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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 (3rd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 17.5%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 13.4%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 5.9%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare17.5%
Amazon CloudFront5.9%
Akamai13.4%
Other63.2%
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 solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"The technical support is good."
"CloudFlare has positively improved my site's speed, performance and security."
"It's very user-friendly."
"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."
"It's a reasonably priced solution that meets customers' needs and it's not too difficult to deploy."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."
"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."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively."
"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"Akamai support is excellent because they have great debugging tools, and they are highly competent, with proactive and responsive engineers whenever we have issues, so everything is pretty smooth."
"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."
"Feature-wise, I like the solution's signed URL because it provides security for me."
"The solution has good security features."
"Amazon CloudFront provides valuable security by ensuring secure file access when accessing files from S3."
"Amazon CloudFront provides valuable security by ensuring secure file access when accessing files from S3."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"The product is very well interconnected with other Amazon services."
"The speed and usability of the solution are valuable."
"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."
 

Cons

"At the end, it is worth than giving your house keys to the NSA."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"Support response time could be improved."
"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."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"Technical support is lacking."
"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"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."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN."
"On the commercials and pricing based on the region, they might have to work a bit because sometimes we lose on commercials."
"Support needs to be enhanced."
"Sometimes, the server goes down automatically."
"They should have more Edge locations so that CloudFront can be used much more. If they can make it a little bit cheaper and better than other networks, we will be able to use it more."
"Amazon CloudFront can improve by accurately determining the latency of a non-defined URL that the solution encounters."
"I have utilized certain characteristics and invested effort in reading the documentation, which proved to be challenging."
"The pricing for Amazon CloudFront is quite expensive; I would rate it six if we use all edges. The price could be optimized."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"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."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their 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."
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"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."
"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 tool is affordable."
"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
"Compared to competitors like Azure and Google, we find AWS pricing to be advantageous."
"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 Amazon CloudFront's pricing a five out of ten."
"The solution’s price is reasonable."
"Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
"The policies and prices keep on changing frequently with AWS solutions"
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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
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

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?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
What do you like most about Akamai?
The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively.
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...
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 do you like most about Amazon CloudFront?
The solution has good security features.
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...
 

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: April 2026.
886,664 professionals have used our research since 2012.