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A10 Thunder TPS vs Akamai App and API Protector comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
A10 Thunder TPS reduced support tickets, improved satisfaction, and saved costs, acting like insurance against significant revenue losses.
Sentiment score
5.8
Akamai App and API Protector offers superior traffic management, security, and cost savings for large infrastructures, despite higher costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
A10 Thunder TPS support is praised for timely responses, effective resolutions, proactive fixes, and handling complex issues efficiently.
Sentiment score
7.7
Customer service is excellent, while technical support has mixed reviews with praise for expertise but needs improved availability.
The technical support was quick and accepted my requests.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
A10 Thunder TPS provides scalable, flexible defenses for global data centers, supporting large traffic volumes for medium-sized enterprises.
Sentiment score
8.1
Akamai App and API Protector excels in scalability, seamlessly handling extensive user demands and large-scale deployments with stability.
Without accessible documentation, setting up can be time-consuming.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
The A10 Thunder TPS offers consistent stability, high availability, and positive user feedback, with reliability enhancements and successful maintenance.
Sentiment score
8.4
Akamai App and API Protector is highly stable and reliable, with no reported outages or issues over years of use.
 

Room For Improvement

A10 Thunder TPS needs better training, smoother upgrades, improved documentation, and enhanced synchronization, with concerns over UI and virtual training.
Akamai App and API Protector needs enhancements in flexibility, UI, customer support, documentation, and advanced protection features.
We had to find workarounds for issues like A10 blocking necessary traffic, sometimes leading to decreased security.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find A10 Thunder TPS pricing mixed, highlighting both value and expense, with multiyear deals as beneficial.
Akamai App and API Protector is expensive yet considered worth the cost by large enterprises for its quality services.
The global price list is not accessible, making it difficult to work.
 

Valuable Features

A10 Thunder TPS excels in traffic filtering, DDoS mitigation, load balancing, and offers programmable automated defense with RESTful API.
Akamai App and API Protector delivers scalable security, ease of use, and cost-effective protection with advanced features like DDoS defense.
The vendor indicated that Thunder would not be supported, but I was able to add Thunder to the central console management.
 

Categories and Ranking

A10 Thunder TPS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
13th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of A10 Thunder TPS is 2.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.2%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

RonaldoDE Melo - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for protecting and supporting users against attacks
One problem for me with A10 Thunder TPS is that the box comes from another country in Brazil. In the tool, there is no one key to block it. For example, in F5 Networks, we have a key. If you try to buy another box from Huawei or from F5 and try to enable them in A10 Thunder TPS, you need a key to do it. The problem here is when you buy another box from A10, they want to put Thunder TPS to run, and it works okay, after which we cannot block it for another solution to be used, which is a problem for me where improvements are needed.
Deepesh  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Bot Manager and different features to manage threats
As a product, it has good capabilities, including professional support. However, it's risky for us to rely on AI for real-time traffic management. We use in-house analytics but avoid automatic actions due to their high impact. For example, I live in a developing country. Everyone has different types of phones, apps, and everything else. So, if someone is using a legacy phone, that is still a use case here. If AI decides that this is an end-of-life phone or end-of-life Android operating system, it starts blocking that traffic. We may potentially lose millions or probably thousands and hundreds of thousands of hits per second. Everything is all about how well we serve payments because we're into payments. So, AI is used for analytics but not for real-time decisions. We can't afford to block traffic based on AI models due to the variety of devices and operating systems our users have.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
34%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about A10 Thunder TPS?
The most valuable feature of A10 Thunder TPS is load balancing.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for A10 Thunder TPS?
I have not seen specific prices, like $10,000 or $20,000. A frustrating aspect is the lack of demo versions. The vendor insists on commercial licenses despite requests for demo licenses. The global...
What needs improvement with A10 Thunder TPS?
I had issues with the user interface because, when putting settings up, the system asked me for strange things like virtual local networks that I didn't create. For example, I set an NTP server, an...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Web Application Protector?
The price is higher than others. It could be about 80% to 70% more expensive than other tools. So, it’s not just a slight difference.
What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?
It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DDoS defense solution trusted for more than 200 service providers, online gaming, and enterprises including; Bungie, Comcast, KDDI Corporation, Leaseweb, Microsoft Azure, NTT Docomo, Softbank, Turkcell Superonline, Verizon and more.
Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Thunder TPS vs. Akamai App and API Protector and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.