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Akamai App and API Protector vs Cloudflare vs Prolexic comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.4%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 16.2%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 2.9%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare16.2%
Akamai App and API Protector4.4%
Prolexic2.9%
Other76.5%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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 faced challenges with bot detection while benefiting from strong threat monitoring and compliance support
Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance. We utilize the real-time monitoring of the solution. Real-time monitoring helps us identify network vulnerabilities by allowing us to see a spike in traffic and understand the traffic levels compared to this time last month or last week. If we notice a sudden increase, we investigate further to determine if it indicates a DDoS attack or a card testing situation. In terms of threat detection capabilities, they are very good because Akamai has a SOC service that we have tapped into for active threat detection and threat hunting, and they monitor everything carefully 24/7. Scrubbing is done by Akamai as a backend service, and we utilize their SOC, which is a service that you pay additional fees for, allowing us to have our queries prioritized. Prolexic features help maintain business continuity during high-volume attacks by having built-in threat detection capabilities in its bot detection and other functionalities, as attacks usually occur through intelligent bots trying to infiltrate the system.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It enables us to move faster with new products because we have this layer of protection set up in our infrastructure."
"I would recommend this solution to potential users."
"The product has a good UI."
"The dashboard is the most interesting feature of the Akamai portal where you can have a detailed analysis of all the attacks that are happening. You can drill down an issue and see exactly what is happening, who are the bad guys attacking your website, and how Akamai is protecting the website. That is the most valuable feature."
"It's a very good solution."
"Akamai Web Application Protector is a good solution that provides basic web application protection."
"The product has a good user interface."
"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."
"There is no service as mature as Cloudflare that is also as easy to use, reliable, and hosted from excellent infrastructure."
"Because our website is blazing fast it improves our conversion rates."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"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."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"The aggressive caching and DDOS mitigation are the most valuable features offered by Cloudflare."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"I have not had a DDOS attack since, or at least not become unavailable due to DDOS which means my ROI is pretty good."
"Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance."
"Prolexic technical support is second to none."
"They've scrubbed DDoS traffic that was blasting us offline, thus allowing legitimate traffic through and letting our service return online."
"The solution does not have hardware or maintenance requirements and is very easy to scale."
"The solution does not have hardware or maintenance requirements and is very easy to scale."
"The support from Akamai is great, and they provide excellent information and mitigation services."
 

Cons

"It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console."
"The custom rules must be improved."
"The custom rules were difficult to use."
"Could integrate more features for each security."
"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."
"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."
"It would be better if there weren't any issues with latency. We had latency issues, but I think they are all solved now."
"The product should provide a secure NTP."
"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"The Always Online feature has room for improvement. It seems to work sometimes and not others even with the pro version."
"We experienced some downtime in the fall of 2013, causing us to switch to Incapsula."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything."
"In bot management, there are times when attackers find ways to bypass Akamai, which is a continuously evolving challenge."
"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."
"It's expensive, though."
"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."
"The reports provided don’t give detailed information about DDoS mitigations, bandwidth utilization, etc."
"The web portal for checking status and traffic needs improvements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose."
"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."
"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."
"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 product is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
"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."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"We are using the free version."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The pricing is a pay-as-you-go model that is charged by the hour."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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 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.
What needs improvement with Akamai Prolexic Routed?
For the DDoS protection, I don't see any areas for improvement because they are pretty solid there, though in bot man...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Prolexic Routed?
The main use case for DDoS protection is to mitigate risks, and there are multiple ways Akamai provides DDoS protecti...
What advice do you have for others considering Akamai Prolexic Routed?
We have a couple of products, including DDoS protection, WAF, and Bot Manager. There are two ways Akamai does DDoS pr...
 

Also Known As

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
Cloudflare DNS
Akamai Prolexic Routed
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Fidor Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Radware, Cloudflare, NETSCOUT and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.