Akamai App and API Protector vs Nexusguard DDoS Protection comparison

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Nexusguard DDoS Protection

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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 Nexusguard DDoS Protection is 1.9%, up from 1.7% 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%
Nexusguard DDoS Protection	1.9%
Other	80.2%

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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ShashikaKodikara

Head of Cybersecurity at Technovage Solution

A solution requiring straightforward maintenance while remaining cost-effective compared to its competitors in the market

I am not in a position to speak about the areas where the solution needed improvement because I resigned during the implementation phase. At that time, the implementation was ongoing, and everything seemed to be going well. Using the solution, our team managed to transfer a couple of routers through a few areas. However, I believe the migration is still ongoing. Nonetheless, the first phase of the implementation was successful before my departure. There was a certain level of performance degradation in the solution, which I don't know if it can be tuned. This is because I was working for a short period on the solution. In my experience, it is an area that can be improved while also considering the stability and scalability aspects of the solution. If one wants to scale up, then one needs to change their plan. However, the thing is, one can always go for the larger scale based on one's anticipation of future traffic.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

"The API gives us the ability to remote control our DNS settings."

"CloudFlare has positively improved my site's speed, performance and security."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it."

"Stability is great; I love their mechanisms, I love their GUI, I love their front end, I love their behind the scenes, algorithms and everything, it all makes sense."

"For businesses that don't have a dedicated security team, I think it's a better product; it's more intuitive for people like us."

More Cloudflare pros

"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."

"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."

"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."

"They have a fantastic tool for analyzing and viewing your traffic."

"It is scalable for DDoS."

"The CDN and the WAF features are the best in this solution."

"I can attest to its benefits in terms of understanding and mitigating threats...The solution's technical support team seems to be pretty responsive."

"Akamai is a very reliable provider and a very safe bet that will suit most environments' needs."

More Akamai App and API Protector pros

"Nexusguard has given us confidence that we are protected against any outside attacks."

"Based on the support received for implementation, I rate the solution's technical support a nine out of ten."

"The support team was helpful."

"Cloud Diversion is another good feature packaged with the whole solution. When attack traffic is detected, Cloud Diversion triggers to automatically route our prefix to Nexusguard’s scrubbing center, ensuring that all attack traffic is dropped in the shortest time possible."

"Filters can be customized depending on the characteristics of the attack traffic. This feature has made it easier for Nexusguard's SOC team to further isolate any specific attack that can't be blocked by pre-configured mitigation."

"Nexusguard has exponentially improved the availability of our services because we don't have to worry much about any threats or DDoS attacks towards our services."

"The managed service allows us to confidently rely on Nexusguard’s professional team to take relevant actions as and when required to make sure DDoS attacks are successfully mitigated, ensuring 100% uptime of our service."

Cons

"I have found CloudFlare's support to be unresponsive at times, and not very helpful with providing technical details for issues that we have reported over the years."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"Several features that I think is essential is not available in the free and business package."

"We experienced some downtime in the fall of 2013, causing us to switch to Incapsula."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

More Cloudflare cons

"The product really isn't very user-friendly."

"The effectiveness of Akamai's bot management in reducing unauthorized access is quite good, although it does require a lot of fine-tuning and tweaking, which involves spending ample time with their support teams to tailor the configuration to our applications."

"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."

"They are already very flexible, but room for improvement is there. Reports generation could be better and should be improved."

"The WAF features definitely have a lot of room for improvement."

"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."

"The custom rules were difficult to use."

"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."

More Akamai App and API Protector cons

"One of the features that should be added to the next release is report generation. Currently, reports can be downloaded every month and are only available at the beginning of each month. It would be nice to generate the reports based on specific dates that we prefer and not have to wait until the next month for the current month’s report."

"The mitigation scope of Origin Protection is not fully efficient as there could be delays in activating the countermeasures."

"One of the features that should be added to the next release is report generation."

"There was a certain level of performance degradation in the solution, which I don't know if it can be tuned...In my experience, it is an area that can be improved while also considering the stability and scalability aspects of the solution."

"One thing that we would like to improve from them is to provide more training to SOC team for them to have a deep understanding of the solution so that they would always be ready to answer anything without the need to escalate queries to senior personnel."

"The solution must provide features for the post-processing of the traffic type and the traffic quality."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"The price is reasonable."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

"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

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

"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."

"Akamai is very expensive."

"The product is expensive, but it is worth the money."

"Akamai Web Application Protector is an expensive product."

"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."

"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."

More Akamai App and API Protector pricing and cost advice

"On a scale of one to ten, where one represents a cheap option, and ten represents an expensive option, I would rate the solution a seven in terms of cost."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.

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900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

Comms Service Provider

44%

Media Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

University

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

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 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.

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.

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

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Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 36% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 3% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

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

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs Nexusguard DDoS Protection

Compared 16% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Nexusguard DDoS Protection

Compared 14% of the time

Fortinet FortiDDoS vs Nexusguard DDoS Protection

Compared 8% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Nexusguard DDoS Protection

Compared 8% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Nexusguard DDoS Protection

Compared 7% of the time

More Nexusguard DDoS Protection Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Akamai App and API Protector

Download Akamai App and API Protector product report

Nexusguard DDoS Protection

Download Nexusguard DDoS Protection product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

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

No data available

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

Nexusguard DDoS Protection provides comprehensive Origin Protection, customizable filters, and cloud-based attack traffic routing to ensure 100% uptime without additional hardware or staff.

Nexusguard DDoS Protection is designed to shield networks and critical infrastructure from cyber-attacks, including DDoS incidents. It offers Origin Protection and customizable filters covering site, network, and host levels. With automatic traffic routing through Cloud Diversion, businesses enjoy managed services ensuring consistent uptime. Nexusguard's local scrubbing capacity reaches up to 100 GB, and transparent traffic analysis is facilitated through intuitive dashboards. Users have access to 24/7 support via the Help Center, ensuring efficient DDoS mitigation and minimized downtime without requiring extra hardware or staff. Areas for improvement include report generation and post-processing features, while application security within Origin Protection might benefit from enhanced application layer analysis.

What are Nexusguard DDoS Protection's key features?

Origin Protection: Safeguards against all attack types with customizable filters.
Cloud Diversion: Automatically reroutes attack traffic to scrubbing centers.
Local Scrubbing: Supports up to 100 GB to handle larger threats.
Intuitive Dashboards: Facilitates transparent traffic analysis.
24/7 Support: Assistance via Help Center for uninterrupted operations.

What benefits should be considered in reviews?

100% Uptime: Maintains consistent service availability.
Network Efficiency: Reduces downtime without additional hardware or staff.
Scalability: Accommodates growing demands with robust protection.
Compliance Assurance: Keeps businesses aligned with security standards.

Industries like online gaming and cargo management utilize Nexusguard DDoS Protection to maintain service availability and meet uptime requirements. By effectively managing network traffic and overcoming ISP-related challenges, companies can ensure seamless operations and continuity. Nexusguard’s customizable, enterprise-grade services support proactive security measures, enabling businesses to remain resilient against cyber threats.

Nexusguard

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

21st Century Technologies, Netpluz, REDtone, SNOC, StarHub, aamra

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Nexusguard DDoS Protection