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Akamai API Security vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 4, 2025

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
6.4
Akamai API Security enhanced efficiency, reduced costs, improved detection, and increased visibility, resulting in 30-40% savings.
Sentiment score
4.8
F5 Distributed Cloud Services reduced costs and increased efficiency, cutting infrastructure, engineering time, and support overheads significantly.
Getting everything from one single portal without anyone's interference saved us a lot of money, time, and frustration.
Incident Manager at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Akamai API Security is preventing multiple issues, and the organization is doing well with Akamai API Security profits, which is good.
IT Specialist at Allianz
I have seen a return on investment, and the main thing is the time saved, allowing our employees to focus on other priority work.
Co-Founder at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
I would estimate the cost was reduced by approximately 30 percent in the first year.
Information Security at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
There is definitely a return on investment in F5 Distributed Cloud Services.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
I do find F5 Distributed Cloud Services to be cost-effective, as it brings benefits and a strong return on investment.
Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Akamai API Security support is responsive and knowledgeable, offering high-quality but costly service with occasional communication issues.
Sentiment score
6.3
F5 Distributed Cloud Services support is reliable yet needs faster response, improved email interactions, and better integration follow-ups.
Sometimes they inform about changes, and sometimes they do not, which impacts clients as a P1 or P2 incident.
IT Specialist at Allianz
The technical support from Akamai API Security is responsive when I have dealt with them.
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
The team was responsive and technically knowledgeable.
Technical Team Lead - Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
There is a lot of support from F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the knowledge on the page is very good and reliable.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
I would provide 9.5 for support.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Email services are good, but they need to have a good human-based interaction with the call centers.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.9
Akamai API Security offers seamless scalability, managing high traffic and API changes efficiently with automatic scaling and global network support.
Sentiment score
6.6
F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers effective scalability and efficient management against DDoS and bot attacks, despite initial pricing challenges.
I have also seen it handle spikes in API traffic, especially during peak usage periods without any performance degradation.
Technical Team Lead - Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
The scalability of Akamai API Security is very appropriate for the architecture given that it is a SaaS application, so it adapts well to any infrastructure.
Consulting Systems Engineer at Boomslang Tech
I need the traffic management environments in distributed management, which have a very good goal to manage very difficult traffic in the world.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Akamai API Security is reliable, robust, and highly effective in production, excelling in stability, scalability, and cyber crime investigations.
Sentiment score
8.3
F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers 99.99% uptime and high stability, praised for reliability despite occasional compliance and configuration queries.
My experience has been good, and it is an excellent WAF solution.
Arquiteto at C.Vale - Cooperativa Agroindustrial
I won't face any issues with stability as a concern because it provides the load balancers and all redundancy, so it's very unlikely that we have any downtime.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
 

Room For Improvement

Akamai API Security needs enhanced customization, intuitive controls, and better integrations to improve efficiency and streamline operations.
Customers desire improved UI/UX, better log retention, cloud integration, AI, iRule support, pricing simplicity, and easier operations.
I believe Akamai API Security could be improved specifically in the integrations so that they can be executed more effectively with platforms such as a SIEM or SOAR, which would help me automate workflows for incident response.
Consulting Systems Engineer at Boomslang Tech
From a pricing standpoint, licensing and pricing depend from module to module. Some modules are expensive, and some are affordable.
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
If Akamai API Security could provide many more security options and make it more transparent to users about exactly what is happening, that would be beneficial.
Security Delivery Analyst at Accenture
The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF.
IT Analyst at Atlas.cz, a.s.
For availability, they have added additional clusters across all the regional edges in the Kubernetes clusters to enhance availability.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
F5 Distributed Cloud Services doesn't have something like that. That is the reason why CloudFlare remains a leader in that space for small customers and those who have just started or are startups.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
 

Setup Cost

Akamai API Security offers premium pricing, licensing flexibility, and valued support, with potential extra costs for bundled API limits.
It is not expensive.
Arquiteto at C.Vale - Cooperativa Agroindustrial
Akamai API Security is not expensive.
IT Specialist at Allianz
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
I believe the prices are much higher than I expected, but for the time being, the customer is still paying.
Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB
 

Valuable Features

Akamai API Security offers automated discovery, anomaly detection, bot management, and DDoS protection for comprehensive API threat mitigation.
F5 Distributed Cloud Services enhance security and efficiency with AI-driven defense, seamless networking, and simplified traffic management.
This gave us an overall picture of how many APIs we are using across our organization, and now we are more cautious about which APIs should be used publicly and how we secure our APIs.
Incident Manager at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
That improvement in visibility and risk posture has translated into concrete benefits for my organization, as I can now proactively identify risky endpoints and apply protection policies, which improves overall security and reduces response times to incidents.
Consulting Systems Engineer at Boomslang Tech
Before an attack goes live, we detect it on the WAF itself, which is the outer layer of security. We detect it and block it.
Security Delivery Analyst at Accenture
The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation.
IT Analyst at Atlas.cz, a.s.
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai API Security
Ranking in API Security
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in API Security
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the API Security category, the mindshare of Akamai API Security is 5.9%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 3.8%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Akamai API Security5.9%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services3.8%
Other90.3%
API Security
 

Featured Reviews

Alark Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Specialist at Allianz
Advanced API defense has protected web channels and consistently reduced downtime and incident impact
Akamai API Security helps comply with DORA compliance in the Europe region, preventing any compliance issues. It helps demonstrate that the ISO understands the secured side is protected by Akamai API Security, ensuring that if any DOS attack is present, it will not occur or take the side down. Currently, no improvements are apparent. In the last few years, there was improvement as bot attacks have been addressed, with more focus now placed on bot attacks. At that time, there was a drawback, but Akamai API Security is improving day by day. Currently, no drawbacks are evident, and the product is good. Akamai API Security is delivering the best products every year.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Akamai API Security?
One thing that really surprised me was how effective the behavioral-based detection is in identifying the anomalies that traditional rule-based systems might miss. It gives much better visibility i...
What is your primary use case for Akamai API Security?
Akamai API Security's main use case in my environment is to protect critical APIs that are exposed to the internet, especially for banking and financial applications. I primarily use it to secure A...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, the confidence level on API security that F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for securing my infrastructure with layer 7 protection, which F5 provides. Th...
 

Also Known As

Noname Security
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai API Security vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
912,930 professionals have used our research since 2012.