AWS Shield vs Cloudflare comparison

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AWS Shield

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Cloudflare and AWS Shield compete in the DDoS protection and web security services category. Cloudflare generally stands out in terms of pricing and support, offering a cost-effective choice for various businesses, whereas AWS Shield is preferred for its integration with AWS services and advanced security features, appealing to AWS users.

Features: Cloudflare provides a global content delivery network, SSL encryption, and caching capabilities that enhance website performance. AWS Shield offers comprehensive threat intelligence, seamless AWS service integration, and robust DDoS protection, ensuring reliability for enterprises complexly embedded within the AWS ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: Cloudflare could enhance its threat intelligence capabilities and enterprise feature set to compete with AWS Shield's advanced functionalities. AWS Shield might improve its pricing competitiveness and expand usability beyond the AWS ecosystem to attract a broader range of users. Both can benefit from more intuitive user interfaces and broader third-party integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloudflare offers straightforward deployment with a user-friendly management portal, making setup quick and easy. AWS Shield integrates seamlessly with other AWS services, offering a smooth deployment for AWS-centric environments. Cloudflare is commended for simple customer service, while AWS Shield benefits from AWS's extensive support network, especially within the AWS environment.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudflare is recognized for its competitive pricing structure and significant ROI, making it a cost-effective option for businesses of various sizes. AWS Shield, though more expensive, offers value through advanced features and AWS integration, providing substantial ROI for enterprises deeply invested in the AWS ecosystem.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: April 2025).

AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare

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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

AWS Shield

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Cloudflare

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of AWS Shield is 6.9%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.6%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Manikandan-R

Senior Project Manager at Synopsys Inc

Solution provides essential protection with good support and a simple setup

I have noticed a pattern developing in approximately five minutes. If it were possible to provide these patterns with historical data spanning six months, three months, or two months directly from the console, it would be extremely beneficial. It would allow for easy inquiries and facilitate the retrieval of relevant parts without having to manually check logs or examine movements. Instead, if all historical data were available, I could consult six months' worth of identified patterns efficiently through AWS without relying on external sources. This solution is particularly suitable for startups or medium-sized startups. I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.

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Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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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

"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."

"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."

"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."

"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

"The product is easy to use."

"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."

"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."

"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

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

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"The technical support is good."

"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

More Cloudflare pros

Cons

"The product is expensive."

"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."

"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. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."

"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."

"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."

"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"Latencies are always a problem."

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

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

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

"Technical support is lacking."

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

More Cloudflare cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is good."

"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

"The tool is cheap."

"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."

"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 price is reasonable."

"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."

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

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"We are using the free version."

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

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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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849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, whi...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?

The tool is cheap.

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal. I am unsure how much this duration can be reduced...

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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...

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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...

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.

Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Comparisons

Compared 25% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 19% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

Prolexic vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Product Reports

AWS Shield

Download AWS Shield product report

Download Cloudflare product report

Also Known As

No data available

Cloudflare DNS

Overview

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“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.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Sample Customers

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code

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

AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare