A10 Thunder TPS vs AWS Shield comparison

A10 Networks and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. A10 Networks is ranked #15 with an average rating of 7.5, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7. A10 Networks holds a 1.7% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 3.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of A10 Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

A10 Thunder TPS and AWS Shield compete in network security. A10 Thunder TPS stands out for comprehensive protection and strong pricing and support ratings, whereas AWS Shield is noted for a robust feature set, offering attractive value in its integration with AWS services.

Features: A10 Thunder TPS is valued for advanced traffic monitoring, DDoS protection, and flexible integration capabilities. AWS Shield offers seamless integration with AWS, scalable protection, and automated traffic analysis. AWS Shield's integration capability is a highlight, whereas A10 Thunder TPS is renowned for its flexibility.

Room for Improvement: A10 Thunder TPS could improve by broadening its integration with more cloud services, refining its user interface, and enhancing automated configuration options. AWS Shield could reduce configuration efforts for non-AWS deployments, enhance real-time attack visibility, and streamline multi-cloud integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: A10 Thunder TPS is praised for efficient deployment and responsive support, making setup straightforward. AWS Shield, integrated with AWS, offers streamlined deployment for AWS users but may require more configuration for non-AWS services. A10 is recognized for supportive customer service, while AWS Shield benefits from AWS's broader support infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: A10 Thunder TPS offers competitive setup costs and strong ROI with adaptable pricing models. AWS Shield has higher costs associated with premium service, justified by extensive AWS integration, appealing to those heavily invested in AWS. A10's cost-effectiveness offers a notable advantage in ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield

March 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 16.2%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of A10 Thunder TPS is 1.7%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 3.9%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	16.2%
AWS Shield	3.9%
A10 Thunder TPS	1.7%
Other	78.2%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

General Manager at bKash Limited

Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility

From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.

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reviewer1126782

Information Technology Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Management console adds value and technical support delivers timely solutions

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, and after some clicks, a message appeared stating 'setup is incorrect'. It asked for a VLAN even though no VLANs were created. We had to find workarounds for issues like A10 blocking necessary traffic, sometimes leading to decreased security, because it was the simplest way to deal with them. This was a real issue. A more flexible policy for demo licenses would also be helpful.

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reviewer2767527

Lead Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Has enabled multi-layered threat mitigation but still lacks deeper visibility for advanced application attacks

AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods. It does not provide inherent protection against more sophisticated layer 7 attacks such as HTTP floods. In such cases, integration with WAF is necessary, which results in additional costs for customers. To protect layer 7, layer 4, and layer 3, customers must implement both solutions. The service also has difficulties with static detection thresholds, which may not be sensitive enough to detect smaller application-specific attacks. While AWS Shield is a key security service, AWS should enhance their expert support with 24/7 response for complex attacks, which is currently limited.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."

"Another reason it's awesome is that you don't need your server to handle every request."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

More Cloudflare pros

"Due to the availability and power of these devices, we've been able to ramp off our upstream cloud-scrubbing provider and handle all attacks on our own."

"The solution has been rock solid for us; we haven't had any issues, we've had numerous attacks, and it's worked perfectly."

"We were convinced that within a year, we'd definitely earn back the investment, both in the A10 equipment, as well as developing the end-to-end solution, including the integration with our administration systems."

"We selected the solution because of its programmable automated defense using RESTful API. We didn't want to connect to the box. We wanted to be able to do some automation. We wanted to have our own portal because we wanted to connect our customers to our own UI using the A10 API. It has been good and exactly what we need."

"The GUI is very use-friendly. You can configure it through CLI or GUI, they give you an option to choose. It's a good solution in terms of the appliance itself. It's very light compared to other brands that offer DDoS solutions."

"The solution is easy to use and implement in terms of operations."

"The primary benefit that we see from their systems is that their filtering technology has the ability to detect and drop the malicious traffic from the legitimate traffic with a high success rate. That, in combination with the very small effort needed to manage their systems, are the two most important benefits to us."

"Thunder TPS has automated mitigation and fully managed support in case the device cannot handle the attack. They have engineers available to respond."

More A10 Thunder TPS pros

"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."

"The product is easy to use."

"AWS Shield offers numerous protection features that are crucial at the application layer, safeguarding users from distributed denial of service attacks, man-in-the-middle assaults, and hacker orchestrations."

"I recommend AWS Shield because it has proven helpful in tracking DDoS attacks within both my past and present environments, and without AWS Shield, a business could face potential losses, as this tool helps in identifying and mitigating fake traffic that disrupts applications, ultimately supporting business continuity."

"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

"AWS Shield is aligned with the web application firewall (WAF), and they work seamlessly together, primarily working with Elastic Load Balancer, CloudFront, and Route 53 for CDN and DNS services protection."

"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."

More AWS Shield pros

Cons

"I would like to not need a separate server for non-www redirection under the CNAME setup option."

"Latencies are always a problem."

"With CDN loads, sometimes we get an error that the host server is unavailable when the connection between CloudFlare and the server timed out."

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

"We experienced some downtime in the fall of 2013, causing us to switch to Incapsula."

"The product needs to improve its automation."

More Cloudflare cons

"The upgrade process for the boxes is not efficient; we have to go through the A10 aGalaxy where we have issues, like timeouts."

"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."

"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."

"If there's one aspect of A10 that needs improvement it would be the training. All of their training is done online, at least in what we've been exposed to. I would like to have a classroom environment for training... It would give [people] a chance to provision it."

"We currently do not use the solution's machine-learning-powered Zero-day Automated Protection because of an issue with it... We also use the aGalaxy platform, which is a management platform for the TPS devices. The issue is that some TPS features were added at the TPS level but weren't carried over to aGalaxy, and we manage all of our devices through aGalaxy. So we can't actually use some of the new features that are available on the TPS because that functionality doesn't exist in aGalaxy. That is one of my biggest complaints."

"The upgrade process for the boxes is not efficient. We have to go through the A10 aGalaxy where we have issues, like timeouts. They told me it was fixed in the latest version, but I tried to do it on the Portal and it is not working all the time."

"The last issue we had to contact them about was just a question of a false-positive. The A10 system wasn't supposed to decide what is a false-positive. So if we send it good traffic, it's supposed to just pass that good traffic through. But we opened this last ticket because the A10 did block some of the good traffic. Their support had to tweak it a little bit, but it wasn't anything that took a long time."

"Its documentation could be better."

More A10 Thunder TPS cons

"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."

"The network has been experiencing frustrating performance issues today, which is not typical for Nigeria."

"AWS Shield Standard requires improvement, particularly regarding its dashboard since it currently provides limited coverage against comprehensive DDoS attacks."

"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."

"AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."

"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

More AWS Shield cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"The price is reasonable."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"We may need to pay fifty percent more if we purchase other solutions. For the payments made to A10 Thunder TPS, we have received three-year support."

"Pricing is very reasonable."

"The financials are always a challenge with this type of technology. That's not really a product-functionality thing but it's the area where we push A10 the most."

"Pricing was much higher with Arbor (APS) for the same type of solution."

"We had a customer who was down for six hours and the loss of revenue for him was three times the price he was paying for us per year. The customer just said, "I don't care about paying you because on only one attack I saved money. It's three times better than losing money.""

"The tool is expensive. If one is low price and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price as a ten."

"We did a price survey, and compared to other solutions, A10 Thunder TPS wasn't cheap."

"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."

"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

"The tool is cheap."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

37%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

See all answers

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 vend...

See all answers

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 v...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for A10 Thunder TPS?

Currently, I have a test setup. A10 Thunder TPS ( /products/a10-thunder-tps-reviews ) works in a chain with a Check P...

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What do you like most about AWS Shield?

We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't de...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?

The pricing structure for AWS Shield is fair, yet it depends on the specific protections chosen. Enabling Shield Adva...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

Services always benefit from improvements, including AWS Shield. With respect to the Web Application Firewall, curren...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 44% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Arbor DDoS vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 30% of the time

Radware DDoS vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 16% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 10% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 7% of the time

Azure DDoS Protection vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 7% of the time

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Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Compared 15% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 14% of the time

Radware DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 10% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield

Compared 8% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

A10 Thunder TPS

March 2026

Download A10 Thunder TPS product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

March 2026

Download AWS Shield product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

The Thunder TPS is a family of high-performance DDoS defense solutions that detect and mitigate multi-vector DDoS attacks. Unlike traditional DDoS defenses that leave a wake of collateral damage against users, Thunder TPS applies a source-based defense-in-depth mitigation pipeline. This multimodal defense that includes actionable DDoS weapons intelligence, operator definable adaptive policies, and machine learning-powered Zero-Day Automated Protection (ZAP) blocks attackers while protecting real users.

The Thunder TPS is uniquely suited for communication service providers, online gaming, and enterprise network operators who protect large networks and need compact solutions with faster response from a fully automated, zero-touch defense during an attack.

A10 Networks

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

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.

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code

Buyer's Guide

A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield

March 2026

Free Report: A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield

Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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