Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Akamai and Imperva are both solutions in the CDN category. Akamai is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while Imperva is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3. Akamai holds a 14.4% mindshare in CDN, compared to Imperva’s 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 2025

Akamai and Imperva are competing in the application security sector. Data comparisons suggest Akamai has an advantage due to user satisfaction with customer support and pricing, but Imperva's comprehensive features offer long-term value.

Features: Akamai's strengths include a highly scalable network, real-time threat insights, and ease of use. Imperva provides advanced bot management, comprehensive threat analytics, and strong web application firewall features.

Room for Improvement: Akamai could enhance its detailed analytics capabilities and bot management features. Imperva could benefit from streamlining its deployment process, improving user interface functionality, and optimizing resource allocation for smaller enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai offers a streamlined deployment process with comprehensive support, allowing for quick implementation. Imperva requires a tailored approach but excels with specialized customer service for complex deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai provides competitive pricing and strong immediate ROI, appealing to cost-conscious businesses. Imperva's initial costs are higher, but its robust security features often justify the investment for organizations seeking deep security capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

March 2026

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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

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
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	18.7%
Imperva Application Security Platform	9.0%
Akamai	14.4%
Other	57.9%

CDN

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

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.

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VinuThomas John

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.

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reviewer1247523

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"It's very user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"Cloudflare's DNS services deliver the best performance in terms of speed and reliability."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

More Cloudflare pros

"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."

"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."

"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."

"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."

"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."

"The most valuable feature of Akamai is its ease of use and simple integration. Additionally, the solution has new aspects added to it regularly."

"It's a scalable and reliable solution."

More Akamai pros

"Its unique interface for managing security performance and ease of use are the most valuable features of this solution."

"It is easy to use and has good security."

"The WAF itself has been very valuable to me because it has such a complete range of features. Another reason why I like it is because it also takes care of the total overview of the traffic over the network."

"Technical support provides good, quick responses."

"The most valuable features of Imperva Web Application Firewall are the monitoring of databases and the dashboards are easy to understand."

"Scalability is pretty easy on the base platform. You just add another, and you're ready to go."

"There are many features. There is ease of deployment. You can deploy the Imperva Web Application Firewall in two to three minutes. After that, you have to set the policies. For setting policies, you have toggle buttons. You can turn something on or off."

"Gives us the ability to trace each connection, and to have logs to be able to differentiate between a positive and a false-positive intruder action."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

Cons

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

"The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."

More Cloudflare cons

"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."

"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."

"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."

"I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."

"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."

"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."

More Akamai cons

"It should be more user-friendly. Like other web solutions, it would be helpful to be able to easily do policy configuration and identification inside the application. Understanding the in-depth configuration of a policy is somewhat difficult for an engineer, and they can improve that."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."

"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection. For example, firewalls are to be dependent on the configuration, but if they could have some data science around it the solution would be even better. The profiling of the traffic, and making decisions surrounding that should be intelligence-based, instead of being based on the configuration of the firewall itself."

"I see some areas for improvement in Imperva Application Security Platform, especially regarding price."

"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."

"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."

"The product could use a broader scope in the area of policies."

"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"We are using the free version."

"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 price is reasonable."

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"

"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."

"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."

"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."

"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."

"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."

"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."

More Akamai pricing and cost advice

"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."

"The tool is expensive."

"Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers."

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."

"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."

"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."

"It is expensive."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user69348

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	84
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	62

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...

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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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Akamai?

The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively.

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 46% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Fastly vs Akamai

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Akamai

Compared 9% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon CloudFront vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 6% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 4% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Application Security Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Akamai

March 2026

Download Akamai product report

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Application Security Platform

February 2026

Imperva Application Security Platform report

Download Imperva Application Security Platform product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Akamai is a powerful solution that aims to enhance the performance and reliability of websites and applications. With features like excellent performance, robust security measures, and efficient content delivery, it optimizes user experience. It also offers bandwidth optimization, caching, online asset security, and protection against DDoS attacks. Users value its wide network coverage and reliable customer support.

Akamai

Imperva Application Security Platform delivers comprehensive and continuous web threat protection. Renowned for its ease of use, it shields web applications and databases from various cyber threats while integrating seamlessly with cloud and on-premises environments.

Imperva Application Security Platform protects web environments by offering advanced security measures against threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting. As a robust web application firewall, it provides extensive monitoring and bot management capabilities. The platform integrates content delivery networks for enhanced performance and scalability, while real-time traffic analysis ensures consistent protection. Despite its strengths, improvements can be made in policy management and customization options. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and more competitive pricing models. The inclusion of AI for enhanced analytics is also anticipated.

What are the key features of Imperva Application Security Platform?

Correlated Attack Validation: Enhances threat assessment by linking related security events.
Threat Radar: Offers visibility into potential and ongoing threats.
Virtual Patching: Provides protection against vulnerabilities without immediate code changes.
IncapRules: Allows creation of custom security policies.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.
CDN Integration: Improves content delivery speed and reliability.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

User-Friendly Administration: Simplifies setup and ongoing management tasks.
Seamless Integration: Ensures smooth operation with existing infrastructure.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Shields digital assets from a wide range of threats.
Hands-On Support: Provides timely and effective customer service assistance.

Imperva Application Security Platform is implemented in industries needing strong database and application protection. Companies use it to enforce geolocation restrictions and manage bots, benefiting sectors like finance and e-commerce where data security and threat monitoring are critical. Its ability to protect and ensure data accessibility makes it integral to business operations prioritizing cyber resilience.

Imperva

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.

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

March 2026

Free Report: Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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