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Akamai App and API Protector vs Prolexic 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
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
8th
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 (12th)
Prolexic
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 14.9%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.4%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 2.8%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare14.9%
Akamai App and API Protector4.4%
Prolexic2.8%
Other77.9%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"This solution has improved the security of our organization."
"The solution is a great fit for customers who want unlimited bandwidth."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic."
"I have contacted the support team of Akamai... I am happy with their responses and answers to my problems."
"The most valuable feature is the DDoS protection, which is the main reason we got it."
"Akamai Web Application Protector is exceptionally stable; after all, it is Akami."
"They have a fantastic tool for analyzing and viewing your traffic."
"The solution easily identifies, delays, or allows business traffic."
"It is scalable for DDoS, keeps our sites up through any size of attack, and has a good breadth of controls."
"All the solution's features are very good."
"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."
"The support from Akamai is great, and they provide excellent information and mitigation services."
"Prolexic technical support is second to none."
"They've scrubbed DDoS traffic that was blasting us offline, thus allowing legitimate traffic through and letting our service return online."
"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."
"The solution does not have hardware or maintenance requirements and is very easy to scale."
 

Cons

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"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."
"DNS Management."
"I think they have failed with their technical support."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"We experienced some downtime in the fall of 2013, causing us to switch to Incapsula."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"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."
"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 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."
"We are experimenting with EdgeWorkers to write our own code at the Edge level. It could grow to be much better."
"The performance of the cloud monitoring tool is low."
"They are already very flexible, but room for improvement is there. Reports generation could be better and should be improved."
"The interface is a little bit clunky and can be improved."
"Support and the pricing need to improve."
"The reports provided don’t give detailed information about DDoS mitigations, bandwidth utilization, etc."
"The web portal for checking status and traffic needs improvements."
"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."
"It's expensive, though."
"In bot management, there are times when attackers find ways to bypass Akamai, which is a continuously evolving challenge."
"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"Akamai is very expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"It's more expensive than others, but the ROI is good for large-scale infrastructure."
"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"Its price is at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose."
"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."
"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."
"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
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Comms Service Provider
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
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...
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 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.
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
Akamai Prolexic Routed
 

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
Fidor Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Prolexic and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,468 professionals have used our research since 2012.