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AWS Shield vs Cloudflare One comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 22, 2025

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
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
AWS Shield
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudflare One
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (15th), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (14th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (14th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (9th), Access Management (7th), Bot Management (4th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), ZTNA (1st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.8%, up from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 5.3%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare One is 3.6%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare18.8%
Cloudflare One3.6%
AWS Shield5.3%
Other72.3%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Ifeanyi Stanly Nwokoro - PeerSpot reviewer
Has ensured ongoing protection against cyber threats and provides timely automated response while requiring improvements in cost structure and performance transparency
Business inherently involves risk, and it's important that services continue to improve. AWS Shield is not an exception. Regarding advanced Shield protection pricing, there should be cost protection for most DDoS events. The pricing model should be based on service usage rather than a flat monthly rate. The advanced technique package, while premium and not available to every user due to cost implications of $3,000 per month, offers valuable features including real-time attack visibility and 24/7 access to the DDoS response team. Integration is paramount, particularly with the Web Application Firewall's rule-based blocking paradigm that helps in balancing routes, especially route 53 and the global accelerator. AWS Shield uses pattern recognition to analyze traffic, and certain attributes are immediately intercepted. The assessment process is profound, and the service maintains consistent availability. From a software perspective, there are improvements needed regarding antivirus and network security. Additional engineering improvement requirements would benefit AWS Shield.
Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution enables seamless security management and fosters a learning environment
Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions. For the solution stopping us for e-learning, I appreciate the concept yet need more resources or courses in Mexico, preferably in Spanish. Certifications are easy, however, I require more real-world environments and instructors.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very user-friendly."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"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."
"The automatic detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks in the product operates in real-time and provides satisfactory results."
"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."
"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."
"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."
"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."
"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 product is easy to use."
"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."
"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"Cloudflare is by far the most effective solution that I have come across."
"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."
"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."
"Enables me to work from two locations."
"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."
"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
 

Cons

"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."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"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."
"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."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"DNS Management."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"The product is expensive."
"AWS Shield Standard requires improvement, particularly regarding its dashboard since it currently provides limited coverage against comprehensive DDoS attacks."
"AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods."
"There is an area for improvement regarding health checks. AWS Shield does not come with its own health check functionality."
"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 should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."
"The network has been experiencing frustrating performance issues today, which is not typical for Nigeria."
"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."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."
"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."
"The response time for support must be reduced."
"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"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."
"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 give the price a five out of ten."
"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."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"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."
"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
 

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 needs improvement with AWS Shield?
Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a si...
What do you like most about Cloudflare Access?
The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Access?
The price of Cloudflare Access is the same as compared to Akamai, but I get better performance from Cloudflare. My co...
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
 

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
23andMe
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare One and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,688 professionals have used our research since 2012.