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Azure DNS vs Cloudflare comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.4
Azure DNS offers reduced costs, high ROI, pay-as-you-go billing, reliability, operational simplicity, and substantial time savings.
Sentiment score
6.5
Cloudflare users experienced increased performance, security, and cost-effectiveness, leading to improved loyalty and revenue despite difficult ROI calculations.
The ROI is always high because Azure DNS setup is essential and does not incur high charges.
Works at Northwestern Indiana Telephone Co.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
Owner at Hga consulting
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.1
Azure DNS support is generally praised for reliability and responsiveness, but experiences vary depending on user plans and outsourced services.
Sentiment score
7.0
Cloudflare's customer service is quick, but technical support feedback is mixed, with improvement needed in responsiveness and detailed assistance.
Technical support is minimally required for DNS-related tasks if you have previous experience.
Works at Northwestern Indiana Telephone Co.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
Owner at Hga consulting
I have primarily worked not with the tool's customer support but with the product's sales engineers and technical sales engineers, who seem to know their stuff.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Azure DNS offers exceptional scalability, supporting enterprises of all sizes and up to 400 users, with high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
8.1
Users praise Cloudflare for seamless scalability, effective traffic management, easy upgrades, and robust global infrastructure without disruptions.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Azure DNS offers excellent reliability and stability, though some users face installation challenges and scalability needs improvement.
Sentiment score
7.6
Cloudflare is highly rated for stability and uptime, with few past issues, especially on higher-tier plans.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
 

Room For Improvement

Azure DNS needs domain registration, better redundancy, improved documentation, enhanced integration, and clearer pricing to address current shortcomings.
Enhancements needed in Cloudflare: analytics, CDN latency, API integration, user support, DNS, pricing, documentation, server coverage, WAF, and cache.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group
Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
 

Setup Cost

Azure DNS is cost-effective with flexible, usage-based pricing and free queries, often included in broader Azure agreements.
Cloudflare offers scalable pricing, from free to enterprise plans, providing significant value especially for mid-sized companies.
Azure DNS charges based on the number of zones enabled, offering some free queries monthly, which keeps costs low.
Works at Northwestern Indiana Telephone Co.
I find it to be cheap.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Azure DNS ensures secure, integrated DNS management with automation, private zones, traffic management, and low-latency global resolution.
Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN caching, DDoS protection, and an easy-to-use dashboard, benefiting many users.
Azure DNS provides end-to-end P2P connectivity and enhances security, making it more secure and reliable.
Works at Northwestern Indiana Telephone Co.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure DNS
Ranking in Managed DNS
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudflare
Ranking in Managed DNS
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of Azure DNS is 10.6%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 31.5%, down from 35.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed DNS Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare31.5%
Azure DNS10.6%
Other57.9%
Managed DNS
 

Featured Reviews

Dieudonné-Nsabimana - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultancy Manager at cidns
Overall experience improves efficiency and lowers operational challenges
* Add native management routing (geo‑routing, failover, weighted records) directly within Azure DNS zones to reduce dependency on extra services. * Cost Efficiency: Offer bundle pricing tiers or discounts for high‑volume enterprise customers, or an option for cost‑optimized internal DNS zones. * Improved Error Diagnostics: Provide more descriptive error codes and guided troubleshooting steps in the portal or CLI.
HA
Owner at Hga consulting
Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility
I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed DNS solutions are best for your needs.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
 

Questions from the Community

Azure DNS or Amazon Route 53?
Azure DNS is a hosting service of DNS domains. It has excellent operating time and performance, resulting in fast resolution. We like the ability to view everything in the Azure portal - this makes...
What do you like most about Azure DNS?
The tool is easy to manage and use.
What needs improvement with Azure DNS?
* Add native management routing (geo‑routing, failover, weighted records) directly within Azure DNS zones to reduce dependency on extra services. * Cost Efficiency: Offer bundle pricing tiers or di...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure DNS vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.