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 3.0% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Akamai’s 2.5% 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.

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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: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Prolexic

April 2026

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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

Cloudflare

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 13.2%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 3.0%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 2.5%, down from 3.7% 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	13.2%
AWS Shield	3.0%
Prolexic	2.5%
Other	81.3%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

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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reviewer2767527

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.

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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.

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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 technical support on offer is excellent; they are very helpful and responsive, and we are quite happy with the level of service they provide to their customers."

"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."

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

"Cloudflare has many features."

"If you don't want to spend too much time hosting your own DNS server or managing the domain, Cloudflare is a great way to rapidly get websites and services online."

"CloudFlare has positively improved my site's speed, performance and security."

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

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

More Cloudflare pros

"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."

"AWS Shield offers numerous protection features that are crucial at the application layer, safeguarding users from distributed denial of service attacks, man-in-the-middle assaults, and hacker orchestrations."

"The product is easy to use."

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

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

"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."

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

More AWS Shield pros

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

"Prolexic technical support is second to none."

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

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

"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."

Cons

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

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"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 one feature that is paid is the custom nameservers instead of using the default ones, I want to use a custom one."

"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."

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

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

"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

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

"AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods."

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

"The product is expensive."

"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."

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

"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."

More AWS Shield cons

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

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

"It's expensive, though."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"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."

"We are using the free version."

"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."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

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

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

17%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

27%

Comms Service Provider

17%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

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

No data available

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...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?

The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...

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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 Adva...

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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, curren...

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What is your primary use case for AWS Shield?

What do you use it for? How do you use it?

See all answers

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...

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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...

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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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 37% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield

Compared 20% of the time

Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Compared 12% of the time

Radware DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 10% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 9% of the time

A10 Thunder TPS vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Akamai App and API Protector vs Prolexic

Compared 18% of the time

StackPath DDoS Protection vs Prolexic

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Prolexic

Compared 9% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 9% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 6% of the time

More Prolexic Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

May 2026

Download AWS Shield product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

May 2026

Download Prolexic product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Akamai Prolexic Routed

Overview

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.

Cloudflare

AWS Shield offers robust DDoS protection with seamless integration into AWS services, providing users with enhanced security without impacting performance. Its intuitive dashboard and integration with tools like WAF and CloudWatch make it a go-to for many organizations seeking reliable protection.

AWS Shield provides real-time attack visibility and transparency, excelling in DDoS protection while maintaining application and network layer security. The Advanced tier offers automated threat detection, tailored defense strategies, and a responsive DDoS team. However, challenges include high costs, limited customization, and a need for better traffic insights. Organizations must often rely on additional AWS services for comprehensive network security. The solution is primarily used to protect against DDoS attacks and secure web applications, offering Layer 3 and 4 security. While the Standard tier offers basic security at no cost, the Advanced tier provides enhanced protection against severe attacks such as SYN floods, albeit with a monthly fee.

What are AWS Shield's most important features?

Ease of Use: Simple integration and intuitive monitoring dashboard.
Real-Time Attack Visibility: Immediate insights into attack metrics without performance impact.
Seamless AWS Integration: Works smoothly with WAF and CloudWatch for comprehensive protection.
Advanced Defense Strategies: Customizable strategies with automatic threat detection.

What benefits or ROI should users consider?

Enhanced Security: Robust DDoS mitigation for continuous protection.
Performance Maintenance: Protects services during high-traffic events without degradation.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Intuitive dashboard for easy attack tracking and management.
Cost-Effective Tiered Offerings: The choice between no-cost basic or feature-rich advanced options.

In industries like finance and e-commerce, AWS Shield's capabilities ensure continual uptime and protection against potential DDoS threats, vital during high-traffic periods. Its use in media and entertainment allows secure streaming and content delivery, while health sectors benefit from secure and reliable patient data access and protection.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Prolexic provides industry-leading DDoS protection, ensuring businesses maintain secure and uninterrupted connectivity. It offers robust defense mechanisms designed to mitigate cyber threats effectively, allowing enterprises to focus on their core operations with confidence.

Prolexic delivers a comprehensive suite of defenses against distributed denial-of-service attacks. Leveraging a global network, it quickly mitigates threats before they affect your networks. The rapid integration and real-time threat analytics facilitate swift, intelligent responses to protect infrastructure from both sophisticated and high-volume attacks. With an emphasis on scalability and reliability, Prolexic addresses the security demands of modern enterprises, minimizing downtime and potential revenue loss.

What are the key features of Prolexic?

Global Threat Intelligence: Provides up-to-date insights into emerging threats.
Customizable Protection: Offers tailored configurations to meet specific needs.
24/7 Monitoring: Ensures constant vigilance and rapid response to incidents.
Traffic Scrubbing: Filters malicious traffic while allowing legitimate traffic through.
Real-Time Reporting: Delivers actionable insights on threat activity and trends.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Reduced Downtime: Minimizes disruptions to maintain productivity and service delivery.
Enhanced Security: Strengthens defenses against cyber threats to protect critical assets.
Cost Efficiency: Lowers potential financial impact of attacks by preventing service outages.
Scalability: Adapts to the evolving needs of growing businesses, ensuring continuous protection.
Ease of Integration: Seamlessly fits into existing networks to streamline implementation.

In industries like finance and e-commerce, Prolexic is crucial due to high threat levels. Financial services leverage its protection to secure sensitive data and ensure transaction integrity, while e-commerce platforms benefit from uninterrupted service during traffic peaks, preserving user experience and transaction volumes.

Akamai

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

Fidor Bank

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Prolexic

April 2026

Free Report: AWS Shield vs. Prolexic

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