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Cloudflare vs Google Cloud DNS 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Ranking in Managed DNS
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Google Cloud DNS
Ranking in Managed DNS
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 33.8%, down from 35.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud DNS is 6.0%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed DNS Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare33.8%
Google Cloud DNS6.0%
Other60.2%
Managed DNS
 

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.
Shikar Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Constantly improving and adapting to customer needs
The effectiveness of Google Cloud DNS largely depends on where an organization stands in its cloud journey and its overall technology landscape. For those heavily invested in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and already embracing cloud solutions, Google Cloud DNS can be rated quite high, ranging from seven to nine out of ten.Deployment times for Google Cloud DNS can vary depending on the complexity of the infrastructure and configuration requirements. For straightforward setups and cloud-ready cases, deployment can typically be completed within a few minutes to an hour. However, in more complex infrastructure scenarios involving extensive configuration, deployment may take longer, possibly spanning days or weeks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"The technical support is good."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"The initial setup process is easy."
"The scalability is good."
"Google Cloud DNS continues to evolve based on customer feedback and technological advancements."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most significant features are the internal and external endpoints using Google Cloud DNS, which are very beneficial for dependent apps."
"The tool is well integrated. We don’t need the interface of another provider. The product helps me manage my domain and write in Google Cloud."
 

Cons

"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."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"The pricing could be improved."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"The cost of using Google Cloud DNS can be relatively high compared to other options, especially considering the cloud environment."
"Migrating away from Google Cloud DNS can be difficult."
"The solution's price could be better."
"The UX of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"It needs to provide better integration."
"The UI is tricky to understand for people who have not worked with DNS records. People with little to no experience with DNS records can find it hard to understand. For example, you need to know the hallmarks to input records since they need to be matched in a specific format."
"More features around rules-based configurations would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"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."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The price is reasonable."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"We are using the free version."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"It is expensive but cost-effective."
"The product is expensive."
"The cost of using Google Cloud DNS can be relatively high compared to other options, especially considering the cloud environment. I would rate it 6 out of 10. Cheaper alternatives might be desirable, but the decision depends on various factors such as vendor lock-in, organizational adaptability, and alignment with other technologies in use."
"I am not sure about the pricing. However, I can give you a rough estimate which is like ten cents per month per zone."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed DNS solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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 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.
What do you like most about Google Cloud DNS?
Google Cloud DNS continues to evolve based on customer feedback and technological advancements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud DNS?
Pricing and support are really good. There are no complaints about the pricing.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud DNS?
I am not heavily involved with Cloud DNS, but from an end-user perspective, the customization part could be improved. More features around rules-based configurations would be beneficial.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
 

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.
MeilleursAgents
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Google Cloud DNS and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
870,701 professionals have used our research since 2012.