AWS Shield vs Akamai App and API Protector comparison

Akamai and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Akamai is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.7, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.4. Akamai holds a 4.1% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 7.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

AWS Shield and Akamai App and API Protector are competing products in the cybersecurity field, each offering protection against various online threats. AWS Shield has an edge in integrated protection within AWS services, while Akamai App and API Protector offers robust capabilities for web applications and APIs, making it a potentially superior choice for comprehensive application security despite any pricing differences.

Features: AWS Shield offers seamless integration with AWS infrastructure, providing DDoS protection that utilizes AWS's global network for high scalability. It focuses on infrastructure-level security with automatic detection and mitigation of DDoS attacks. Akamai App and API Protector provides advanced threat intelligence, adaptive security controls, and comprehensive application-layer protection beyond DDoS attacks. It excels in custom rules and offers robust bot management and WAF capabilities for enhanced threat detection.

Room for Improvement: AWS Shield could improve by expanding its application-layer security features beyond DDoS protection and providing more transparent reporting on security incidents. The UI could be further simplified for better user experience. Akamai App and API Protector may need to enhance its integration ease with non-Akamai infrastructures and provide more cost-effective solutions to compete favorably on pricing. Simplifying deployment processes could also be beneficial for users needing quicker configurations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Shield is generally easier for AWS users due to its seamless integration with AWS cloud services and consistent customer service. Its deployment within the AWS ecosystem is straightforward. Akamai App and API Protector demands separate deployment efforts but benefits from Akamai's specialized cybersecurity expertise and responsive, dedicated support.

Pricing and ROI: AWS Shield is cost-effective for organizations using AWS services, thanks to low setup costs and integration. However, Akamai App and API Protector might have higher initial setup costs but provides significant ROI with its comprehensive security features, making it ideal for businesses prioritizing robust application and API protection.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Akamai App and API Protector Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Akamai App and API Protector

March 2025

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.4%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.1%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 7.0%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Bharat Chandra

Head of DevOpps at Indian express

Exceptional support, protects our sites, and provides visibility into traffic

We did a PoC of Akamai and Cloudflare. 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. Other things are good in Akamai. That is why we are using Akamai. Only the captcha part should be implemented.

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Manikandan-R

Senior Project Manager at Synopsys Inc

Solution provides essential protection with good support and a simple setup

I have noticed a pattern developing in approximately five minutes. If it were possible to provide these patterns with historical data spanning six months, three months, or two months directly from the console, it would be extremely beneficial. It would allow for easy inquiries and facilitate the retrieval of relevant parts without having to manually check logs or examine movements. Instead, if all historical data were available, I could consult six months' worth of identified patterns efficiently through AWS without relying on external sources. This solution is particularly suitable for startups or medium-sized startups. I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable feature is the DDoS protection, which is the main reason we got it."

"The features are powerful and better than F5."

"The product is user-friendly."

"We are getting security for each and every API."

"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."

"The solution easily identifies, delays, or allows business traffic."

"It is scalable for DDoS."

"I can attest to its benefits in terms of understanding and mitigating threats...The solution's technical support team seems to be pretty responsive."

More Akamai App and API Protector pros

"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."

"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."

"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."

"The product is easy to use."

"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."

"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."

Cons

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"Technical support is lacking."

"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

More Cloudflare cons

"They are already very flexible, but room for improvement is there. Reports generation could be better and should be improved."

"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."

"There are some issues with pushing configurations across a network. It still takes about 20 minutes and that means to retract it's another 20 minutes."

"It's fine for a simple tool, but as I recall, if you encounter a lot of bots, scrapers, and other things, you'll need this tool bot and this other thing they offer called Bot Manager."

"Support and the pricing need to improve."

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

"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."

"The WAF features definitely have a lot of room for improvement. A lot of the WAF is really basic. For some products or some of our solutions, we need to run a second layer of more advanced WAF. If it had better layer seven protection then we would not need a second WAF."

More Akamai App and API Protector cons

"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."

"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."

"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."

"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

"The product is expensive."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."

"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"The price is reasonable."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"We are using the free version."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Akamai is very expensive."

"The price they are offering is quite reasonable for premium customers, but it's very expensive if you're a small and medium-sized enterprises."

"The solution is not expensive."

"Its price is at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose."

"It's more expensive than others, but the ROI is good for large-scale infrastructure."

"One reason not all people use Akamai is that it is a little bit more expensive than some other providers."

"Akamai Web Application Protector is an expensive product."

"Based on the billing discussions in the DevOps team, Akamai's cost does not seem to be a major thing. However, LOE is an issue. When it comes to support, we know that even all the competitors do this. For a 30-minute issue, they give us a LOE of one or two hours. That is a basic practice, but that is something we worry about."

More Akamai App and API Protector pricing and cost advice

"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."

"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"The tool is cheap."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 GR...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Akamai Web Application Protector?

The product is user-friendly.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Web Application Protector?

The price is higher than others. It could be about 80% to 70% more expensive than other tools. So, it’s not just a sl...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?

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

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS Shield?

We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't de...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?

The tool is cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a si...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 12% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 12% of the time

AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 11% of the time

Prolexic vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 8% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 3% of the time

More Akamai App and API Protector Competitors

Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Compared 25% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 21% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

Fortinet FortiDDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

Prolexic vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector

March 2025

Download Akamai App and API Protector product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

March 2025

Download AWS Shield product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Akamai App and API Protector provides website security by preventing DDoS attacks, acting as an application firewall, managing content delivery, and monitoring APIs. It adapts to threat profiles and is used for fast media delivery and identifying malicious activities.

Akamai App and API Protector offers strong protection, adaptable security features, and efficient traffic management. Its WAF blocks IP addresses and country-specific threats while preventing SQL injections. Companies utilize it for scalable CDN services and comprehensive traffic analysis. Known for its cost-effectiveness and user-friendly dashboard, this protector stands out for its customizable rules and technical support. Users also highlight the ease of integration and detailed attack insights available through its advanced dashboard.

What are the key features of Akamai App and API Protector?

DDoS Protection: Strong defense against Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
Scalable CDN: Manages content delivery efficiently under high traffic loads.
WAF Capabilities: Blocks specific IPs and countries, prevents SQL injections.
Traffic Filtering: Analyzes and controls incoming requests to maintain security.
Adaptive Stream Delivery: Adjusts content delivery to meet bandwidth needs.

What benefits should users expect?

Cost-Effectiveness: Provides robust security tools at a competitive price.
Enhanced Security: Comprehensive protection against cyber threats.
Scalability: Easily handles increasing traffic and data loads.
Ease of Integration: Simple integration with existing systems.
Insightful Analytics: Offers data-driven insights into traffic and attack patterns.

In media, Akamai App and API Protector ensures smooth streaming by handling high bandwidth demands. E-commerce companies use it to guard against fraud and data breaches. Financial sectors rely on its ability to protect sensitive transactions. Implementations in healthcare focus on safeguarding patient data while maintaining compliance with regulations.

Akamai

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Akamai App and API Protector

March 2025

Free Report: AWS Shield vs. Akamai App and API Protector

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Akamai App and API Protector and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our AWS Shield vs. Akamai App and API Protector report.

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We monitor all Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.