Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Akamai and Imperva are both solutions in the CDN category. Akamai is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3, while Imperva is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7. Akamai holds a 11.6% mindshare in CDN, compared to Imperva’s 7.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

Akamai and Imperva Application Security Platform compete in the application security market. Imperva has the upper hand, attributed to its robust features.

Features: Akamai delivers global scale using a proprietary content delivery network, with advanced threat protection and automated DDoS mitigation. Imperva provides enhanced threat analytics, adaptive threat response, and a comprehensive feature set offering thorough protection and insight.

Room for Improvement: Akamai could enhance its analytics and offer more diverse threat response options. Greater customization and detailed reporting are needed. Imperva might improve its integration capabilities with third-party platforms and streamline its user interface for ease of navigation. Additional cost-effective solutions can also be developed.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai ensures swift deployment and effective customer service with cloud-native integrations. Imperva features reliable deployment with extensive guidance, offering hands-on support that excels in addressing complex deployment needs.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai's setup costs are lower, giving it a competitive edge in initial pricing. However, Imperva offers a better long-term ROI due to its comprehensive security features and reduced risk exposure, despite potentially higher initial costs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

August 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 909,647 peers since 2012

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 August 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 15.0%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 11.6%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.3%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	15.0%
Imperva Application Security Platform	7.3%
Akamai	11.6%
Other	66.1%

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

reviewer2818155

Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Application protection has improved and reporting and dashboards still need refinement

I believe Imperva Application Security Platform should have a more interactive wizard. While the dashboard is good, it could be more eye-catching. Based on my perspective, I recommend modifying the dashboards, especially the main dashboard where I can see the traffic hit count, alerts, and other latest information. In terms of reporting, I find it challenging to create reports; in my earlier days, it was difficult. Over time, I have learned how to create reports, but it should be easier to do so. I have used other tools such as firewalls or SolarWinds, where creating a report is straightforward and does not take much time, unlike in Imperva, where I have to add many elements. Modifications in the integration aspects would also be beneficial.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support is good."

"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."

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."

"I have not had a DDOS attack since, or at least not become unavailable due to DDOS which means my ROI is pretty good."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"Cloudflare makes it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple users and multiple clients, and basically go in and access their account, make the changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

More Cloudflare pros

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

"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."

"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 is very sustainable and flexible."

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

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

"Akamai provides low-latency throughput."

"We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."

More Akamai pros

"The solution can be configured in just a couple of minutes, ensures 99.7% availability for my applications, provides an additional layer of security for web and mobile applications, protects my environment, and helps maintain my reputation in the market."

"They're quite easy to install and quite easy to set up. Clients really like that. Especially when you're dealing with the cloud, it's really easy."

"The most valuable features for us are the DDoS and Bot."

"The solution is stable."

"Human contact Fast SLA Trustworthy and excellent communication Highly-functional back office with user friendly reports and intelligence on bad IPS and malicious software is at very high level and very quick."

"Final words : I was pretty much convinced by the Incapsula CDN, Overall it worked well without any glitches or breaking down the theme or stylesheet of my blog."

"By using this application, the firewall is blocking every suspicious activity and event, and now we are safe with peace of mind that nobody will use malware on us or try to hack our website."

"The tool's profiling feature maps all the web application directories and related components on the profile directory. It has improved the security of my client's website applications."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

Cons

"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."

"For the services I am using, it is a bit expensive."

"The installation was complex until I learned what I had to learn."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"Honestly the product has not really improved the way of my organisation."

"DNS Management."

"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."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

More Cloudflare cons

"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."

"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."

"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."

"Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team."

"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."

"I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."

"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."

"Akamai should improve its integrations."

More Akamai cons

"Technical support is probably the biggest drawback."

"They once terminated a free account without warning, resulting in a few days downtime."

"The hardware being more expensive compared to other vendors poses a challenge, along with a need for improvement in the cloud WAF offerings."

"Communication declined a bit as they got bigger – 7/10."

"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."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by adding more features to the dashboard. increasing the visibility of the real-time events, besides configuring the administration itself."

"It would be nice to have a mobile app as a dashboard interface instead of the web administration, but the service is really great."

"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

"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."

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

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

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

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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 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."

"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."

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

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

"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."

More Akamai pricing and cost advice

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."

"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."

"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."

"The solution's price is high for small companies."

"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."

"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."

"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	88
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	70

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...

See all answers

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

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

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 31% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

Wiz vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Fastly vs Akamai

Compared 9% of the time

Uplynk vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

EdgeNext CDN vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

More Akamai Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Link11 vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

SiteLock vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Application Security Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

August 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Akamai

August 2026

Download Akamai product report

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Application Security Platform

August 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 enhances performance and security for web applications with features such as a robust CDN and web application firewall. It supports traffic management and improving content delivery speed through a global data center network.

Akamai, known for its web application firewall and CDN, provides comprehensive solutions catering to enterprises with advanced needs like traffic offloading, logging, security, and scalability. Its global Points of Presence network and threat intelligence capabilities, incorporating AI and machine learning, ensure strong security and traffic management. Users appreciate the ease of integration and management, despite the complexity and navigation challenges of the Akamai console. The potential improvements in API security, caching strategies, and migration processes alongside competitive pricing could broaden its appeal. Akamai primarily focuses on content delivery, video streaming, and caching, supporting sectors such as streaming, gaming, and businesses requiring rapid content delivery and cyber threat protection.

What are Akamai's key features?

Web Application Firewall: Protects against common vulnerabilities and threats.
CDN: Enhances website performance by reducing load times.
Security: Includes DDoS protection and threat intelligence.
Traffic Management: Efficient handling and scaling of web traffic.
Global Presence: Extensive data centers for faster content delivery.
Automatic Updates: Ensures security features are up-to-date.

What benefits do users find with Akamai?

Improved Performance: Faster content delivery enhances user experience.
Enhanced Security: Robust protection against cyber threats.
Scalability: Accommodates growing traffic demands seamlessly.
Integration Ease: Simplifies operational workflows.
Reliability: Ensures consistent uptime and performance quality.

In streaming and gaming industries, Akamai optimizes content delivery and security measures, meeting the demands for rapid, secure, and reliable services. Businesses leverage its CDN and monitoring capabilities to reduce load times and enhance application performance, whilst increasing protection against cyber threats.

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

August 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: August 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform report.

See our list of best CDN vendors.

We monitor all CDN reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.