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

Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in CDN
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.7%, down from 22.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 14.4%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 9.0%, up from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare18.7%
Imperva Application Security Platform9.0%
Akamai14.4%
Other57.9%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
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.
reviewer1247523 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation
Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"Because our website is blazing fast it improves our conversion rates."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"Cloudflare's DNS services deliver the best performance in terms of speed and reliability."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"There is no service as mature as Cloudflare that is also as easy to use, reliable, and hosted from excellent infrastructure."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."
"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."
"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."
"Akamai has a very established network of PoPs globally."
"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."
"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"Akamai's scalability is good."
"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."
"Imperva anti-DDoS protection has the well-known value of having lots of distributed nodes around the world, making it the best value for DDoS protection."
"The features I have found most valuable with Imperva Web Application Firewall are account takeover protection, advanced bot protection, and API security."
"The dynamic profiling of websites is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."
"It works right out of the box once you integrate the application."
"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are performance and flexibility. We can extend or customize the box itself."
"This product is a reliable defense from malicious attacks on a network environment."
"Incapsula’s DDoS Protection and Load Balancing really helped maximize our security."
 

Cons

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"I rate technical support quite badly."
"More insight into analytics and threats would be a good place to start improving Cloudflare."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"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."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN."
"Akamai should improve its integrations."
"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"One thing that they really could improve on is the depth of the analytics."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."
"I would like to improve the tool's turnaround time in terms of support."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the console by making it easier to use."
"On the negative side, API security mainly supports cloud-based solutions, while most of my customers prefer on-prem setups, so achieving high performance with on-prem solutions would be beneficial."
"The solution needs to improve Integration with third parties for their on-prem deployment models. The integration is not that good yet."
"Imperva always needs to adjust to new versions of cyber attacks, it needs to be faster, improve the resiliency of the software of the solution."
"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"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."
"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 product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"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 price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"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."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"The tool is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user69348 - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business84
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise62
 

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 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?
Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...
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 wher...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

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.
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
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.