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

Akamai vs Amazon CloudFront 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 17.7%, up from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 7.9%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.4%, up from 21.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Aryan Singh1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers great enterprise support, ideal for solutions requiring high scalability and seamless integration with AWS infrastructure
For Akamai, it is definitely one of the best tools out there. However, there are challenges with how their approach is designed for large enterprises. While it's great for solutions with high scalability, like global e-commerce, it's not really built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It has too many options and can be complex for SMBs to utilize. That's the biggest challenge we faced when migrating to Akamai from other solutions, like Cloudflare. It can be difficult to migrate between platforms. Due to its great features but high activation thresholds. So, while it's a powerful tool, it has limitations for some implementations. It was difficult to migrate from and to Akamai. It is challenging when we are building a website.
Parth Buch - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly manages security and dynamic content hosting in diverse applications
Hosting static content or with engineering dynamic content is beneficial. CloudFront provides a common access point, manages routing to different methods, and serves as an access point plus API routing. With AWS, maintenance is not required as it's a service offered by AWS which maintains itself. Security concerns are manageable through AWS's security mechanisms, with additional security enhancement possible through options like WAF and NACL.
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 is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"If an attacker conducts an attack, we can check what query he is running and whether he wants to see our password or any other files."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions."
"The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively."
"It's a scalable and reliable solution."
"The product is very well interconnected with other Amazon services."
"The speed and usability of the solution are valuable."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to deliver content to users nearby."
"Its main advantage is that it offers something in this region that wasn't available before; previously, you had to go outside of the region to get the same level of service that you can now access right here in Bahrain. It's truly incredible. Building this IX has significantly changed how traffic is handled. The technical support is good. The initial setup is very straightforward. I rate the solution a perfect ten."
"The solution makes our platform fully accessible and available globally, helping us to ensure that our customers can rely on it being up and running."
"The tool is highly available and reliable. It helps to access server applications easily. Integrating Amazon CloudFront with other AWS services was very easy, I would rate it eight out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the speed of delivery."
"We can personalize a lot of things inside CDN."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"It's very user-friendly."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
 

Cons

"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN."
"I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"Akamai could improve by providing its own cloud services. We have to use third-party cloud services at this time, such as Amazon AWS. The offering becomes a lot easier for an SMB if everything was in one single platform to be used for the services."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
"There are some solutions needed for integration that are not free."
"They could be expanding the number of locations available. It will help users easily access content."
"With a mixed stack, things become a problem. With GCP and Azure, the DNS setup gets tricky when using CloudFront."
"I have utilized certain characteristics and invested effort in reading the documentation, which proved to be challenging."
"The lack of seamless integration made the setup process more complex and required additional research to manage all the services properly."
"Amazon CloudFront seems to have too many unnecessary products, which makes it cluttered."
"Amazon CloudFront could improve by making it easier to integrate with components from different cloud providers."
"The product should be more intuitive."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"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."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"It is an expensive product. The licensing costs for the solution are based on the usage. If we need premium support, we need to buy it from Akamai."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"From the resource component, it's very costly, and Akamai's charges are also high. So, any organization with a high-tech budget can definitely afford it, but companies with 10-15% of their revenue as a technical budget probably won't be able to. That's where they have a lot of room for improvement if they want to onboard those early users."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."
"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"Amazon CloudFront costs less than third-party services."
"Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
"For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution."
"I used to work with AWS and Azure, and we provided cost comparisons for customers to help them choose the right services. Azure tends to be more user-friendly and easier to understand, while AWS may take more time."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."
"Its price is really on the high side. It should be cheaper in general."
"The solution’s price is reasonable."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"We are using the free version."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.
858,327 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user69348 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 17, 2013
Akamai vs. CloudFlare – Simple Stats
In the world of CDNs Akamai is the incumbent 500 pound gorilla, no question. They have a HUGE global presence, super solid technology and networks, and have the most experience with large enterprise clients. However, now there other strong players in the CDN market. One of the most…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Akamai?
The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively.
What needs improvement with Akamai?
Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team. While the support is not bad, there is room...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We use Akamai ( /products/akamai-reviews ) as our CDN ( /categories/cdn ) to advertise prefixes and download traffic....
How do I choose between AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFro...
What do you like most about Amazon CloudFront?
The solution has good security features.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudFront?
I find Amazon's pricing good, rating it eight out of ten and considering it affordable and rightly placed, not expens...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork
Unilever, Spotify, Pinterest, MLB Advanced Media, Foursquare, PBS, Airbnb, Netflix, WIX, Comcast, Automobili Lamborghini, Rovio, Discovery Communications
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 Cloudflare, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in CDN. Updated: June 2025.
858,327 professionals have used our research since 2012.