Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Akamai Bot Manager vs Cloudflare 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 Bot Manager
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Bot Management (2nd)
Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Akamai Bot Manager is designed for Bot Management and holds a mindshare of 25.0%, down 25.7% compared to last year.
Cloudflare, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 18.9% mindshare, up 17.8% since last year.
Bot Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Akamai Bot Manager25.0%
F5 Shape Security18.7%
DataDome11.1%
Other45.199999999999996%
Bot Management
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare18.9%
Arbor DDoS12.0%
Radware DDoS8.6%
Other60.5%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a good user experience and has a straightforward initial setup phase
The features of the tool are associated with the licensing part, so my company uses Akamai Bot Manager for account takeovers. The aforementioned area consists of functionality related to the product, which is available straight out of the box. The product is very straightforward. One of the features of the product is associated with the fact that it allows us to automate the blocking of countries, like Russia, that have some serious criminal records or where the crimes are high, so my company uses IP geo protection as a function. VPNs from areas that are used by some bots to potentially launch attacks are blocked by automating certain processes through Akamai. Akamai has a database of blacklisted IPs, URLs, and users.
Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai Bot Manager is very easy to scale. Adding new domains or subdomains is a super easy process."
"Akamai Bot Manager has more advanced rules that allow it to detect and block bot scrapers."
"Akamai Bot Manager has two valuable features: BMS (Bot Manager Standard) and BMP (Bot Manager Premier)."
"The best feature is the BNP. That is what Manager Premium does, protection of transactional endpoints."
"Based on the telemetry, Akamai Bot Manager gives a rough estimate of all the hits and requests we get, which are suspected bots."
"The most valuable features of Akamai Bot Manager are the seamless integration and accuracy with which it detects the bots that can make attacks."
"In terms of the security provided, the benefits from the use of the product are immediately visible."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"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 most valuable feature is its usability."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
 

Cons

"We cannot block illegitimate web scrapers because Akamai Bot Manager does not provide detailed information about various origins and remote VPNs they come through."
"There are other rules that are user-friendly, however, many of the things have a learning curve. This is not something you enter into lightly."
"In my opinion, the UI of Akamai Bot Manager is a bit unconventional and not as intuitive as one might expect."
"Akamai Bot Manager Premier has some additional functionalities, particularly for web telemetry, but they don't have it for app telemetry."
"I feel that customer support has certain concerns where improvements are required."
"I would say there is definitely a need of improvement because I think some start of this year or even, like one and a half years. But now have enough resources at their end especially with the, advanced AI and everything. So they have enough resources to launch basic bot attacks. And whenever we do some type of fine tuning, they are always somehow able to evade it or just fly under the threshold. And from our end, we also have to maintain those threshold so that we still do not start blocking the real general customer. So every time when they try to do something else, we have to see their traffic patterns and then find you in our solution.When these bot attacks happen, what we have to do is we have to check their, traffic patterns, their IT sees and then do the proper analysis. And based on that, the fine tuning is done. So I would say, like, based on these bot traffic, if there is a automatic fine tuning. With the help of machine learning at all, then that would be much more easier of beneficial. So this needs improvement."
"There is a clear need for improvement. Over the past year or so, we've observed an increase in the sophistication of attacks, with some occurring at the start of this year or even extending back one and a half years. Despite having ample resources, particularly with the advent of advanced AI, these entities can now execute basic bot attacks."
"Akamai Bot Manager can improve by having better SDK integration. SDK would be required to integrate with any mobile applications and if they are able to make that more seamless, it will help."
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"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."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"DNS Management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Akamai Bot Manager requires a separate license that sits on top of Kona or Akamai Web Application Protector."
"The price of Akamai Bot Manager could improve."
"We have to pay a bundled cost."
"You buy a license of the product based on a certain volume, but if you hit the volume and go above it, then you are charged additional for each GB you use. I think you need to pay 20,000 per month."
"Akamai Bot Manager is a very expensive solution."
"We are using the free version."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"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."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Bot Management solutions are best for your needs.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Akamai Bot Manager?
The best feature is the BNP. That is what Manager Premium does, protection of transactional endpoints.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Bot Manager?
You buy a license of the product based on a certain volume, but if you hit the volume and go above it, then you are charged additional for each GB you use. I think you need to pay 20,000 per month.
What needs improvement with Akamai Bot Manager?
In terms of the need for improvement, I feel that it is a continuous cycle where Akamai keeps updating the databases. There are new emerging threats, risks, and sources from which threats can emerg...
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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Luisa Via Roma, Gymgrossisten, Rakuten, U.S. News & World Report, Japan Airlines
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Akamai, Cloudflare and others in Bot Management. Updated: August 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.