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AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (4th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
AWS WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.0%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS WAF is 13.7%, down from 15.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Deepesh  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 9, 2024
Bot Manager and different features to manage threats
As a product, it has good capabilities, including professional support. However, it's risky for us to rely on AI for real-time traffic management. We use in-house analytics but avoid automatic actions due to their high impact. For example, I live in a developing country. Everyone has different types of phones, apps, and everything else. So, if someone is using a legacy phone, that is still a use case here. If AI decides that this is an end-of-life phone or end-of-life Android operating system, it starts blocking that traffic. We may potentially lose millions or probably thousands and hundreds of thousands of hits per second. Everything is all about how well we serve payments because we're into payments. So, AI is used for analytics but not for real-time decisions. We can't afford to block traffic based on AI models due to the variety of devices and operating systems our users have.
Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 24, 2024
A highly stable solution that helps mitigate different kinds of bot attacks and SQL injection attacks
We use AWS WAF to protect our application from different kinds of attacks. We use AWS WAF for retail customers Our retail application is vulnerable to a lot of bot attacks. AWS WAF helps mitigate different kinds of bot attacks and SQL injection that happen within the retail industry. The…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The CDN and the WAF features are the best."
"They have a fantastic tool for analyzing and viewing your traffic."
"It enables us to move faster with new products because we have this layer of protection set up in our infrastructure."
"I can attest to its benefits in terms of understanding and mitigating threats...The solution's technical support team seems to be pretty responsive."
"The solution can scale extremely well."
"The solution easily identifies, delays, or allows business traffic."
"The product is user-friendly."
"I like that the charges are all based on usage and labor costs. For the time that we spend onboarding almost 252020 FQDN, Akamai charges us only for the traffic usage, but it's only charging us for the labor costs for onboarding."
"The tool’s stability is very good."
"AWS has flexibility in terms of WAF rules."
"This is not a product that you need to install. You just use it."
"AWS WAF helps mitigate different kinds of bot attacks and SQL injection that happen within the retail industry."
"The most valuable feature is the capability to limit access based on geographical location by restricting specific IP addresses."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features of AWS WAF are its cloud-native and on-demand."
"The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is its highly configurable rules system."
 

Cons

"Customer support has room for improvement."
"The solution could offer even more integrations."
"Akamai needs to focus on quickly responding to risks, even those that may potentially be of zero threat..Maybe some of the documentation is a little confusing. They have a lot of different places where you can go to get information, and some of the information is quite out of date."
"The interface is a little bit clunky and can be improved."
"It would be nice if Akamai Web Application Protector's price is lowered and made cheaper."
"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."
"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."
"Support and the pricing need to improve."
"The product must provide more features."
"The solution could improve by having better rules, they are very basic at the moment. There are more attacks coming and we have to use third-party solutions, such as FIA. The features are not sufficient to prevent all the attacks, such as DDoS. Overall the solution should be more secure."
"It would be good if the solution provided managed WAF services."
"The product should improve the DDoS-related features."
"One area for improvement in AWS WAF could be the limitation on the number of rules, particularly those from third-party sources, within the free tier."
"The solution should identify why it blocks particular websites."
"They have to do more to improve, to innovate more features. They need to increase the security. It has to be more active in detecting threats."
"Technical support for AWS WAF needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s price is high."
"Akamai Web Application Protector is an expensive product."
"The solution is not expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"If you want quality, you have to pay the price. Its price is fair. Their account managers are also very helpful. They help you a lot with pricing even though they are working with Akamai."
"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."
"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."
"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's cost depends on the use cases."
"AWS WAF costs $5 monthly plus $1 for the rule. It's cheap, cost-wise. It's worth the money."
"There are different scale options available for WAF."
"It's quite affordable. It's in the middle."
"It has a variable pricing scheme."
"AWS WAF has reasonable pricing."
"The price of AWS WAF is reasonable, it is not expensive and it is not cheap."
"The price of AWS WAF is expensive if you do not know how to manage your software up or down. I price of the solution is average amongst the other competitors but it would be better if it was less expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 slight difference.
What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?
It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.
What are the limitations of AWS WAF vs alternative WAFs?
Hi Varun, I have had experienced with several WAF deployments and deep technical assessments of the following: 1. Imperva WAF 2. F5 WAF 3. Polarisec Cloud WAF Typical limitations on cloud WAF is t...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...
What do you like most about AWS WAF?
The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is its highly configurable rules system.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS WAF vs. Akamai App and API Protector and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.