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Akamai vs Amazon CloudFront comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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 CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon CloudFront
Ranking in CDN
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 15.8%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 12.0%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 5.4%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare15.8%
Amazon CloudFront5.4%
Akamai12.0%
Other66.8%
CDN
 

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.
JV
Sr. Strategic Accounts Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Improved security and faster operations with a seamless integration
They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best. We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai. It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view. It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere. The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side. On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.
Nicolas Forgues - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data & Content at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Improved web performance has boosted content customization and currently delivers faster user experiences
From my perspective, I see some weaknesses in Amazon CloudFront; I would rate the product something around nine out of ten, but there are disadvantages compared to its competitors. Talking specifically about Amazon CloudFront, I think they could have some additional features in the future, and I believe they may lack certain functionalities.

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 on offer is excellent; they are very helpful and responsive, and we are quite happy with the level of service they provide to their customers."
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"The solution is a great fit for customers who want unlimited bandwidth."
"This solution has improved the security of our organization."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"Akamai's scalability is good."
"Akamai has a very established network of PoPs globally."
"It's beneficial since it's one of the best solutions in the world for CDN."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"If an attacker conducts an attack, we can check what query he is running and whether he wants to see our password or any other files."
"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."
"Akamai provides low-latency throughput."
"CloudFront provides a common access point, manages routing to different methods, and serves as an access point plus API routing."
"Hosting static content or with engineering dynamic content is beneficial."
"Its main advantage is that it offers something in this region that wasn't available before; previously, you had to go outside of the region to get the same level of service that you can now access right here in Bahrain. It's truly incredible. Building this IX has significantly changed how traffic is handled. The technical support is good. The initial setup is very straightforward. I rate the solution a perfect ten."
"The product provides reduced latency and quicker site refreshes."
"The tool is highly available and reliable. It helps to access server applications easily. Integrating Amazon CloudFront with other AWS services was very easy, I would rate it eight out of ten."
"The solution has many features that are comprehensive."
"One of the most valuable features of CloudFront is the reduced latency due to its edge locations, which results in a very fast delivery of data."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the availability of the websites."
 

Cons

"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."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"The one feature that is paid is the custom nameservers instead of using the default ones, I want to use a custom one."
"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."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"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."
"Access to the solution's dashboards is not intended for a service company. You are practically blind, and to validate a problem, you must view the customer's screen."
"The solution can be improved by creating a communication pathway with technical engineers because when we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team."
"Akamai could improve by providing its own cloud services. We have to use third-party cloud services at this time, such as Amazon AWS. The offering becomes a lot easier for an SMB if everything was in one single platform to be used for the services."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."
"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
"On the commercials and pricing based on the region, they might have to work a bit because sometimes we lose on commercials."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN, as we are a key player for Internet access in Argentina for final users of mobile, DSL, cable, and FTTH users."
"Amazon CloudFront could improve by making it easier to integrate with components from different cloud providers."
"Improvements are needed as per customer requirements."
"There are some solutions needed for integration that are not free."
"Its price is really high and can be improved. From the technology perspective, they should have some multi-platform integration."
"Amazon CloudFront is harder to understand compared to Azure."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The pricing for Amazon CloudFront is quite expensive; I would rate it six if we use all edges. The price could be optimized."
"The product could support any network load balancer. At present, we can use only Amazon’s load balancer application."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"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 for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"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."
"It is an expensive product. The licensing costs for the solution are based on the usage. If we need premium support, we need to buy it from Akamai."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"From the resource component, it's very costly, and Akamai's charges are also high. So, any organization with a high-tech budget can definitely afford it, but companies with 10-15% of their revenue as a technical budget probably won't be able to. That's where they have a lot of room for improvement if they want to onboard those early users."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"Price-wise, I find Akamai's pricing model's inclination to be more towards the expensive side of the spectrum, though I can't say that it is a very expensive product."
"Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
"Its price is really on the high side. It should be cheaper in general."
"The solution’s price is reasonable."
"For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution."
"The product has a mid-range pricing."
"I used to work with AWS and Azure, and we provided cost comparisons for customers to help them choose the right services. Azure tends to be more user-friendly and easier to understand, while AWS may take more time."
"The policies and prices keep on changing frequently with AWS solutions"
"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.
What needs improvement with Akamai?
Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets wher...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai?
The pricing is good, with no complaints about costs, which is essential when deciding to have Akamai in your network.
How do I choose between AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFro...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudFront?
I find Amazon's pricing good, rating it eight out of ten and considering it affordable and rightly placed, not expens...
What needs improvement with Amazon CloudFront?
Honestly, Amazon CloudFront does its job really well, but it doesn’t always feel easy to work with. The setup can be ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
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.
Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork
Unilever, Spotify, Pinterest, MLB Advanced Media, Foursquare, PBS, Airbnb, Netflix, WIX, Comcast, Automobili Lamborghini, Rovio, Discovery Communications
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,645 professionals have used our research since 2012.