# Amazon WAF Documentation

Amazon WAF is a web application firewall that lets you monitor and manage web requests that are forwarded to protected Amazon resources. With Amazon WAF, you can protect resources such as Amazon CloudFront distributions, Amazon API Gateway REST APIs, Application Load Balancers, and Amazon AppSync GraphQL APIs. You can use Amazon WAF to inspect web requests for matches to conditions that you specify, such as the IP address that the requests originate from, the value of a specific request component, or the rate at which requests are being sent. Amazon WAF can manage matching requests in a variety of ways, including counting them, blocking or allowing them, or sending challenges like CAPTCHA puzzles to the client user or browser.

- [Developer Guide](/en_us/waf/latest/developerguide/waf-chapter.html): Describes how to get started with Amazon WAF. Explains key concepts and provides instructions for using the features.
- [API Reference](/en_us/waf/latest/APIReference/): Provides detailed descriptions of the actions and data types that are available through the Amazon WAF REST API, and provides links to the corresponding documentation for the CLI and SDKs.

---