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Akamai App and API Protector vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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)
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (30th)
 

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.
Shashank N - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good stability, but the agent-based approach could be more convenient
The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF. Additionally, the agent-based approach presents challenges with managing agents across versions and dependencies on specific application platforms like Apache or NGINX, leading to compatibility issues and complexity in integration. This agent-based system proved particularly difficult to manage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"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."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"The product is user-friendly."
"Traffic filtering and WAF are valuable."
"They have a fantastic tool for analyzing and viewing your traffic."
"I can attest to its benefits in terms of understanding and mitigating threats...The solution's technical support team seems to be pretty responsive."
"The most valuable feature is the DDoS protection, which is the main reason we got it."
"Akamai Web Application Protector is a good solution that provides basic web application protection."
"The product has a good UI."
"Everything will be handled by Akamai's system before it reaches our infrastructure."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."
"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."
"Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"Technical support is lacking."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."
"It would be nice if Akamai Web Application Protector's price is lowered and made cheaper."
"The product should provide a secure NTP."
"The pricing could be reduced a bit."
"It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console."
"Support and the pricing need to improve."
"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."
"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."
"The custom rules must be improved."
"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."
"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."
"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."
"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"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 tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The price is reasonable."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"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."
"Its price is at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose."
"Akamai is very expensive."
"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."
"The solution is not 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."
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
"The product has an affordable cost."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
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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%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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.
What do you like most about Signal Sciences?
The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signal Sciences?
The pricing is very competitive compared to other providers. The pricing is definitely a factor in our decision-makin...
What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?
We do use it, but the UI can be improved as we mostly work through the CI/CD. It provides support, but sometimes it i...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

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
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.