No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AWS Shield vs Azure DDoS Protection comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th)
AWS Shield
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure DDoS Protection
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 16.2%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 3.9%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure DDoS Protection is 3.0%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare16.2%
AWS Shield3.9%
Azure DDoS Protection3.0%
Other76.9%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
reviewer2767527 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has enabled multi-layered threat mitigation but still lacks deeper visibility for advanced application attacks
AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods. It does not provide inherent protection against more sophisticated layer 7 attacks such as HTTP floods. In such cases, integration with WAF is necessary, which results in additional costs for customers. To protect layer 7, layer 4, and layer 3, customers must implement both solutions. The service also has difficulties with static detection thresholds, which may not be sensitive enough to detect smaller application-specific attacks. While AWS Shield is a key security service, AWS should enhance their expert support with 24/7 response for complex attacks, which is currently limited.
Dinesh Jaisankar - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at Vision Bank
Security architecture shields infrastructure but dashboard needs enhancement
The Azure DDoS Protection plan is essential for environments like ours that are highly exposed to potential attacks, especially since DDoS attacks have become common. The security architecture with Azure DDoS Protection is critical for safeguarding our financial organization's infrastructure. Although implementing it is pricier, it is worth using since our applications are entirely in Azure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If someone is looking for a secure and optimized wrapper over an open website, I would suggest CloudFlare services."
"Using the CDN of Cloudflare improved the speed significantly, reducing the page loading times to appropriate levels."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."
"I recommend AWS Shield because it has proven helpful in tracking DDoS attacks within both my past and present environments, and without AWS Shield, a business could face potential losses, as this tool helps in identifying and mitigating fake traffic that disrupts applications, ultimately supporting business continuity."
"The automatic detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks in the product operates in real-time and provides satisfactory results."
"If most of your internet presence from your application side is in AWS, AWS Shield is a great option."
"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."
"AWS Shield is aligned with the web application firewall (WAF), and they work seamlessly together, primarily working with Elastic Load Balancer, CloudFront, and Route 53 for CDN and DNS services protection."
"The product is easy to use."
"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."
"This solution is the best option for us because we use a lot of Microsoft products. So, it is easy for us to deploy or integrate any features or products."
"The Azure DDoS Protection plan is essential for environments like ours that are highly exposed to potential attacks, especially since DDoS attacks have become common."
"The integration of various tools with Azure Firewall, like DDoS Protection, Web Application Firewall, and Azure Front Door, is quite effective."
"Azure DDoS Protection offers superior protection against denial-of-service attacks."
"The most valuable feature of Azure DDoS Protection is that it performs well."
"Azure is easy to set up and widely used by our clients."
"AI capabilities are very good. I would rate them an eight out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Azure DDoS Protection is that it performs well."
 

Cons

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"For the services I am using, it is a bit expensive."
"Access to the solution's dashboards is not intended for a service company. You are practically blind, and to validate a problem, you must view the customer's screen."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"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."
"There is an area for improvement regarding health checks. AWS Shield does not come with its own health check functionality."
"The product is expensive."
"AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods."
"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."
"AWS Shield Standard requires improvement, particularly regarding its dashboard since it currently provides limited coverage against comprehensive DDoS attacks."
"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it."
"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."
"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."
"I have noticed some false positives with the Web Application Firewall yet not with DDoS Protection."
"I suggest adding more services and additional services, which would be beneficial."
"Azure DDoS Protection could improve on the reporting."
"The implementation of Azure DDoS Protection results in a decrease in our bandwidth capacity and should be optimized to reduce resource consumption."
"The dashboard lacks insights and user-friendliness, as most data is logged into metrics like Log Analytics workspaces."
"It's not very easy to configure, in my view."
"The visibility could be better. We would like to have better metrics, so we could see all the information in a central place."
"Sometimes, it is hard for our staff to keep track of changes (in the GUI) between different projects, because there are constant changes. As a result, it is hard to manage, recall, and see all the features because they have been moved from one place to another."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"We are using the free version."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."
"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."
"The tool is cheap."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."
"You can test it for a certain period of time free of charge. You can have a free account. You can test it to compare its pros and cons with other products that you are testing."
"It is an expensive solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about AWS Shield?
We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't de...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?
The pricing structure for AWS Shield is fair, yet it depends on the specific protections chosen. Enabling Shield Adva...
What needs improvement with AWS Shield?
Services always benefit from improvements, including AWS Shield. With respect to the Web Application Firewall, curren...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure DDoS Protection?
The pricing is somewhat costly, usually around $3,000 to $4,000 per month. Managing this expense is tough, especially...
What needs improvement with Azure DDoS Protection?
The dashboard lacks insights and user-friendliness, as most data is logged into metrics like Log Analytics workspaces...
What is your primary use case for Azure DDoS Protection?
We are a bank with Internet banking and corporate banking portals, which exposes multiple applications externally. Th...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Azure DDoS Protection and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.