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Akamai App and API Protector vs Check Point DDoS Protector comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th), Cloud and Data Center Security (15th)
Check Point DDoS Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.3%, up from 17.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.1%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point DDoS Protector is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare18.3%
Akamai App and API Protector4.1%
Check Point DDoS Protector1.0%
Other76.6%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
Has provided strong protection against evolving threats but still needs support for configuration fine-tuning
The standout features of Akamai App and API Protector are rooted in it being the Web Application Firewall, where all traffic gets scanned, including the implementation of web firewall rules, and after this phase, traffic proceeds through the BMP, which is Bot Management. Akamai App and API Protector exceeds expectations in terms of AI capabilities, and it genuinely combines a plethora of advanced features. The area in which Akamai excels compared to other competitors with a WAF is in threat intelligence, as threats continually evolve, requiring ongoing updates to backend algorithms to effectively capture smart bots, and Akamai's commitment in that regard is backed by an excellent team, while other providers are still catching up.
Petr Zemánek - PeerSpot reviewer
Protect from DDoS attacks with good management and easy setup
I have used Fortinet FortiDDoS. Fortinet is a little bit cheaper. Both solution was effective. The management of Check Point solution is a little bit better. It is 50 percent cheaper than Fortinet. It's very modern now to have an AI in the management for fast finding of attacks or investigation. Check Point have these features in a new releases.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"The technical support is good."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"The solution can scale extremely well."
"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."
"Akamai App and API Protector exceeds expectations in terms of AI capabilities, and it genuinely combines a plethora of advanced features."
"The most valuable feature is the custom rules feature. This is because many of our customers require a lot of custom rules. Because it's a very customized project for our customers, I think they have the best of everything already."
"The support that we got from their technical team has been fantastic. I have never experienced this level of support from other CDN providers."
"The CDN and the WAF features are the best."
"I can attest to its benefits in terms of understanding and mitigating threats...The solution's technical support team seems to be pretty responsive."
"Adaptive stream delivery and WAF protection are valuable."
"As our business continues to grow, we can grow this product simultaneously."
"Check Point DDoS Protector has positively impacted my organization by improving uptime, reducing incidents, and providing cost savings."
"Currently, we have fewer incidents with viruses. We improved our IQ operations and security using this solution. Our company's better after using Check Point."
"It uses several layers of security."
"One of its most outstanding functions is the zero-day DDOS."
"The is a really low level of the false-positive alerts (when the clean traffic is marked as DDoS) due to some advanced techniques used by Check Point under the hood."
"From my experience, the best part of this solution is behavioral DDoS protection. The DDoS Protector can monitor the traffic, and based on the behavior, it can decide which traffic is malicious and which traffic is regular. It works dynamically, and it's a very good solution."
"This product uses auto-learning and behavioral analysis to establish baselines for legitimate traffic, and automatically detects and blocks traffic behavior that does not conform."
 

Cons

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"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 would be nice if Akamai Web Application Protector's price is lowered and made cheaper."
"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."
"The solution could offer even more integrations."
"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."
"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."
"The interface is a little bit clunky and can be improved."
"Could integrate more features for each security."
"The Check Point support language is only in English."
"Check Point DDoS Protector can be improved in that initial fine-tuning of policies can be complex and may require expertise."
"The solution should greatly improve its interface."
"The mitigation part could be improved."
"For a long time, there was no software version of R80.10 available for the Check Point DDoS Protector software appliances, and we had to stay on the quite outdated R77.30 version."
"It does not provide the capability to upload data for blacklisting/whitelisting in bulk."
"Monitoring and reporting are the things that can be introduced in the future."
"Check Point DDoS Protector does not provide the ability to upload data for the blacklist/whitelist in bulk, which is one of the big points that need to be improved to facilitate configurations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."
"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."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"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."
"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 for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
"Akamai is very expensive."
"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."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"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."
"Its price is slightly high. Every company has a justification for the high price. Overall, it feels worth the money based on how the service has been structured, but we do negotiate it."
"The solution is not expensive."
"The product is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"The appliance comes with a loaded hardware license, and additional options such as SSL can be purchased and enabled."
"It's an expensive solution. It's one of the most expensive solutions in the world. It's cheaper than Palo Alto and Cisco but these are expensive solutions. Fortinet is cheaper."
"I don't deal with the pricing, but it seems that you need to get basic support in order to upgrade the DDoS database for new attacks and so on."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Performing Arts
6%
Comms Service Provider
33%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Security Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

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...
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...
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.
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...
What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?
There are no significant areas for improvement on the WAF side or for Akamai App and API Protector solution; they are...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point DDoS Protector?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is straightforward with no challenges.
What needs improvement with Check Point DDoS Protector?
Check Point DDoS Protector can be improved in that initial fine-tuning of policies can be complex and may require exp...
What is your primary use case for Check Point DDoS Protector?
My main use case for Check Point DDoS Protector is to protect our network perimeter against DDoS attacks, ensuring se...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
No data available
 

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.
Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
Boston Properties
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Check Point DDoS Protector and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
873,003 professionals have used our research since 2012.