Akamai App and API Protector vs Cloudflare One comparison

Akamai and Cloudflare are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Akamai is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0, while Cloudflare is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.5. Akamai holds a 4.7% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Cloudflare’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cloudflare users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 5, 2026

Cloudflare One and Akamai App and API Protector are competitive in application and API security and performance optimization. Cloudflare One leads with pricing and customer support, while Akamai is preferred for its advanced features and value.

Features: Cloudflare One integrates Zero Trust policies and threat mitigation, simplifying security tasks with user-friendly interfaces and cost-effective firewall solutions. Akamai App and API Protector has comprehensive bot management, advanced WAF features, and offers robust API protection, backed by enhanced threat intelligence and AI capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Cloudflare One could enhance feature depth and AI integration, improve threat intelligence, and optimize comprehensive security analysis. Akamai App and API Protector can streamline deployment, reduce overall complexity, and offer more transparent pricing; in addition, it could improve customer onboarding.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloudflare One is favored for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. Akamai App and API Protector offers dedicated support to manage its more complex deployment process efficiently, maintaining strong customer relations through attentive support.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudflare One offers competitive pricing, ensuring a good return on investment with lower costs. Akamai App and API Protector, despite higher initial costs, justifies pricing with advanced security features, providing long-term benefits and high value for premium pricing structures.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai App and API Protector vs. Cloudflare One Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Cloudflare One

June 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 June 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 13.2%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.7%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare One is 3.7%, down from 3.8% 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	13.2%
Akamai App and API Protector	4.7%
Cloudflare One	3.7%
Other	78.4%

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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Gavin Pinho

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.

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Cobe Van Coller

Network Architect at IP Dimension

Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites

I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

"Because our website is blazing fast it improves our conversion rates."

"The UI is good."

More Cloudflare pros

"It is scalable for DDoS, keeps our sites up through any size of attack, and has a good breadth of controls."

"It gives us a report of traffic. It gives us a report of the day-to-day URL traffic, and it also gives an individual report. If we reach out to Akamai, they give us the IPs as well."

"It enables us to move faster with new products because we have this layer of protection set up in our infrastructure."

"I have contacted the support team of Akamai... I am happy with their responses and answers to my problems."

"It is scalable for DDoS."

"Adaptive stream delivery and WAF protection are valuable."

"All the solution's features are very good."

"The product has a good user interface."

More Akamai App and API Protector pros

"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."

"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."

"It is a stable solution."

"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."

"Cloudflare One has assisted in securing my remote workforce through a SASE solution with Cloudflare One and the Workers part, although I am not currently using the Workers component."

"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."

"The simplicity of the solution is its valuable features as almost no effort was needed to learn the configurations. It is also one of the cheapest firewalls available in this category."

"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."

More Cloudflare One pros

Cons

"Perhaps I would ask that they improve the Free plan and allow us to use it with any TLD (certain ones are not allowed)."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"We had to do a lot of digging and back-and-forth with technical support for specific use cases, and it might be helpful to have more screencasts or screenshots for common situations."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

More Cloudflare cons

"The WAF features definitely have a lot of room for improvement. A lot of the WAF is really basic. For some products or some of our solutions, we need to run a second layer of more advanced WAF. If it had better layer seven protection then we would not need a second WAF."

"One area where Akamai can improve is the captcha part. Cloudflare provides a captcha if there are a certain number of threats. For example, I can assign that if there are 10 requests within a second from a single IP, it should send a captcha to the user. The user should fill in the captcha, and only after that, the user should be able to access our website. This captcha feature should be built into Bot Manager. I love this captcha feature of Cloudflare."

"A lot of piracy happens in India and other countries. If there is a product for protection from piracy, it would be great. For example, there are multiple hackers that hack your event, and there are some channels that pirate and publish the event on some other website. We protect our streaming through DRM and different technologies. We are also protecting the website, but hacking is still happening. If they can work on protecting from piracy, it would be great."

"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."

"If we talk about application layer attacks, including WAF, CloudFlare is leading. Akamai can focus a bit more on the application layer attacks and how to protect them."

"I do not see any area for improvement. Akamai is already maintaining its own databases for the security concerns, vulnerabilities, and attacks that are there. If anything, they should have a solution in the infrastructure security area as well. They should not be only in cloud cybersecurity; they should also be in infrastructure security."

"It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console."

"One thing I asked them is to integrate the API discovery product that they have and push that data into Akamai App and API Protector so that we do not have two types of reviews to identify the type of traffic. We already know the APIs that are frequently getting used, so analysis becomes easier. We can integrate both products and use them."

More Akamai App and API Protector cons

"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."

"From a logging perspective, it is still a bit difficult to see exactly what users are being blocked with the current views."

"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."

"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."

"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."

"The response time for support must be reduced."

"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."

More Cloudflare One cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

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

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Akamai is very expensive."

"The product’s price is high."

"The price they are offering is quite reasonable for premium customers, but it's very expensive if you're a small and medium-sized enterprises."

"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."

"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 Web Application Protector is an expensive product."

"If you want quality, you have to pay the price. Its price is fair. Their account managers are also very helpful. They help you a lot with pricing even though they are working with Akamai."

"The solution is not expensive."

More Akamai App and API Protector pricing and cost advice

"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."

"The prices are slightly expensive."

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."

"The solution is not that expensive."

"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."

"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Comms Service Provider

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

19%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	18

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	12

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?

Pricing is competitive. Akamai is more expensive, in my view.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?

In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?

Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 36% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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AWS Shield vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 6% of the time

AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 5% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 4% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 3% of the time

More Akamai App and API Protector Competitors

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 4% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 3% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cloudflare One

Compared 3% of the time

Twingate vs Cloudflare One

Compared 3% of the time

FortiSASE vs Cloudflare One

Compared 3% of the time

More Cloudflare One Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One

June 2026

Download Cloudflare One product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform

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

Akamai App and API Protector provides website security by preventing DDoS attacks, acting as an application firewall, managing content delivery, and monitoring APIs. It adapts to threat profiles and is used for fast media delivery and identifying malicious activities.

Akamai App and API Protector offers strong protection, adaptable security features, and efficient traffic management. Its WAF blocks IP addresses and country-specific threats while preventing SQL injections. Companies utilize it for scalable CDN services and comprehensive traffic analysis. Known for its cost-effectiveness and user-friendly dashboard, this protector stands out for its customizable rules and technical support. Users also highlight the ease of integration and detailed attack insights available through its advanced dashboard.

What are the key features of Akamai App and API Protector?

DDoS Protection: Strong defense against Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
Scalable CDN: Manages content delivery efficiently under high traffic loads.
WAF Capabilities: Blocks specific IPs and countries, prevents SQL injections.
Traffic Filtering: Analyzes and controls incoming requests to maintain security.
Adaptive Stream Delivery: Adjusts content delivery to meet bandwidth needs.

What benefits should users expect?

Cost-Effectiveness: Provides robust security tools at a competitive price.
Enhanced Security: Comprehensive protection against cyber threats.
Scalability: Easily handles increasing traffic and data loads.
Ease of Integration: Simple integration with existing systems.
Insightful Analytics: Offers data-driven insights into traffic and attack patterns.

In media, Akamai App and API Protector ensures smooth streaming by handling high bandwidth demands. E-commerce companies use it to guard against fraud and data breaches. Financial sectors rely on its ability to protect sensitive transactions. Implementations in healthcare focus on safeguarding patient data while maintaining compliance with regulations.

Akamai

Cloudflare One is a comprehensive platform for security, performance, and connectivity. It provides features like rate limiting, DDoS protection, and application access, tailored to enhance user experience while securing internet access and accelerating communications.

Designed to integrate security measures with ease of use and scalability, Cloudflare One offers a secure web gateway and zero trust network access. These features ensure seamless setup and operation, making connectivity reliable and protected. Users appreciate its integrated console, intuitive interface, and the ability to manage risk effectively. It offers straightforward deployment, improves latency, and boasts cost-effectiveness. While its onboarding process and documentation need enhancement, its value in content delivery and application shielding is notable. Despite challenges in integrating Cloudflare Access with existing VPNs and the need for better automation and support, it remains vital for DNS and infrastructure protection.

What features make Cloudflare One stand out?

Rate Limiting: Controls the traffic rate to prevent abuse.
DDoS Protection: Shields applications from distributed denial-of-service attacks.
Secure Web Gateway: Provides secure internet access with seamless operation.
Zero Trust Network Access: Ensures secure, application-based connectivity without relying on traditional VPNs.
Access for Connectivity: Facilitates access to internal applications securely.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Security: Robust measures for DNS and browsing protection.
Performance: Enhanced site accessibility and communication speed.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing for its features.
Ease of Deployment: Straightforward and efficient setup process.

In industries like finance, retail, and technology, Cloudflare One is crucial for enabling secure remote access and protecting web applications against dynamic threats. It supports compliance access policies and enhances content delivery, playing a key role in safeguarding digital infrastructure.

Cloudflare

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

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Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Cloudflare One

June 2026

Free Report: Akamai App and API Protector vs. Cloudflare One

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Cloudflare One and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

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