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

Akamai App and API Protector vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service comparison

Sponsored
 

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
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Akamai App and API Protector
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (5th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (34th)
 

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.
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Hadar Eshel - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to install platform with valuable policy management features
We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy. Additionally, it could operate in a local data center.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"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."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"Adaptive stream delivery and WAF protection are valuable."
"We are getting security for each and every API."
"The product is user-friendly."
"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."
"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."
"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 most valuable feature is the DDoS protection, which is the main reason we got it."
"I have contacted the support team of Akamai... I am happy with their responses and answers to my problems."
"It provides an ease of policy management."
"The most valuable features of the solution are it is plug and play, has automated policies, a simple configuration, and is easy to create rules."
"The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system"
"The product's bot protection feature is valuable for our company."
"I like its ability to identify known attacks, including DDOS attacks. It's valuable because software must be able to stop known attacks. Application attacks are evolving all the time. When it comes to software-as-a-service, we need to have software that knows about all the latest attacks. It should also protect against major unknown attacks."
 

Cons

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"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."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"Support response time could be improved."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"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."
"It would be nice if Akamai Web Application Protector's price is lowered and made cheaper."
"It would be better if there weren't any issues with latency. We had latency issues, but I think they are all solved now."
"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."
"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."
"They are already very flexible, but room for improvement is there. Reports generation could be better and should be improved."
"The custom rules must be improved."
"Support and the pricing need to improve."
"One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy."
"The solution can improve by bundling Security Operation Center (SOC) with the WAF-as-a-Service, it would provide a lot more value to customers."
"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser. The URL also exposed the user name and the hashed password. When I log into my Barracuda WAF user portal, I could see the username and the hashed password on the URL itself. So, it is not very secure, and it is important to take that off."
"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The price is reasonable."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"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 are using the free tier of the solution."
"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."
"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."
"Akamai Web Application Protector is an expensive product."
"The product is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"Based on the billing discussions in the DevOps team, Akamai's cost does not seem to be a major thing. However, LOE is an issue. When it comes to support, we know that even all the competitors do this. For a 30-minute issue, they give us a LOE of one or two hours. That is a basic practice, but that is something we worry about."
"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
"The solution is not expensive."
"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 at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose."
"It's very difficult for me to give an estimate of the cost. All I know is that we sell the box itself as a service."
"The product is expensive but it offers flexible pricing. It could be affordable."
"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. There are no additional costs to be paid apart from the standard licensing fees attached to the solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
6%
Government
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Media Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
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?
There are no significant areas for improvement on the WAF side or for Akamai App and API Protector solution; they are...
What needs improvement with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?
One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strateg...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?
We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
Barracuda WAF as a Service
 

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
Salvation Army
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.