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Akamai App and API Protector vs Comodo cWatch comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
18th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th), Cloud and Data Center Security (12th)
Comodo cWatch
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
35th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
CDN (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 3.1%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Comodo cWatch is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.5%
Akamai App and API Protector3.1%
Comodo cWatch1.3%
Other91.1%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
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.
Bernardo Murillo - PeerSpot reviewer
Director De Netquatro at Netquatro
Alerts organizations if any malware is detected and removes it quickly
The solution allows me to change my logo. It gives me a white-label portal because I am a partner. OWASP has been the most effective in malware prevention. It can detect if the headers are okay and do FTP scans. We get alerts if we have some malware. It is removed very quickly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup process is simple."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."
"It is scalable for DDoS."
"Akamai App and API Protector exceeds expectations in terms of AI capabilities, and it genuinely combines a plethora of advanced features."
"The features are powerful and better than F5."
"Traffic filtering and WAF are valuable."
"I would recommend this solution to potential users."
"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's a very good solution."
"The solution is very good and I feel more secure under this than I did under Symantec or McAfee."
"They took my website under their surveillance, scanned the website for infection, detected the incident, and removed it in a jiff."
"We get alerts if we have some malware."
"The FIM feature, the information in the new management system, and their support are the most valuable features. The scanned results are quite fast as compared to other platforms compared to scanning timing. It takes about a minute or two minutes. Also, the results of the Comodo scan results are in detail."
"My customers see ROI in the sense that their whole environment is secure."
"The solution is pretty stable. I've never faced pressing issues or hanging issue."
 

Cons

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"It would be nice if Akamai Web Application Protector's price is lowered and made cheaper."
"Support and the pricing need to improve."
"Akamai needs to focus on quickly responding to risks, even those that may potentially be of zero threat..Maybe some of the documentation is a little confusing. They have a lot of different places where you can go to get information, and some of the information is quite out of date."
"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."
"The interface is a little bit clunky and can be improved."
"We are experimenting with EdgeWorkers to write our own code at the Edge level. It could grow to be much better."
"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."
"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."
"The solution needs to build better performance, specifically in the hardware resources."
"Better CDN could be a great thing since this is the best that any website owners would be interested in for protecting their website."
"The portal is a little slow."
"A small problem is from the support team. Sometimes they are a bit delayed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It is not too pricey."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The solution is expensive."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"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."
"The solution is not expensive."
"It's more expensive than others, but the ROI is good for large-scale infrastructure."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"Akamai is very expensive."
"One reason not all people use Akamai is that it is a little bit more expensive than some other providers."
"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."
"Comodo cWatch’s first level, which has fewer features, costs $7."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Construction Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Hospitality Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
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.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
cWatch
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
Xerox, Intel, HP, UPS, Western Union, Western Digital
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Comodo cWatch and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.