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Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 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

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
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 15.0%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 8.9%, up from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform8.9%
Akamai15.0%
Other76.1%
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.
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

"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"Akamai's scalability is good."
"The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively."
"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."
"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 provides low-latency throughput."
"One good thing about Imperva Web Application Firewall is it can be on the cloud and also it can be on-premise."
"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."
"The most valuable features for us are the DDoS and Bot."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution is cloud-based and offers us good uptime. It has combined web and API security. Therefore, with one license, you access both application security and also API security."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."
"The dynamic profiling of websites is the solution's most valuable feature. The security is also good."
"There are a number of features that are valuable such as the account takeover and various antivirus features."
 

Cons

"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN."
"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
"After three or four months from this perspective, I don’t know all the features on the platform yet, so I am still learning about it."
"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."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"Imperva now offers add-ons to add functionality, but I would like to see these included in the product, even if it would cost more."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by providing better features, such as improved prevention of zero-day attacks. Additionally, it should include a VR meta-analysis."
"The tool needs to include artificial intelligence and machine learning. It also needs to improve profiling."
"The UI interface needs improvement."
"If they can bring in generative AI features, that would be useful."
"The rules surrounding the making of web applications could be improved."
"It needs to be improved every time there are new attacks."
"The tool needs to improve CPU and storage memory."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"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 price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"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."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"It is expensive."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"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."
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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
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
 

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?
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...
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 management.
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
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 provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...
 

Also Known As

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

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
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: December 2025.
881,176 professionals have used our research since 2012.