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AWS Shield vs Akamai App and API Protector comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th), Cloud and Data Center Security (12th)
AWS Shield
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 14.9%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.4%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 3.5%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare14.9%
AWS Shield3.5%
Akamai App and API Protector4.4%
Other77.2%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Has provided strong protection against evolving threats but still needs support for configuration fine-tuning
The standout features of Akamai App and API Protector are rooted in it being the Web Application Firewall, where all traffic gets scanned, including the implementation of web firewall rules, and after this phase, traffic proceeds through the BMP, which is Bot Management. Akamai App and API Protector exceeds expectations in terms of AI capabilities, and it genuinely combines a plethora of advanced features. The area in which Akamai excels compared to other competitors with a WAF is in threat intelligence, as threats continually evolve, requiring ongoing updates to backend algorithms to effectively capture smart bots, and Akamai's commitment in that regard is backed by an excellent team, while other providers are still catching up.
reviewer2767527 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very clear and the information is very useful."
"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"CloudFlare has positively improved my site's speed, performance and security."
"Cloudflare's DNS services deliver the best performance in terms of speed and reliability."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted our organization by giving us flexibility to manage the DNS part, being quite fast, and allowing us to manage everything from a single dashboard, which is quite handy."
"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."
"The most valuable feature is the DDoS protection, which is the main reason we got it."
"The most valuable feature is the custom rules feature, because many of our customers require a lot of custom rules and, because it's a very customized project for our customers, I think they have the best of everything already."
"I have contacted the support team of Akamai... I am happy with their responses and answers to my problems."
"The CDN and the WAF features are the best in this solution."
"It's a very good solution."
"The solution can scale extremely well."
"It is scalable for DDoS."
"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."
"If most of your internet presence from your application side is in AWS, AWS Shield is a great option."
"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 am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."
"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."
"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."
"The automatic detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks in the product operates in real-time and provides satisfactory results."
"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"The one feature that is paid is the custom nameservers instead of using the default ones, I want to use a custom one."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"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."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"At the end, it is worth than giving your house keys to the NSA."
"Akamai App and API Protector is very new to me, so I do not have any insights on improvement areas for the product. However, when we ask for some help, it can take some time. We understand that the job is done by professionals, but if that time can be reduced, it would be great."
"It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console."
"There are some issues with pushing configurations across a network. It still takes about 20 minutes and that means to retract it's another 20 minutes."
"The custom rules must be improved."
"The pricing could be reduced a bit."
"The effectiveness of Akamai's bot management in reducing unauthorized access is quite good, although it does require a lot of fine-tuning and tweaking, which involves spending ample time with their support teams to tailor the configuration to our applications."
"It's fine for a simple tool, but as I recall, if you encounter a lot of bots, scrapers, and other things, you'll need this tool bot and this other thing they offer called Bot Manager."
"They should allow for multiple security configurations in one account which will enhance the scalability."
"There is an area for improvement regarding health checks. AWS Shield does not come with its own health check functionality."
"The network has been experiencing frustrating performance issues today, which is not typical for Nigeria."
"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."
"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."
"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."
"AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The price is reasonable."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"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."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
"One reason not all people use Akamai is that it is a little bit more expensive than some other providers."
"It's more expensive than others, but the ROI is good for large-scale infrastructure."
"Its price is slightly high. Every company has a justification for the high price. Overall, it feels worth the money based on how the service has been structured, but we do negotiate it."
"Based on the billing discussions in the DevOps team, Akamai's cost does not seem to be a major thing. However, LOE is an issue. When it comes to support, we know that even all the competitors do this. For a 30-minute issue, they give us a LOE of one or two hours. That is a basic practice, but that is something we worry about."
"Akamai is very expensive."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"The product’s price is high."
"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."
"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 is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
 

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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
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 sl...
What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?
There are no significant areas for improvement on the WAF side or for Akamai App and API Protector solution; they are...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Web Application Protector?
The main use case for Akamai App and API Protector is serving as the WAF, Web Application Firewall.
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...
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...
What needs improvement with AWS Shield?
Services always benefit from improvements, including AWS Shield. With respect to the Web Application Firewall, curren...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Akamai App and API Protector and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
890,071 professionals have used our research since 2012.