a flat price, no per-GB tax, multi-cloud reach and compliance-as-code. Most teams switching are leaving behind Network Firewall's per-AZ endpoint-hours and per-GB charges for one flat-priced appliance that also does secure NAT.

AWS Network Firewall bills two ways at once: $0.395 per firewall endpoint-hour for the primary Availability Zone, $0.158 for each additional AZ (so a 2-AZ HA pair is roughly $404/month before any traffic), plus $0.065 per GB processed, forever and uncapped. AWS waives the NAT Gateway's own fee when it is service-chained behind Network Firewall, so this is the whole AWS bill — but the $0.065/GB rate is itself 44% higher than the $0.045/GB NAT fee it replaces. Enforza is a flat per-firewall licence with $0/GB, doing secure NAT and L3/L4/L7 in one appliance. Rates are us-east-1, dated 2026-07-10, directional and subject to change — use the savings calculator for your own numbers.

No. On AWS, Network Firewall meters filtered egress by per-AZ endpoint-hours plus $0.065/GB — a bill that doubles across Availability Zones and grows with every byte. Enforza does secure source NAT and FQDN/SNI-based L7 filtering in a single appliance, so you get both for one flat per-firewall licence at $0/GB — no separate NAT charge.

Both. Wherever AWS Network Firewall can be deployed, Enforza can be deployed — including the AWS-recommended centralized inspection VPC, where spoke networks route through a central hub, and behind an AWS Gateway Load Balancer as a transparent GENEVE inspection appliance (see the GWLB inspection appliance page). In that topology Enforza inspects egress, ingress and east-west VPC-to-VPC lateral traffic between your own networks, not just the outbound path.

No. Enforza filters egress by SNI and FQDN without decrypting TLS and without holding your keys. On AWS, inspecting encrypted L7 traffic means enabling TLS inspection (Advanced Inspection), which decrypts the traffic and adds an hourly charge. Enforza gives you FQDN/SNI-based L7 control with no man-in-the-middle and no key custody.

Yes. AWS Network Firewall is AWS-only — the entire model assumes your workloads sit in a VPC. Enforza runs the same capability on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and on-prem VMs, managed from one control plane, so a multi-cloud estate is one fleet rather than three separate firewall products.

Yes. Enforza has a genuine free tier — one firewall with L3/L4 policy and network objects, no card required. A 14-day trial unlocks the full feature set, including L7/FQDN filtering, compliance packs, log export and live logs. The paid plan is £179/month per firewall, dropping to £149 from your sixth, plus the Linux VM you provision. AWS Network Firewall has no free tier — the meter starts on deploy.