Arbor DDoS vs Cloudflare vs Prolexic comparison

Read 78 Cloudflare reviews

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96% willing to recommend

Prolexic

Read 5 Prolexic reviews

1,508 Views
1,478 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Arbor DDoS

Prolexic

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Arbor DDoS, Cloudflare, and Prolexic based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Radware, Cloudflare, NETSCOUT and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection.

To learn more, read our detailed Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Report (Updated: March 2026).

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

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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:

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Arbor DDoS is 8.7%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 16.2%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 2.9%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	16.2%
Arbor DDoS	8.7%
Prolexic	2.9%
Other	72.2%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Sanjin Zuhric

Team Lead Network Engineer at Artco Group d.o.o Sarajevo

Reliable protection ensures robust network defense and simplifies DDoS management

I am not sure if we plan to use additional features because we have many vendors and platforms that we support. We use the main function and that is it. The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss that prices are very high. A potential improvement could be establishing a contract with Cisco to sell via their channel. This could be beneficial because we work extensively with Cisco. If you are a Cisco partner, you can sell Arbor DDoS. That would be good for customers that are Cisco-based because many customers in Bosnia are Cisco-based customers. BH Telecom, our main customer, sells Arbor DDoS to other customers for protection. They buy Arbor and sell the product services to others via Internet links. They sell add-on DDoS protection via Arbor DDoS. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Arbor DDoS is not present in many customers. Some customers try to sell it, but they sell other vendors such as F5. Arbor DDoS is mainly seen in telecom operators but not much in other customers.

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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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Gavin Pinho

Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Has faced challenges with bot detection while benefiting from strong threat monitoring and compliance support

Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance. We utilize the real-time monitoring of the solution. Real-time monitoring helps us identify network vulnerabilities by allowing us to see a spike in traffic and understand the traffic levels compared to this time last month or last week. If we notice a sudden increase, we investigate further to determine if it indicates a DDoS attack or a card testing situation. In terms of threat detection capabilities, they are very good because Akamai has a SOC service that we have tapped into for active threat detection and threat hunting, and they monitor everything carefully 24/7. Scrubbing is done by Akamai as a backend service, and we utilize their SOC, which is a service that you pay additional fees for, allowing us to have our queries prioritized. Prolexic features help maintain business continuity during high-volume attacks by having built-in threat detection capabilities in its bot detection and other functionalities, as attacks usually occur through intelligent bots trying to infiltrate the system.

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

"With real-time packet capture features, you can easily and quickly response."

"Predefined filters/techniques to easily stop the attacks and start mitigation."

"It's very flexible and we can easily deploy it to our network. It's very user-friendly. We can do everything via the web interface and troubleshoot easily from the CLI. It's not complicated."

"The solution provides good protection against volumetric DDoS attacks."

"It provides packet capture and we can block or whitelist whichever IPs we need to. Whatever traffic we want to block - and we get IPs from internal teams and from national teams - we block at the Arbor level only, because if it gets to the firewall then firewall bandwidth will be taken."

"Arbor DDoS is used for network protection if you have a DDoS attack, it keeps the session or information moving."

"In the seven years we have been using the tool, we have continued with availability of services as before, but today, without the Arbor solution, I believe we would have suffered quite a number of service availability issues."

"Arbor DDoS has given us a very good ROI."

More Arbor DDoS pros

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"The overall performance of this solution is what makes it one of the best solutions on the market."

"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."

"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it."

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"Because our website is blazing fast it improves our conversion rates."

More Cloudflare pros

"They've scrubbed DDoS traffic that was blasting us offline, thus allowing legitimate traffic through and letting our service return online."

"Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance."

"Prolexic technical support is second to none."

"The solution does not have hardware or maintenance requirements and is very easy to scale."

"The support from Akamai is great, and they provide excellent information and mitigation services."

Cons

"There is always room for improvement for any product or service. If we can bring in more agility when deploying services, that is definitely a scope which we can work towards. Nowadays, everything is being offered as a service model. It is not that we have to deploy the physical hardware, many things move up to the cloud, or even can be delivered in the VNS form in the customer's environment as well. So, in that space, if we can add more features to make it more seamless for customers to use and make it available through some marketplace, not only at the hyperscalers, but also for any on-prem deployment, that definitely would be a big plus."

"The solution could be more granular to include logs per second and enhanced pipeline monitoring for router licenses."

"Arbor's SSL decryption is confusing and needs external cards to be installed in the devices. This is not the best solution from an architectural point of view for protecting HTTPS and every other protocol that is SSL encrypted."

"The upgrade process is mildly complex requiring treatment of the custom embedded OS separately from the application. The correlation of the underling OS to the application version can be easily missed."

"The following areas need improvement: Opening and tracking support tickets, online support resources, software upgrades/updates and replacement media, and event management guidelines."

"The regional support here in African could improve, such as marketing and account managers."

"A small improvement could be a better reporting system."

"Because we had some routers that were somewhat old, they were not integrated with Arbor. They did not support the NetFlow version that Arbor was running. That was a challenge."

More Arbor DDoS cons

"Latencies are always a problem."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."

"I think they have failed with their technical support."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

"There should at least be a read-only view of the data so that resellers can properly support the clients."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

More Cloudflare cons

"The reports provided don’t give detailed information about DDoS mitigations, bandwidth utilization, etc."

"The web portal for checking status and traffic needs improvements."

"In bot management, there are times when attackers find ways to bypass Akamai, which is a continuously evolving challenge."

"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."

"It's expensive, though."

"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of the solution is cheap."

"Pricing is slightly on the higher side."

"It is an expensive product. I use this product for its different features."

"I don't deal with the pricing, but it seems that you need to get basic support in order to upgrade the software and implement some patches."

"I'm a technical guy. But I know it's expensive compared to its competitors. After you have the on-premise solution, for your solution to be effective you have to subscribe to an "upper level," so there's another cost. There is also a subscription to cloud services, which is another cost."

"As far as I know, they are the best in this sector, in DDoS protection. They know it, I know, because their service prices are too high. They provide cloud DDoS protection for ISPs, but that is also too expensive."

"Arbor's products are very expensive. Their competitors are cheap when compared with Arbor."

"Because the solutions from competitors are very different, it's not easy to compare. However, the licensing from Arbor is clear and understandable and the pricing is reasonable when looking at the market, in general."

More Arbor DDoS pricing and cost advice

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

"The product's pricing is cheap."

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

"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."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is a pay-as-you-go model that is charged by the hour."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.

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885,789 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Comms Service Provider

16%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	29

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

No data available

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other soluti...

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arbor DDoS?

The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss...

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 needs improvement with Akamai Prolexic Routed?

For the DDoS protection, I don't see any areas for improvement because they are pretty solid there, though in bot man...

What is your primary use case for Akamai Prolexic Routed?

The main use case for DDoS protection is to mitigate risks, and there are multiple ways Akamai provides DDoS protecti...

What advice do you have for others considering Akamai Prolexic Routed?

We have a couple of products, including DDoS protection, WAF, and Bot Manager. There are two ways Akamai does DDoS pr...

Radware DDoS vs Arbor DDoS

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 42% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 1% of the time

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Akamai App and API Protector vs Prolexic

Compared 17% of the time

Lumen DDoS Mitigation vs Prolexic

Compared 9% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Prolexic

Compared 8% of the time

StackPath DDoS Protection vs Prolexic

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Arbor DDoS

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Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Download Prolexic product report

Also Known As

Arbor Networks SP, Arbor Networks TMS, Arbor Cloud for ENT

Cloudflare DNS

Akamai Prolexic Routed

Overview

Arbor DDoS offers a comprehensive defense system against DDoS attacks, integrating a user-friendly GUI and advanced threat mitigation technologies for enhanced network protection.

Arbor DDoS is recognized for its ability to manage high-volume DDoS attacks efficiently, providing extensive protection through real-time traffic analysis and automated threat detection. It utilizes advanced techniques such as blackhole and BGP Flowspec for effective threat management. Arbor's cloud signaling allows users to handle and mitigate volumetric attacks while maintaining service availability. Though it provides robust security features, users note potential improvements in auto-mitigation, scalability, and AI integration. Challenges like an outdated graphical interface, hardware stability, and false positives need addressing to further enhance its usability and integration with third-party systems.

What are the key features of Arbor DDoS?

User-Friendly GUI: Provides an intuitive interface for ease of use.
Effective Mitigation: Combats high-volume DDoS attacks effectively.
Predefined Filters: Simplifies threat management with pre-configured settings.
Real-Time Traffic Analysis: Offers insights into traffic patterns and potential threats.
Automated Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats without manual intervention.
Able to Handle High-Volume Attacks: Ensures extensive protection even under large-scale attacks.
Packet Capture and Integration: Facilitates comprehensive security analysis.
Cloud Signaling: Enhances attack traffic management through hybrid deployments.

What benefits should users expect from Arbor DDoS?

Enhanced Protection: Safeguards networks from diverse DDoS threats.
Improved Service Availability: Maintains business operations without disruptions.
Timely Reporting: Delivers detailed attack reports for proactive prevention.
AI Capabilities: Leverages AI for smarter threat mitigation strategies.
Comprehensive Security: Combines on-premise and cloud deployments for optimal defense.

Internet service providers and telecom companies commonly adopt Arbor DDoS to protect their networks and infrastructure from DDoS attacks. It is also implemented in financial and government sectors to ensure web application security and maintain high availability. Arbor DDoS supports a hybrid approach, utilizing both on-premise and cloud solutions to manage traffic efficiently and sustain service quality during attacks.

NETSCOUT

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.

Akamai Prolexic is a cloud-based DDoS protection solution that defends your data center and hybrid infrastructure to ensure availability and uptime. It provides comprehensive port and protocol protection against the broadest range of DDoS attacks, including high-bandwidth sustained attacks and complex multi-vector attacks. Prolexic is available as an always-on or on-demand service, contains a Network Cloud Firewall, and offers flexible integration models based on your desired security posture across hybrid origins. Prolexic is backed by a proven platform with more than 20 Tbps of dedicated DDoS defense capacity and our 24/7/365 global SOCC for a fully managed solution.

Prolexic stops DDoS attacks closer to the source to maximize performance for users and to maintain network resiliency through cloud distribution. Instead of originating advertisements for your prefixes from your cloud/data centers, you’ll make either a border gateway protocol route advertisement change or DNS redirection (A record or CNAME record) to originate from one of many Akamai scrubbing centers globally. Your intended traffic is then routed to the user via Anycast through the closest scrubbing center. Prolexic will inspect the traffic to determine if it is good or bad, and apply proactive and/or custom mitigation controls designed to stop attacks instantly if needed. This ensures fast and accurate DDoS protection. Clean traffic is then returned to the customer origin via GRE tunnels, Layer 2 VLAN connections, and/or VIP-to-origin back-end mapping with little perceived latency. Prolexic also features a Network Cloud Firewall that allows IT teams to auto generate or manually manage access control lists.

Akamai

Sample Customers

Xtel Communications

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Fidor Bank

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection