AWS Shield vs Prolexic comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Akamai are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7, while Akamai is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 4.9% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Akamai’s 3.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Akamai users who would recommend it.

AWS Shield

Read 11 AWS Shield reviews

1,995 Views
1,995 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Prolexic

Read 5 Prolexic reviews

1,390 Views
1,362 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

AWS Shield

Prolexic

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Prolexic and AWS Shield are competing products in the domain of DDoS protection services. AWS Shield seems to have the upper hand due to its seamless integration with the AWS ecosystem, making it more attractive for existing AWS customers.

Features: Prolexic's strengths lie in its tailored defense strategies, high-volume attack handling, and detailed analytics. It offers extensive reporting features for network security professionals. AWS Shield's key features include native AWS integration, automatic scaling during attacks, and real-time threat mitigation, which benefit businesses already using AWS platforms.

Room for Improvement: Prolexic could benefit from a more streamlined integration process with third-party services and greater automation capabilities. Its reporting interface, while detailed, may improve in user-friendliness. AWS Shield could enhance customization options, provide more granular control beyond the AWS ecosystem, and offer a more transparent billing model for advanced services.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prolexic provides comprehensive deployment support with detailed guidance, suitable for enterprises needing hands-on configuration and robust customer service offering personalized assistance. AWS Shield simplifies deployment through its integration with AWS services, ensuring efficient onboarding and automated protection; however, support tends to align with standard AWS service protocols, which may be less personalized than Prolexic.

Pricing and ROI: Prolexic generally involves higher upfront costs but delivers significant ROI for enterprises requiring robust protection and customization, especially for frequent large-scale attacks. AWS Shield offers cost-effective solutions with its Standard option included with AWS services, appealing to businesses seeking basic DDoS mitigation. Its Advanced tier incurs additional costs but enhances security and integration benefits for AWS-centric operations.

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Prolexic

December 2025

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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

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Prolexic

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

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of AWS Shield is 4.9%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 3.1%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
AWS Shield	4.9%
Prolexic	3.1%
Other	92.0%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

PranavTelang

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.

Read full review

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

More AWS Shield pros

"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."

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

Cons

"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."

"There is an area for improvement regarding health checks. AWS Shield does not come with its own health check functionality."

"AWS Shield Standard requires improvement, particularly regarding its dashboard since it currently provides limited coverage against comprehensive DDoS attacks."

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

"The product is expensive."

"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 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."

More AWS Shield cons

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is good."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

28%

Comms Service Provider

17%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	7

No data available

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...

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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 Advanced on multiple services such as CloudFront, network load balancer, or Route 53...

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What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

Services always benefit from improvements, including AWS Shield. With respect to the Web Application Firewall, current rule-based setups may not be adequately defined or classified. Enhancement of ...

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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 ...

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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 management, there are times when attackers find ways to bypass Akamai, which is a c...

See all answers

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 protection; one is application-based DDoS protection and the other is volumetric DDoS pr...

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Comparisons

Cloudflare vs AWS Shield

Compared 24% of the time

Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Compared 20% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 16% of the time

Radware DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Akamai App and API Protector vs Prolexic

Compared 21% of the time

Cloudflare vs Prolexic

Compared 19% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Prolexic

Compared 13% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 11% of the time

Lumen DDoS Mitigation vs Prolexic

Compared 6% of the time

More Prolexic Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

January 2026

Download AWS Shield product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

January 2026

Download Prolexic product report

Also Known As

No data available

Akamai Prolexic Routed

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)

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

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

Fidor Bank

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Prolexic

December 2025

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