Akamai App and API Protector vs Prolexic comparison

Akamai App and API Protector and Prolexic are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Akamai App and API Protector is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.7, while Prolexic is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0. Akamai App and API Protector holds a 4.2% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Prolexic’s 3.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai App and API Protector users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Prolexic users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Prolexic and Akamai App and API Protector compete directly in cloud security, each with unique strengths. Prolexic is often favored for its affordability and responsive customer service, whereas Akamai is recognized for its advanced features, making it a preferred choice for functionality-focused users.

Features: Prolexic offers strong DDoS protection, efficient handling of large-scale attacks, and thorough traffic analysis. Akamai App and API Protector provides robust application-layer security, real-time analytics, and automated threat detection, positioning it as a superior option for comprehensive, feature-rich protection.

Room for Improvement: Prolexic could enhance scalability and user interface intuitiveness, while its technical documentation can be expanded. Akamai could offer simpler deployment, reduce costs, and streamline customer support processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prolexic is praised for easy deployment and reliable customer service, facilitating smooth integration. Akamai, with its advanced functionalities, might present a more complex deployment but compensates with thorough documentation and support services.

Pricing and ROI: Prolexic is noted for its competitive pricing and favorable ROI for cost-conscious businesses. Akamai, despite a higher initial cost, offers extensive protection that may validate the investment over time for those seeking advanced security capabilities.

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

Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Prolexic

December 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 December 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 17.8%, up from 17.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.2%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cloudflare	17.8%
Akamai App and API Protector	4.2%
Prolexic	3.3%
Other	74.7%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

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Gavin Pinho

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

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.

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Gavin Pinho

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

Has faced challenges with bot detection while benefiting from strong threat monitoring and compliance support

Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance. We utilize the real-time monitoring of the solution. Real-time monitoring helps us identify network vulnerabilities by allowing us to see a spike in traffic and understand the traffic levels compared to this time last month or last week. If we notice a sudden increase, we investigate further to determine if it indicates a DDoS attack or a card testing situation. In terms of threat detection capabilities, they are very good because Akamai has a SOC service that we have tapped into for active threat detection and threat hunting, and they monitor everything carefully 24/7. Scrubbing is done by Akamai as a backend service, and we utilize their SOC, which is a service that you pay additional fees for, allowing us to have our queries prioritized. Prolexic features help maintain business continuity during high-volume attacks by having built-in threat detection capabilities in its bot detection and other functionalities, as attacks usually occur through intelligent bots trying to infiltrate the system.

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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 technical support is good."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"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. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."

More Cloudflare pros

"The product has a good UI."

"I have contacted the support team of Akamai... I am happy with their responses and answers to my problems."

"Traffic filtering and WAF are valuable."

"All the solution's features are very good."

"It is scalable for DDoS."

"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."

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

"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 solution does not have hardware or maintenance requirements and is very easy to scale."

"Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance."

Cons

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

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."

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

"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."

"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

More Cloudflare cons

"It would be better if there weren't any issues with latency. We had latency issues, but I think they are all solved now."

"It would be nice if Akamai Web Application Protector's price is lowered and made cheaper."

"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."

"If we talk about application layer attacks, including WAF, CloudFlare is leading. Akamai can focus a bit more on the application layer attacks and how to protect them."

"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."

"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."

"Support and the pricing need to improve."

More Akamai App and API Protector cons

"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."

"In bot management, there are times when attackers find ways to bypass Akamai, which is a continuously evolving challenge."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

"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 pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

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

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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

"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."

"The solution is not expensive."

"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

More Akamai App and API Protector pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is a pay-as-you-go model that is charged by the hour."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

30%

Comms Service Provider

17%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	18

No data available

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...

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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...

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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 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...

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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...

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What is your primary use case for Akamai Web Application Protector?

The main use case for Akamai App and API Protector is serving as the WAF, Web Application Firewall.

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What needs improvement with Akamai Prolexic Routed?

For the DDoS protection, I don't see any areas for improvement because they are pretty solid there, though in bot man...

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What is your primary use case for Akamai Prolexic Routed?

The main use case for DDoS protection is to mitigate risks, and there are multiple ways Akamai provides DDoS protecti...

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What advice do you have for others considering Akamai Prolexic Routed?

We have a couple of products, including DDoS protection, WAF, and Bot Manager. There are two ways Akamai does DDoS pr...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 52% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 7% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 5% of the time

AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 5% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 5% of the time

F5 Shape Security vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 4% of the time

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Cloudflare One vs Prolexic

Compared 13% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 13% of the time

AWS Shield vs Prolexic

Compared 8% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Prolexic

Compared 5% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 5% of the time

More Prolexic Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector

December 2025

Download Akamai App and API Protector product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

November 2025

Download Prolexic product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

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

Akamai Prolexic Routed

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

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

Akamai Prolexic is a cloud-based DDoS protection solution that defends your data center and hybrid infrastructure to ensure availability and uptime. It provides comprehensive port and protocol protection against the broadest range of DDoS attacks, including high-bandwidth sustained attacks and complex multi-vector attacks. Prolexic is available as an always-on or on-demand service, contains a Network Cloud Firewall, and offers flexible integration models based on your desired security posture across hybrid origins. Prolexic is backed by a proven platform with more than 20 Tbps of dedicated DDoS defense capacity and our 24/7/365 global SOCC for a fully managed solution.

Prolexic stops DDoS attacks closer to the source to maximize performance for users and to maintain network resiliency through cloud distribution. Instead of originating advertisements for your prefixes from your cloud/data centers, you’ll make either a border gateway protocol route advertisement change or DNS redirection (A record or CNAME record) to originate from one of many Akamai scrubbing centers globally. Your intended traffic is then routed to the user via Anycast through the closest scrubbing center. Prolexic will inspect the traffic to determine if it is good or bad, and apply proactive and/or custom mitigation controls designed to stop attacks instantly if needed. This ensures fast and accurate DDoS protection. Clean traffic is then returned to the customer origin via GRE tunnels, Layer 2 VLAN connections, and/or VIP-to-origin back-end mapping with little perceived latency. Prolexic also features a Network Cloud Firewall that allows IT teams to auto generate or manually manage access control lists.

Akamai

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

Fidor Bank

Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Prolexic

December 2025

Free Report: Akamai App and API Protector vs. Prolexic

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