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Akamai App and API Protector vs Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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
Sponsored
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)
Akamai App and API Protector
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
Neustar UltraDDoS [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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.
JT
Identifies a request that comes up multiple times, block holds that particular IP, and lets the genuine traffic pass through
Genuine traffic coming in is still getting better. While I understand that it's some sort of algorithm that is written in this scale, that algorithm can be a little bit better because sometimes while we are doing DDoS mitigation, genuine traffic does get blocked. While it is one of the greatest features it can still be improved. I would like to see a dashboard that shows you the data that is transferred from which end. It's where people start looking at abuse management. People keep questioning when the mitigation is on what service it is and how many GBs are passing through. An end user dashboard that will help you identify all of these questions and that can be visible in your entire organization is something that would make sense.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The solution can scale extremely well."
"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 most valuable feature is the DDoS protection, which is the main reason we got it."
"I like that the charges are all based on usage and labor costs. For the time that we spend onboarding almost 252020 FQDN, Akamai charges us only for the traffic usage, but it's only charging us for the labor costs for onboarding."
"The product has a good user interface."
"It enables us to move faster with new products because we have this layer of protection set up in our infrastructure."
"They have a fantastic tool for analyzing and viewing your traffic."
"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."
"In the DDoS it's difficult to validate what is a genuine request from an end user. We've started being able to do that with the logistics that they have set up. With the protection that they have provided, they are able to identify what is valid and what is not valid. We see that a person who is getting DDoS Neustar service is able to block that particular user. However, while they are doing that it doesn't affect other customers on the server."
 

Cons

"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."
"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"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."
"Customer support has room for improvement."
"It would be nice if Akamai Web Application Protector's price is lowered and made cheaper."
"The interface is a little bit clunky and can be improved."
"If we talk about application layer attacks, including WAF, CloudFlare is leading. Akamai can focus a bit more on the application layer attacks and how to protect them."
"The product should provide a secure NTP."
"The pricing could be reduced a bit."
"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."
"I would like to see a dashboard that shows you the data that is transferred from which end. It's where people start looking at abuse management. People keep questioning when the mitigation is on what service it is and how many GBs are passing through. An end user dashboard that will help you identify all of these questions and that can be visible in your entire organization is something that would make sense."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"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 price of the solution is expensive."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"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."
"The product is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"The product’s price is high."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"Akamai is very expensive."
"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."
"One reason not all people use Akamai is that it is a little bit more expensive than some other providers."
"Its price is at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise18
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.
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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
Neustar UltraDDoS, UltraDDoS
 

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
Choxi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Radware, NETSCOUT and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: August 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.