Palo Alto PA-500 Series

The Palo Alto Networks PA-500 Series next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) comprise the following models: PA-505, PA-510, PA-520, PA-540, PA-545-POE, PA-550, PA-555-POE, and PA-560. These models deliver ML-powered NGFW capabilities to distributed enterprise branch offices, retail locations, and midsize businesses.

The controlling element of the PA-500 Series is PAN-OS-the same software that powers all Palo Alto Networks NGFWs. PAN-OS natively classifies all traffic-applications, threats, and content-and then ties that traffic to the user regardless of location or device type. Applications, content, and users-the pillars of your business-become the basis for security policies, improving your security posture and reducing incident response time.

Palo Alto PA-500 Series pricing

On this page you will find detailed specifications for each model.

For list prices and license bundles, visit the central price list and send us your RFQ: Go to the central price list.

Application identification and categorization with full Layer 7 inspection

App-ID identifies and categorizes every application, on any port, with full Layer 7 inspection.

It uses advanced techniques such as protocol decoding, heuristics, and signature matching to accurately identify applications across the network, regardless of port, protocol, or encryption methods. The optional App-ID Cloud Engine (ACE) provides on-demand App-IDs for SaaS applications.

Gain a comprehensive understanding of the risks and business value associated with each application to make informed decisions when building network security policies.

Enforce application-specific security policies effectively by centralizing identification and control at the firewall.

Detects and manages evasive or custom applications that often bypass traditional security controls.

Continuously updates application identifications to stay effective against the latest application trends and tactics.

Leverages state-of-the-art AI techniques to improve precision when identifying and categorizing AI-powered applications, ensuring even the most advanced and dynamic apps don’t slip through.

User security enforcement

PA-500 Series NGFWs enforce user security anywhere, on any device, while adapting policies based on activity.

Provide visibility, security policies, reporting, and forensics based on users, groups, and IP addresses.

Apply consistent policies regardless of user location (office, home, travel, etc.) and device-covering iOS and Android mobiles, macOS, Windows, and Linux desktops and laptops, Citrix and Microsoft VDI, and terminal servers.

Use IP geolocation to automatically enforce policies by geography, helping reduce the attack surface, meet compliance requirements, and control application access by blocking traffic to/from specific countries or regions.

Authenticate and authorize users consistently-no matter where identity is stored (cloud, on-prem, or both)-to accelerate your move to Zero Trust with Cloud Identity Engine, a cloud-based architecture for identity-driven security.

Secure all applications with passwordless authentication, whether on-premises, SaaS, or hybrid.

Take dynamic, risk-based, time-bound security actions based on user behavior by defining Cloud Dynamic User Groups (CDUGs) on the firewall-without waiting for directory updates.

Prevent corporate credentials from leaking to third-party sites and block reuse of stolen credentials by enabling MFA at the network layer for any application-without changes.

Integrate easily with a wide range of repositories that handle user information, including wireless LAN controllers, VPNs, directory servers, and SIEM tools.

Automate policy recommendations to save time and reduce human error.

A unique approach to packet processing

PA-500 Series NGFWs process network packets using a single-pass architecture.

In a single pass, the firewall performs networking, policy lookup, application ID and decoding, and signature matching-for all threats and content-dramatically reducing processing overhead while delivering multiple security functions on one device.

Avoid added latency by scanning for all signatures in a single pass with stream-based, uniform signature matching.

Deliver consistent, predictable performance even with security subscriptions enabled.

Post-quantum cryptography ready

The PA-500 Series is post-quantum cryptography ready, helping you achieve quantum-safe security in hardware and software with PAN-OS 12.1.

Supports PQC for SSL/TLS decryption, PQC site-to-site VPN, PQC SSL/TLS Cipher Translation Proxy, and PQC SSL/TLS Service Profile for firewall management access.

Supports PQC algorithms including NIST standards such as ML-KEM, ML-DSA, and SLH-DSA, as well as pre-standard PQCs like Classic McEliece, BIKE, HQC, Frodo-KEM, and NTRU-Prime.

Preventing malicious activity concealed in encrypted traffic

Inspect and apply policy to SSL/TLS-encrypted traffic (inbound and outbound), including SSLv3, TLSv1.1, TLSv1.2, TLSv1.3, and application protocols such as SMTP, WebSocket, gRPC, HTTP/1.0, HTTP/1.1, and HTTP/2.

Decrypt and inspect SSL/TLS sessions using classic key exchanges (RSA, ECDHE, DHE) and post-quantum key exchange standards (ML-KEM, HQC), plus experimental BIKE and Frodo-KEM.

Gather TLS metrics such as encrypted traffic volume, SSL/TLS versions, and ciphers in use.

Gain visibility into cryptographic information from all SSL/TLS sessions that traverse the firewall-supporting classic key exchanges (RSA, ECDHE, DHE) and post-quantum key exchanges (ML-KEM, HQC) even without decryption.

Control the use of legacy TLS protocols, insecure or deprecated ciphers, and misconfigured certificates (e.g., SNI and CN mismatch) to mitigate risk.

Streamline decryption deployment and use enhanced built-in logs to troubleshoot client-side and server-side sessions independently-for a seamless experience-whether you’re dealing with missing intermediate certificates or pinned certificates.

Enable or disable decryption flexibly-by URL category, source/destination zone, address, user, user group, device, and port-for privacy and regulatory compliance.

Use the Decrypt Mirror feature to copy decrypted traffic from the firewall and send it to collection tools for forensics, historical analysis, or data loss prevention (DLP).

AI-powered unified management and operations with Strata Cloud Manager

Complete visibility across your network security estate: Gain real-time, comprehensive visibility across users, applications, devices, and the most critical threats-through a unified interface.

Simple, consistent lifecycle management: Manage configuration and policy across all enforcement points-including SASE, hardware and software firewalls, and all security services-to ensure consistency and reduce operational overhead.

Strengthen your security posture in real time: Use AI-powered analysis to detect, resolve, and optimize policy anomalies such as shadow or redundant rules and overly permissive or unused policies. Improve posture with integrated best-practice recommendations and maintain compliance with industry and InfoSec standards.

Proactively resolve disruptions and enhance user experience: Predict, diagnose, and fix network health issues-such as user experience problems, capacity bottlenecks, CVE vulnerabilities, service connection issues, and 130 other issue categories-up to 90 days in advance.

Resolve issues fast with instant knowledge: Strata Copilot, our AI-powered assistant, provides a natural-language interface to quickly find, understand, and address security and operational challenges before they escalate.

Best-in-class cloud-delivered security services powered by Precision AI

PA-500 Series NGFWs deliver market-leading security through Cloud-Delivered Security Services (CDSS). At the heart of CDSS is Precision AI. Unlike reactive tools, Precision AI enables proactive threat detection, inline prevention, and automated response-stopping even highly evasive, never-before-seen attacks before damage occurs.

Backed by threat intelligence from over 70,000 customers worldwide, these cloud-delivered services continuously learn, adapt, and evolve. Seamlessly integrated with our NGFW and SASE platforms, CDSS delivers unified protection across web, DNS, email, applications, and more-no matter where your users or data reside.

Whether you’re enabling hybrid work, embracing cloud transformation, or defending against sophisticated adversaries, CDSS powered by Precision AI provides the visibility, automation, and confidence to stay ahead.

Advanced Threat Prevention: Analyze up to 673 million new sessions daily and proactively block 28.2 billion threats in real time-including zero-day exploits, malware, C2 traffic, and evasive techniques-at unprecedented scale.

Advanced WildFire®: Proactively stop up to 450,000 new threats every day with the industry’s most powerful malware prevention engines-blocking zero-day malware, ransomware, RATs, weaponized documents, and more before impact.

Advanced URL Filtering: Safeguard web access by blocking up to 151 million threats inline each day while analyzing 3.8 billion new URLs-protecting against phishing, malware, ransomware, C2 communications, and evasive web attacks.

Advanced DNS Security: Deliver real-time protection that instantly blocks sophisticated DNS request/response threats-including DNS hijacking, DGAs, DNS tunneling, and C2 callbacks. Analyze over 1.1 billion new domains daily and identify up to 7.7 million newly malicious domains, preventing more than 2 billion threats inline.

Device Security: Secure every connected device with industry-tailored solutions (manufacturing, retail, healthcare, high tech, and general enterprise), achieving up to a 90% device discovery rate within 48 hours, with prioritized vulnerability and risk assessments-plus anomaly detection, least-privileged policy recommendations, and virtual patching on a single NetSec platform.

SaaS Security: Discover and control all SaaS usage with visibility into 75,000+ SaaS apps and DLP controls for 150+ apps. Prevent misconfigurations with posture management for 117+ SaaS apps and inline tenancy control for 39 apps.

AI Access Security: Enable safe GenAI usage with real-time visibility, access controls, data protection, and continuous risk monitoring-featuring a catalog of 2,500+ GenAI apps and 15+ GenAI-specific attributes, posture management for 13+ GenAI apps, and inline tenancy control for 11 apps.

Advanced SD-WAN: Adopt SD-WAN easily by enabling it on existing firewalls with integrated security. Ensure SLAs and a great end-user experience with path measurements and application steering to route apps to the best-performing paths.