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Cloudflare vs Palo Alto Networks DNS Security comparison

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Executive Summary

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 Domain Name System (DNS) Security
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (15th)
Palo Alto Networks DNS Secu...
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 6.1%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks DNS Security is 10.7%, up from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks DNS Security10.7%
Cloudflare6.1%
Other83.2%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Partha Dash - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Network Tech Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Protects against threats by quickly identifying insider risks and compromised devices
Palo Alto should explore agentless approaches to integrate DNS Security more easily and efficiently. The existing system sometimes presents challenges with backbone routing, impacting productivity. An agentless approach could be more lightweight and user-friendly. Additionally, there is a need for improvement in the pricing model for support and license renewals.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very clear and the information is very useful."
"Cloudflare is easier to manage than the solutions provided by these vendors, and the user experience is much more straightforward and appeals to a lot of developers."
"Cloudflare is very straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"Because our website is blazing fast it improves our conversion rates."
"Another reason it's awesome is that you don't need your server to handle every request."
"The technical support is good."
"The product is easy to install."
"DNS security is required to filter out the DNS traffic, any DNS-based attacks, DNS DDoS attacks, and DNS amplification attacks."
"The most valuable feature is DNS filtering."
"I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten."
"DNS sinkhole is a valuable feature."
"Palo Alto Networks DNS Security is a stable solution."
"So, in general, it's very stable because the process to deliver new features and new releases in not so long...I rate the scalability a nine out of ten."
"We now have insight into our DNS requests and we can actively see how many thousands of malicious requests have gotten knocked down in the last day or week that we didn't have before. There's more insight for both security and more insight."
 

Cons

"I rate technical support quite badly."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"It looks like they don't support as many TLDs as other registrars, but since they are very new as a registrar, I expect this may improve soon."
"I have observed only one weakness with Cloudflare, which is the slowness of their web UI."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"Yes, there were a few times when some of their CDN nodes would fail, creating serious speed issues with the site without any warning or notification from their side."
"With Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, sometimes the DNS clients don't work well, and they get disconnected, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The scalability can be improved."
"We would like to have cloud-based management."
"Every vendor that sells DNS or firewalls needs to be able to protect against DNS look-up attacks and DNS naming hacks. This is true of Palo Alto as well as others."
"There should be an on-premise version of this solution."
"Palo Alto should explore agentless approaches to integrate DNS Security more easily and efficiently."
"I'm not really sure what needs improvement. The only hiccup I've really seen is a couple of the DNS requests get flagged as the Sophos traffic instead of DNS traffic, but that's more of their app detection in the DNS Security. I haven't really seen any issues with the DNS security."
"Sometimes, it blocks legitimate traffic for custom applications, requiring manual intervention."
 

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."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"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."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The product is expensive compared to Fortinet."
"Palo Alto Networks DNS Security is an expensive product. I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten points are expensive."
"The product is expensive. My company makes payments on a quarterly basis towards the solution's costs."
"The solution's pricing is equal to Cisco AMP or Cisco Umbrella."
"There is an annual license for the solution and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"It is not an expensive solution."
"If one is very cheap and ten is very expensive, I rate the tool's price as two."
"There aren't many vendors offering DNS security solutions, but generally, Palo Alto subscriptions tend to be more expensive than other security vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
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 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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks DNS Security?
DNS Security protects us against threats, malware, and malicious domains or malicious navigation to the internet, which is where it can be improved the best. Palo Alto helps us with support, so I d...
What is your primary use case for Palo Alto Networks DNS Security?
I can describe my use cases for Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, which is used for protecting our network. I use this product, Palo Alto Networks DNS Security, with Palo Alto firewalls.
What advice do you have for others considering Palo Alto Networks DNS Security?
I don't have experience with Palo Alto Networks AutoFocus. Regarding the DNS Security, I have firewalls with the DNS Security module in the firewall. DNS Security is something we configure in our f...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Palo Alto Networks DNS Security and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,325 professionals have used our research since 2012.