Akamai vs Amazon CloudFront comparison

Akamai and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the CDN category. Akamai is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2. Akamai holds a 16.4% mindshare in CDN, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 8.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Akamai and Amazon CloudFront are competitive products in the content delivery network space. Akamai is known for its global reach and security, while Amazon CloudFront offers competitive pricing and excellent AWS integration.

Features: Akamai provides robust security with advanced threat protection, extensive global presence with a vast network of servers, and advanced traffic analytics for comprehensive monitoring. Amazon CloudFront integrates seamlessly with AWS services, delivers high-speed content through a network of edge locations, and offers flexible configurations for personalized content delivery.

Room for Improvement: Akamai could simplify its deployment process and offer more competitive pricing options. It may also enhance ease of use for smaller businesses. Amazon CloudFront could expand its global server coverage and improve integration with non-AWS services for better versatility. It could also enhance its setup for mixed IT environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon CloudFront is easier to deploy, especially for those familiar with AWS, and benefits from extensive AWS documentation and support. Akamai, while offering strong customer support, can be more complex due to its comprehensive feature set, requiring more expertise for effective deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon CloudFront, with its pay-as-you-go pricing, is budget-friendly, particularly for AWS users, offering immediate financial benefits. Akamai's higher cost may be justified by its superior security and global reach, potentially offering greater ROI for businesses needing extensive coverage and protection.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront

March 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 March 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.7%, up from 21.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 16.4%, up from 16.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 8.5%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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XYX ABC

Product Manager at Infozion

Offers great enterprise support, ideal for solutions requiring high scalability and seamless integration with AWS infrastructure

For Akamai, it is definitely one of the best tools out there. However, there are challenges with how their approach is designed for large enterprises. While it's great for solutions with high scalability, like global e-commerce, it's not really built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It has too many options and can be complex for SMBs to utilize. That's the biggest challenge we faced when migrating to Akamai from other solutions, like Cloudflare. It can be difficult to migrate between platforms. Due to its great features but high activation thresholds. So, while it's a powerful tool, it has limitations for some implementations. It was difficult to migrate from and to Akamai. It is challenging when we are building a website.

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Parth Buch

Infrastructure Architecture at Capgemini

Seamlessly manages security and dynamic content hosting in diverse applications

Hosting static content or with engineering dynamic content is beneficial. CloudFront provides a common access point, manages routing to different methods, and serves as an access point plus API routing. With AWS, maintenance is not required as it's a service offered by AWS which maintains itself. Security concerns are manageable through AWS's security mechanisms, with additional security enhancement possible through options like WAF and NACL.

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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 most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"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."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

More Cloudflare pros

"We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."

"As of now, the best thing about Akamai is WAF, and though CDN is a good feature, it comes in second place when compared to WAF. I am very impressed with the WAF offered by Akamai."

"Akamai provides low-latency throughput."

"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."

"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."

"The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions."

"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."

"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."

More Akamai pros

"The best feature of Amazon CloudFront is its simplified process and easy integration."

"The beneficial feature for the entire AWS community is the presence of edge location servers. These servers are strategically located in multiple locations, allowing efficient content delivery from the nearest server."

"We can personalize a lot of things inside CDN."

"The solution is very easy to use."

"The AWS environment was very helpful in terms of integration."

"The product’s most valuable feature is the availability of the websites."

"If you're using AWS entirely, it's smooth sailing."

"It is stable."

More Amazon CloudFront pros

Cons

"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."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

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

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

"DNS Management."

"The pricing could be improved."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

More Cloudflare cons

"I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."

"Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy."

"After three or four months from this perspective, I don’t know all the features on the platform yet, so I am still learning about it."

"I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."

"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."

"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."

"While it's great for solutions with high scalability, like global e-commerce, it's not really built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It has too many options and can be complex for SMBs to utilize."

"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."

More Akamai cons

"The UI could be more user-friendly."

"The solution could be more simplified for new users. It could be more user-friendly."

"The solution can benefit from expanding its data center and server locations to multiple places for smoother content delivery with even lower latency. The latency we experience is sufficient for our needs, and we are doing well. However, if they expand their locations in the future, it could be a positive factor. Its competitors have multiple data and server locations."

"They could be expanding the number of locations available. It will help users easily access content."

"During the setup phase, there were some hiccups in terms of security, the user role, and the permissions."

"The support must be improved."

"AWS is redesigning its user interface and user experience for CloudFront, and there is room for improvement in certificate management."

"Amazon CloudFront can improve by accurately determining the latency of a non-defined URL that the solution encounters."

More Amazon CloudFront cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"We are using the free version."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"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."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."

"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."

"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."

"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."

"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."

"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."

"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."

"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."

More Akamai pricing and cost advice

"Its price is really on the high side. It should be cheaper in general."

"The product could improve its price."

"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."

"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."

"I rate Amazon CloudFront's pricing a five out of ten."

"Compared to competitors like Azure and Google, we find AWS pricing to be advantageous."

"The product has a mid-range pricing."

"The tool is affordable."

More Amazon CloudFront pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user69348

Partner at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Nov 17, 2013

Akamai vs. CloudFlare – Simple Stats

In the world of CDNs Akamai is the incumbent 500 pound gorilla, no question. They have a HUGE global presence, super solid technology and networks, and have the most experience with large enterprise clients. However, now there other strong players in the CDN market. One of the most…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

25%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

23%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 do you like most about Akamai?

The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively.

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What needs improvement with Akamai?

Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team. While the support is not bad, there is room...

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What is your primary use case for Akamai?

We use Akamai ( /products/akamai-reviews ) as our CDN ( /categories/cdn ) to advertise prefixes and download traffic....

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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...

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What do you like most about Amazon CloudFront?

The solution has good security features.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Azure Front Door vs Akamai

Compared 22% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Akamai

Compared 14% of the time

Fastly vs Akamai

Compared 6% of the time

AWS Global Accelerator vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

More Akamai Competitors

Azure Front Door vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 64% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Global Accelerator vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 3% of the time

Fastly vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 2% of the time

Edgio vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 2% of the time

More Amazon CloudFront Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Akamai

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudFront

March 2025

Download Amazon CloudFront product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“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. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Akamai is a powerful solution that aims to enhance the performance and reliability of websites and applications. With features like excellent performance, robust security measures, and efficient content delivery, it optimizes user experience. It also offers bandwidth optimization, caching, online asset security, and protection against DDoS attacks. Users value its wide network coverage and reliable customer support.

Akamai

Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that accelerates delivery of your websites, APIs, video content or other web assets. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services products to give developers and businesses an easy way to accelerate content to end users with no minimum usage commitments. Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Amazon CloudFront is optimized to work with other Amazon Web Services, like Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and Amazon Route 53. Amazon CloudFront also works seamlessly with any non-AWS origin server, which stores the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services products, there are no long-term contracts or minimum monthly usage commitments for using Amazon CloudFront – you pay only for as much or as little content as you actually deliver through the content delivery service.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront

March 2025

Free Report: Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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