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Akamai App and API Protector vs Kaspersky DDoS Protection comparison

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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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
Kaspersky DDoS Protection
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
35th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.6%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.2%, up from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kaspersky DDoS Protection is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Bharat Chandra - PeerSpot reviewer
Exceptional support, protects our sites, and provides visibility into traffic
We did a PoC of Akamai and Cloudflare. 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. Other things are good in Akamai. That is why we are using Akamai. Only the captcha part should be implemented.
Nadeem Syed - PeerSpot reviewer
A comprehensive and advanced product that prevents DDoS attacks
Kaspersky DDoS Protection offers three layers of support. The first layer of support is from the reseller, the second from the distributor, and the third from Kaspersky itself. Kaspersky has two support options. If one of my clients to whom I have sold Kaspersky licenses is facing an issue, they have to register themselves and wait in queue for support. It can take around 24-72 hours. A client can buy support from Kaspersky directly for a whole year. This type of support is quick and good since they respond within an hour.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The support that we got from their technical team has been fantastic. I have never experienced this level of support from other CDN providers."
"The solution can scale extremely well."
"Traffic filtering and WAF are valuable."
"The product has a good user interface."
"They have a fantastic tool for analyzing and viewing your traffic."
"The CDN and the WAF features are the best."
"It enables us to move faster with new products because we have this layer of protection set up in our infrastructure."
"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 is a mature product and we have not faced any DDoS attack. The tool is a comprehensive and advanced product. The solution is compatible with third-party products."
 

Cons

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"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."
"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."
"The custom rules must be improved."
"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."
"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 could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console."
"In terms of precedence of Akamai rules, the last one is implemented. That is the one that is operational. If two rules contradict, the last one is implemented. We had a clash, but it was really tough to find that out. I would like to have a rulebook because, in their architecture documentation, it is not mentioned anywhere that if two rules clash, the last one works, and if it does not work, then what to do. This is something we were debating today with their tech support. With AWS, we get documents for the issues so that they do not occur in the future. Akamai's support and knowledge base needs to be improved."
"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."
"Kaspersky DDoS Protection's cloud version does not support all the features of its on-prem version. The solution needs to improve its support since clients can face issues that hurt their network. They would need an immediate response."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is cheap."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The price is reasonable."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"Akamai Web Application Protector is an expensive product."
"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."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"The product is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
"Kaspersky DDoS Protection's prices are average. Compared to other brands, prices are competitive. When you purchase many licenses, you get a heavy discount. However, the prices are not affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
24%
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

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 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?
It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.
What do you like most about Kaspersky DDoS Protection?
It is a mature product and we have not faced any DDoS attack. The tool is a comprehensive and advanced product. The ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kaspersky DDoS Protection?
Kaspersky DDoS Protection's prices are average. Compared to other brands, prices are competitive. When you purchase m...
What needs improvement with Kaspersky DDoS Protection?
Kaspersky DDoS Protection's cloud version does not support all the features of its on-prem version. The solution need...
 

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
goods.ru, Revain Blockchain, Alfa Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Radware, NETSCOUT and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: May 2025.
851,042 professionals have used our research since 2012.