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Cloudflare vs Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
6.2
Cloudflare's services enhanced security and efficiency, resulting in significant ROI, cost savings, and improved WordPress performance for businesses.
Sentiment score
7.2
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange offers high ROI, enhancing security and productivity, reducing costs, and improving remote user experience significantly.
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
The return on investment for me is significant as time is the critical aspect.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
When I see that I am trying to cut costs, for example, even when replacing Prisma, we have managed to save about over half a million dollars a year.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
In terms of time savings, since users no longer manually connect to the VPN, access became seamless, improving user productivity, especially for remote users.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
We don't have to purchase many components such as load balancers and proxy servers that were necessary in traditional setups.
Lead Engineer at FIS Global
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Cloudflare's support is responsive and knowledgeable, with varying experiences depending on the plan and need for faster escalation.
Sentiment score
4.9
Zscaler's customer service is professional and knowledgeable, but complex issues can cause delays, affecting global user ratings.
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
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
General Manager at bKash Limited
The support engineers are technically knowledgeable, particularly for Zscaler Private Access related issues, providing clear guidance and documentation for troubleshooting.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Sometimes, support takes time since the solution has some bugs that need fixing.
architect at Tata Consultancy
They have provided the numbers and contact supports, and it is almost immediate.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Cloudflare excels in scalability, supporting seamless transitions and performance during high-traffic periods, highly rated by users.
Sentiment score
7.7
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform's cloud-native architecture enables scalable, efficient, and seamless expansion for diverse enterprises with minimal hardware changes.
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
Cloudflare's scalability is quite good; it is very easy to scale whenever we want to include multiple domains.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The only limitation I was mentioning is that it was unable to identify the sources of vulnerability, which they are going to embed by the mid of this year.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is highly scalable, primarily because it is built on a cloud-native, globally distributed architecture.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cloudflare is reliable with high stability ratings, minimal issues, improved network connectivity, and praised fast DNS services.
Sentiment score
7.8
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform offers high reliability and availability with minimal downtime, ensuring effective performance for enterprises.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
Cloudflare's reliability and uptime has met my expectations; it has been quite good in general.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is very stable, especially in enterprise environments.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is very stable.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest improvements in Cloudflare's features, pricing, support, analytics, documentation, and partner relations for better service experience.
Zscaler's Zero Trust Platform faces cost, latency, and control issues, with users seeking better integration, support, and scalability.
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.
General Manager at bKash Limited
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
What Cloudflare is doing internally is that it is stepping ahead in areas like detection and protection.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
It would be beneficial to have more granular centralized visibility, allowing for quick end-to-end tracing of a user request from authentication to application access without switching between multiple views.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform probably needs to be more efficient because scanning takes a lot of time.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
They might be able to identify if something is missing with Zscaler.
architect at Tata Consultancy
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare provides cost-effective, feature-rich plans for varying traffic needs, offering significant value compared to competitors like Akamai.
Zscaler Zero Trust pricing varies, with flexible customization options and potential savings offsetting initial high costs for larger organizations.
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
There is minimal setup cost since it is a cloud-delivered platform, eliminating the need to invest in additional hardware such as VPN gateways or maintain infrastructure.
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform is much, much cheaper when comparing price.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare offers superior caching, DNS management, and security, enhancing performance, global reach, and domain management with innovative features.
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform enhances security and user experience with seamless connectivity, scalability, and robust control features.
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
Most of our DNS records that are presented to the internet are proxied whenever possible, providing another layer of defense from our perspective.
Senior Security Engineer at ManpowerGroup
The solution is cloud-based with the latest inspection engines, which I find to be amazing.
architect at Tata Consultancy
We have excellent account management, smooth marketplace engagement, and processing in how my team or organization uses Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform.
Manager, Software Development at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Since we started using Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform, it has auto-configuration, and wherever we have deployed the auto-configuration, we have not encountered any problem.
Cybersecurity Senior Program Manager at Dayforce
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (3rd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (18th)
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (5th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), Application Control (4th), ZTNA as a Service (1st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Cloudflare is designed for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection and holds a mindshare of 14.0%, down 19.1% compared to last year.
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), holds 8.9% mindshare, down 11.3% since last year.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare14.0%
Imperva Application Security Platform8.5%
Arbor DDoS7.2%
Other70.3%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform8.9%
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks10.4%
Cato SASE Cloud Platform8.7%
Other72.0%
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)
 

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.
Vibin Thomas - PeerSpot reviewer
Team Lead, Technical Content Security at Valuepoint Systems
Zero trust access has transformed remote connectivity and now simplifies secure app usage
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform, especially Zscaler Private Access, is very strong, though there are a few areas where improvements can be made. One challenge observed is around initial troubleshooting and visibility. While Zscaler Private Access provides logs, it can sometimes take time to pinpoint the exact cause of access issues, especially in complex environments with multiple policies and identity integration. Another area is the dependency on identity and connector health. Since Zscaler Private Access is heavily reliant on app connectors and identity providers, any issues with these components can impact user access, making proper monitoring critical. During the initial setup, policy configuration and application onboarding require careful planning, especially for larger environments with many applications. These challenges are manageable with proper design and monitoring. Overall, the platform delivers strong security and user experience. I would recommend a few improvements, especially around user interface, reporting, and troubleshooting experience. From a user interface perspective, while the platform is powerful, the policy configuration and navigation can feel complex, especially for new users. A more simplified and intuitive layout for policy mapping and application access would help reduce the learning curve. In terms of reporting, Zscaler Private Access provides logs, but having more built-in customizable dashboards and analytics would be very helpful. Better visibility into user access patterns, application performance, and real-time troubleshooting insights would improve operational efficiency. From a support and troubleshooting standpoint, it would be beneficial to have more granular centralized visibility, allowing for quick end-to-end tracing of a user request from authentication to application access without switching between multiple views. These improvements would make the platform even more efficient, especially for large-scale enterprise environments.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise45
 

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?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
What is the better solution - Prisma Access or Zscaler Private Access?
We looked into Prisma Access before choosing Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). Palo Alto’s Prisma Access is a secure access service edge (SASE) designed to deliver network security in a cloud-deliver...
What needs improvement with Zscaler SASE?
The solution needs to improve a lot of aspects.
What is your primary use case for Zscaler SASE?
We are using Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange for its Zscaler Internet Access service. It provides web security, DLP, data protection, prevention, and lots more features.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Zscaler SASE, Zscaler DLP, Zscaler CASB, Zscaler CSPM, Zscaler Browser Isolation, Zscaler Posture Control
 

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.
Siemens, AutoNation, GE, NOV
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.