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Akamai Bot Manager vs Cloudflare comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Akamai Bot Manager
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Bot Management (2nd)
Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Akamai Bot Manager is designed for Bot Management and holds a mindshare of 13.0%, down 15.3% compared to last year.
Cloudflare, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 16.6% mindshare, down 18.0% since last year.
Bot Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Akamai Bot Manager13.0%
Imperva Application Security Platform14.2%
DataDome10.5%
Other62.3%
Bot Management
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare16.6%
Arbor DDoS9.3%
Imperva Application Security Platform8.2%
Other65.9%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Denis Burnaev - PeerSpot reviewer
SecOps Engineer at El Al
Uses real-time dashboards to manage bot traffic and has provided a reliable first layer of defense
Because we are an airline, we have various attacks on our website and application, and we really have to involve our experience and try to find attacks by ourselves. These days attacks are very sophisticated and they are trying to manipulate in the same way as humans, so the anomaly feature is not really helpful. Bots are very clever these days and they move through the website the way humans do. We are not really using it because again, the attacks are sophisticated. We need something that involves different AI models that can try to find similarity in all the data that we are getting from Akamai Bot Manager to understand where exactly we can find similarities between the ways bots are reacting on the website. The most valued feature these days is getting research on all the data as fast as possible and trying to find similarities to understand which bots are trying to manipulate or abuse my website. We are going toward AI solutions because it is the fastest, but it should be a very sophisticated model. Bots these days move the way humans do, so it's really hard to understand which of them is a bot and which is human. Bots can go through the challenges you are putting on the website, and it seems nothing can stop them.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai Bot Manager is helping us understand how many bots are accessing our websites or applications, and we can manage the dashboard to differentiate on a quick view and see how much good bots get access compared to bad bots trying to reach our website."
"The most valuable features of Akamai Bot Manager are the seamless integration and accuracy with which it detects the bots that can make attacks."
"The best feature is the BNP. That is what Manager Premium does, protection of transactional endpoints."
"In terms of the security provided, the benefits from the use of the product are immediately visible."
"Akamai Bot Manager has more advanced rules that allow it to detect and block bot scrapers."
"Based on the telemetry, Akamai Bot Manager gives a rough estimate of all the hits and requests we get, which are suspected bots."
"Akamai Bot Manager is very easy to scale. Adding new domains or subdomains is a super easy process."
"Akamai Bot Manager has two valuable features: BMS (Bot Manager Standard) and BMP (Bot Manager Premier)."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"Cloudflare's DNS services deliver the best performance in terms of speed and reliability."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"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."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
 

Cons

"There is a clear need for improvement. Over the past year or so, we've observed an increase in the sophistication of attacks, with some occurring at the start of this year or even extending back one and a half years. Despite having ample resources, particularly with the advent of advanced AI, these entities can now execute basic bot attacks."
"There are other rules that are user-friendly, however, many of the things have a learning curve. This is not something you enter into lightly."
"We cannot block illegitimate web scrapers because Akamai Bot Manager does not provide detailed information about various origins and remote VPNs they come through."
"Akamai Bot Manager can improve by having better SDK integration. SDK would be required to integrate with any mobile applications and if they are able to make that more seamless, it will help."
"In my opinion, the UI of Akamai Bot Manager is a bit unconventional and not as intuitive as one might expect."
"Akamai Bot Manager Premier has some additional functionalities, particularly for web telemetry, but they don't have it for app telemetry."
"The anomaly feature is not really helpful. Bots are very clever these days and they move through the website the way humans do."
"I feel that customer support has certain concerns where improvements are required."
"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."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"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."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Akamai Bot Manager could improve."
"Akamai Bot Manager requires a separate license that sits on top of Kona or Akamai Web Application Protector."
"We have to pay a bundled cost."
"You buy a license of the product based on a certain volume, but if you hit the volume and go above it, then you are charged additional for each GB you use. I think you need to pay 20,000 per month."
"Akamai Bot Manager is a very expensive 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."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"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."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Bot Manager?
Akamai Bot Manager is not cheap. From what I know, Akamai Bot Manager is not so cheap.
What needs improvement with Akamai Bot Manager?
Because we are an airline, we have various attacks on our website and application, and we really have to involve our experience and try to find attacks by ourselves. These days attacks are very sop...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Bot Manager?
I'm working at an airline company, so Akamai Bot Manager has been used in our company for approximately 20 years.
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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Luisa Via Roma, Gymgrossisten, Rakuten, U.S. News & World Report, Japan Airlines
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Akamai, Cloudflare and others in Bot Management. Updated: February 2026.
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