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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), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
4th
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 August 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 15.0%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 11.6%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 5.3%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare15.0%
Amazon CloudFront5.3%
Akamai11.6%
Other68.1%
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

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"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."
"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."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"We're partners with Cloudflare; this solution is the best product and it does not charge you for any kind of attack on your traffic, only for good traffic, and it can mitigate up to 30 TBPS of DDoS attacks."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"For businesses that don't have a dedicated security team, I think it's a better product; it's more intuitive for people like us."
"The support from Akamai is fantastic, as they have one of the best supports available and you have assigned engineers targeting specific issues, making the use of the support services very easy."
"We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it has been quite helpful in our company, especially when it comes to applications needing updates frequently."
"It's beneficial since it's one of the best solutions in the world for CDN."
"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."
"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."
"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."
"The AWS environment was very helpful in terms of integration."
"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 distribution aspect of CloudFront and its ability to reduce latency are most beneficial."
"The best feature of Amazon CloudFront is its simplified process and easy integration."
"The UI and the functionality in AWS for CloudFront is much better as compared to Azure and GCP."
"The image loading process is easy and cost-effective too."
"The product’s most valuable feature is the availability of the websites."
 

Cons

"The Always Online feature has room for improvement. It seems to work sometimes and not others even with the pro version."
"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."
"Honestly the product has not really improved the way of my organisation."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"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."
"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."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."
"One area for improvement with Akamai could be pricing."
"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."
"Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team."
"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."
"Improvements are needed as per customer requirements."
"Its price is really high and can be improved. From the technology perspective, they should have some multi-platform integration."
"A lot of caching features must be added to the solution."
"AWS is redesigning its user interface and user experience for CloudFront, and there is room for improvement in certificate management."
"The solution could be more simplified for new users. It could be more user-friendly."
"Amazon CloudFront seems to have too many unnecessary products, which makes it cluttered."
"Support needs to be enhanced."
"There are some solutions needed for integration that are not free."
 

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."
"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 tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"We are using the free version."
"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 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 solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"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."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
"Compared to competitors like Azure and Google, we find AWS pricing to be advantageous."
"The solution’s price is reasonable."
"Amazon CloudFront costs less than third-party services."
"The product has a mid-range pricing."
"I rate Amazon CloudFront's pricing a five out of ten."
"Its price is really on the high side. It should be cheaper in general."
"Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
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: August 2026.
907,816 professionals have used our research since 2012.