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Akamai vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in CDN
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th), API Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 11.3%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 2.3%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Akamai11.3%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services2.3%
Other86.4%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

JV
Sr. Strategic Accounts Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Improved security and faster operations with a seamless integration
They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best. We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai. It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view. It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere. The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side. On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it has been quite helpful in our company, especially when it comes to applications needing updates frequently."
"It's beneficial since it's one of the best solutions in the world for CDN."
"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."
"As of now, the best thing about Akamai is WAF, and though CDN is a good feature, it comes in second place when compared to WAF. I am very impressed with the WAF offered by Akamai."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve my traffic management efficiency overall because it is cheaper than Silverline."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
"In my opinion, the best features F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers are that the complexity is very low, it is simple to use and gives the opportunity to do whatever I want, basically."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"Overall, I would recommend it; it is very easy to use and effective, and you can immediately configure the policies and configurations you need, with results appearing in seconds."
 

Cons

"Akamai should improve its integrations."
"Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team."
"One area for improvement with Akamai could be pricing."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN, as we are a key player for Internet access in Argentina for final users of mobile, DSL, cable, and FTTH users."
"The solution can be improved by creating a communication pathway with technical engineers because when we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"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."
"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"Sometimes this does not work and I go import them manually."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services still does not have the same flexibility as BIG-IP. It does not have iRules."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
"I would evaluate F5 technical support as not particularly fast in replying, but it is effective."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"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."
"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."
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"Price-wise, I find Akamai's pricing model's inclination to be more towards the expensive side of the spectrum, though I can't say that it is a very expensive product."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Akamai?
Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they could make some cases less complex to set up. There could be improvements in ho...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets where AWS is one of the targets. We are building up websites that we are pointing to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai?
The pricing is good, with no complaints about costs, which is essential when deciding to have Akamai in your network.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, the confidence level on API security that F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for securing my infrastructure with layer 7 protection, which F5 provides. Th...
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.