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Akamai App and API Protector pros and cons

Vendor: Akamai

4.2 out of 5

29 reviews
100% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Akamai App and API Protector effectively handles DDoS attacks and accelerates product launches with protective infrastructure, CDN, WAF, and adaptable custom rules. Despite scalable usage-based pricing, it faces configuration delays and lacks advanced WAF features. While praised for technical support, improvements are needed in pricing, outdated documentation, and custom rules. It suits large-scale implementations but requires additional protection for layer seven. Buyers should weigh support advantages against configuration and documentation limitations.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Akamai App and API Protector is scalable and handles DDoS attacks efficiently, which is essential for fast-paced product deployment and infrastructure protection.

DDoS protection, customizable WAF features, and CDN efficiency are highlighted as some of the most valuable aspects of Akamai App and API Protector, enhancing web application security.

Charges for Akamai App and API Protector are usage-based, particularly beneficial for managing large volumes of Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs) while keeping costs tied to actual traffic and labor for onboarding.

Custom rules capabilities cater to specialized client requirements, making Akamai App and API Protector adaptable for customized security projects.

Technical support from Akamai App and API Protector is noted for being responsive and helpful, providing significant assistance compared to other CDN providers.

CONS

Pushing configurations across a network has issues, taking about 20 minutes, and retracting requires another 20 minutes.

Pricing is considered high and could be reduced.

Customer support and documentation need improvement.

Akamai needs better application layer attack protection compared to competitors like Cloudflare.

Custom rules and analytics reporting could be improved for better visibility in the OEM console.

Akamai App and API Protector Pros review quotes

Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 19, 2025

Akamai App and API Protector exceeds expectations in terms of AI capabilities, and it genuinely combines a plethora of advanced features.

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Senior Engineering Manager Cybersecurity at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 9, 2024

Features like scalability and uptime are most effective.

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Head of DevOpps at Indian express

Oct 2, 2023

The support that we got from their technical team has been fantastic. I have never experienced this level of support from other CDN providers.

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Akamai App and API Protector

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Learn what your peers think about Akamai App and API Protector. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.

893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Platform Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Oct 30, 2023

All the solution's features are very good.

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AK

Sr Manger DevOps at Foundit

Oct 2, 2023

We are getting security for each and every API.

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Associate Director at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Oct 4, 2023

Traffic filtering and WAF are valuable.

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GM IT at a recreational facilities/services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 4, 2023

Adaptive stream delivery and WAF protection are valuable.

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KE

Krishnan Ekambaram

Cyber Recovery Lead at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 13, 2023

The product is user-friendly.

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Pranav Vashisht

Dev Ops at a media company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 2, 2023

It gives us a report of traffic. It gives us a report of the day-to-day URL traffic, and it also gives an individual report. If we reach out to Akamai, they give us the IPs as well.

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Manager of Infrastructure and Cloud at Foundit

Oct 2, 2023

The dashboard is the most interesting feature of the Akamai portal where you can have a detailed analysis of all the attacks that are happening. You can drill down an issue and see exactly what is happening, who are the bad guys attacking your website, and how Akamai is protecting the website. That is the most valuable feature.

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Akamai App and API Protector Cons review quotes

Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 19, 2025

The effectiveness of Akamai's bot management in reducing unauthorized access is quite good, although it does require a lot of fine-tuning and tweaking, which involves spending ample time with their support teams to tailor the configuration to our applications.

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Senior Engineering Manager Cybersecurity at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 9, 2024

It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.

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Head of DevOpps at Indian express

Oct 2, 2023

One area where Akamai can improve is the captcha part. Cloudflare provides a captcha if there are a certain number of threats. For example, I can assign that if there are 10 requests within a second from a single IP, it should send a captcha to the user. The user should fill in the captcha, and only after that, the user should be able to access our website. This captcha feature should be built into Bot Manager. I love this captcha feature of Cloudflare.

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Akamai App and API Protector

Free Report: Akamai App and API Protector Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Akamai App and API Protector. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2026.

893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Platform Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Oct 30, 2023

We are experimenting with EdgeWorkers to write our own code at the Edge level. It could grow to be much better.

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AK

Sr Manger DevOps at Foundit

Oct 2, 2023

I do not see any area for improvement. Akamai is already maintaining its own databases for the security concerns, vulnerabilities, and attacks that are there. If anything, they should have a solution in the infrastructure security area as well. They should not be only in cloud cybersecurity; they should also be in infrastructure security.

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Associate Director at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Oct 4, 2023

One thing I asked them is to integrate the API discovery product that they have and push that data into Akamai App and API Protector so that we do not have two types of reviews to identify the type of traffic. We already know the APIs that are frequently getting used, so analysis becomes easier. We can integrate both products and use them.

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GM IT at a recreational facilities/services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Oct 4, 2023

A lot of piracy happens in India and other countries. If there is a product for protection from piracy, it would be great. For example, there are multiple hackers that hack your event, and there are some channels that pirate and publish the event on some other website. We protect our streaming through DRM and different technologies. We are also protecting the website, but hacking is still happening. If they can work on protecting from piracy, it would be great.

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KE

Krishnan Ekambaram

Cyber Recovery Lead at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Oct 13, 2023

The custom rules must be improved.

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Pranav Vashisht

Dev Ops at a media company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 2, 2023

In terms of precedence of Akamai rules, the last one is implemented. That is the one that is operational. If two rules contradict, the last one is implemented. We had a clash, but it was really tough to find that out. I would like to have a rulebook because, in their architecture documentation, it is not mentioned anywhere that if two rules clash, the last one works, and if it does not work, then what to do. This is something we were debating today with their tech support. With AWS, we get documents for the issues so that they do not occur in the future. Akamai's support and knowledge base needs to be improved.

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Manager of Infrastructure and Cloud at Foundit

Oct 2, 2023

Akamai App and API Protector is very new to me, so I do not have any insights on improvement areas for the product. However, when we ask for some help, it can take some time. We understand that the job is done by professionals, but if that time can be reduced, it would be great.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 27)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Cloud and Data Center Security

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Cloud and Data Center Security

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Cloudflare vs Akamai App and API Protector

Cloudflare One vs Akamai App and API Protector

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Akamai App and API Protector

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Akamai App and API Protector

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Akamai App and API Protector

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Akamai App and API Protector

Illumio vs Akamai App and API Protector

NetScaler vs Akamai App and API Protector

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Akamai App and API Protector

Azure Front Door vs Akamai App and API Protector

F5 Advanced WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Akamai App and API Protector

AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector

Kentik vs Akamai App and API Protector

Arbor DDoS vs Akamai App and API Protector

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