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Akamai App and API Protector vs Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
26th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 3.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Deepesh  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Bot Manager and different features to manage threats
As a product, it has good capabilities, including professional support. However, it's risky for us to rely on AI for real-time traffic management. We use in-house analytics but avoid automatic actions due to their high impact. For example, I live in a developing country. Everyone has different types of phones, apps, and everything else. So, if someone is using a legacy phone, that is still a use case here. If AI decides that this is an end-of-life phone or end-of-life Android operating system, it starts blocking that traffic. We may potentially lose millions or probably thousands and hundreds of thousands of hits per second. Everything is all about how well we serve payments because we're into payments. So, AI is used for analytics but not for real-time decisions. We can't afford to block traffic based on AI models due to the variety of devices and operating systems our users have.
Lilian Blaitt - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently identifies and addresses vulnerabilities while providing robust protection
It is a secure tool. It is user-friendly and easy to work with. It is possible to easily find vulnerabilities with the WAF. I understand that the return is good since I haven't had any significant attacks. The vulnerabilities I found were easy to close. I think the return is good. It is a good tool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Traffic filtering and WAF are valuable."
"The product is user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the custom rules feature. This is because many of our customers require a lot of custom rules. Because it's a very customized project for our customers, I think they have the best of everything already."
"They have a fantastic tool for analyzing and viewing your traffic."
"The product has a good user interface."
"The product has a good UI."
"The CDN and the WAF features are the best."
"It is a secure tool."
"Fortinet FortiWeb offers a variety of protections, including machine learning that helps protect web applications."
"The stability of the solution is excellent."
"The company provides technical support, and they are mostly available 24/7."
"The technical support is really good."
"It is user-friendly and easy to work with."
"I rate the overall solution ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"The performance of the cloud monitoring tool is low."
"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."
"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."
"Could integrate more features for each security."
"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 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."
"They are already very flexible, but room for improvement is there. Reports generation could be better and should be improved."
"The interface is a little bit clunky and can be improved."
"The usability of the interface could be improved as it is not user-friendly."
"The only thing I encountered was related to integration, mostly concerning translation."
"I do not have any notes on improvement."
"The usability of the interface could be improved as it is not user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 expensive."
"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."
"Its price is at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose."
"One reason not all people use Akamai is that it is a little bit more expensive than some other providers."
"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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 slight difference.
What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?
It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
The price is not the cheapest, but it offers great value for money. I would rate it as an eight out of ten for pricing.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
While we find the solution to be really good overall, some improvements could be made to the alerting system, specifically around the health checks of endpoints. Enhancements to the X header forwar...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
We use Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service situated in front of our web-facing APIs. This includes everything that is customer-facing, business-to-business APIs, and things like that.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.