Akamai vs Amazon CloudFront comparison

Akamai and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the CDN category. Akamai is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Akamai holds a 15.0% mindshare in CDN, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 6.9% 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.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Akamai and Amazon CloudFront compete in the content delivery network space, each catering to diverse business needs. Akamai seems to have the upper hand with its global reach and performance capabilities, while Amazon CloudFront is preferred for AWS integration.

Features: Akamai is known for its extensive global network, advanced caching techniques, and robust security such as comprehensive DDoS protection. Amazon CloudFront offers deep integration with AWS, ease of scaling, and edge computing functionalities.

Room for Improvement: Akamai could benefit from simplifying its deployment process and pricing model. Enhancing integration with platforms outside its network scope is another area for potential growth. Amazon CloudFront may improve by expanding its global presence and refining its security configurations for a broader range of use cases. Streamlining integration with non-AWS environments would also enhance its versatility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai requires sophisticated initial configuration but offers strong customer support with in-depth guidance. Amazon CloudFront provides straightforward deployment for existing AWS customers, with efficient support tied to AWS infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai’s pricing is complex, reflecting high-end global service offerings, with potentially higher ROI for large-scale operations. Amazon CloudFront's pay-as-you-go pricing offers cost-effective solutions for smaller to medium businesses, with ROI increasing as usage scales with other AWS offerings.

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

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront

December 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 January 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.1%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 15.0%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 6.9%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cloudflare	19.1%
Amazon CloudFront	6.9%
Akamai	15.0%
Other	59.0%

CDN

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

Read full review

VinuThomas John

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.

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Nicolas Forgues

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

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

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

More Cloudflare pros

"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."

"We have received excellent support from their team; I have not worked with any other applications where they have delivered professional services as good as them."

"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."

"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 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."

"The most valuable feature of Akamai is its ease of use and simple integration. Additionally, the solution has new aspects added to it regularly."

"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."

"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."

More Akamai pros

"This scalability has positively reflected in my customer's web performance and user experience, allowing for better loading times."

"The solution is very easy to use."

"The most valuable feature is the number of servers they can put your content in while being reliable."

"The solution improves performance by reducing latency and cost."

"The product is very well interconnected with other Amazon services."

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

"Edge configuration and availability are vital features for easy content drop-off requests"

"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."

More Amazon CloudFront pros

Cons

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

More Cloudflare cons

"One area for improvement with Akamai could be pricing."

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

"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."

"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."

"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."

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

"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN."

"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."

More Akamai cons

"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."

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

"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."

"The support must be improved."

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

"The tool must provide regional control."

"There is a bit of a workaround required for custom domain management on CloudFront."

"Support needs to be enhanced."

More Amazon CloudFront cons

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."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"We are using the free version."

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

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"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."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"

"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."

More Akamai pricing and cost advice

"The product has a mid-range pricing."

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

"The solution’s price is reasonable."

"The policies and prices keep on changing frequently with AWS solutions"

"Amazon CloudFront costs less than third-party services."

"The tool is affordable."

"For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution."

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

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

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	21
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

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...

See all answers

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?

Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...

See all answers

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...

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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 51% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Azure Front Door vs Akamai

Compared 14% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Akamai

Compared 12% of the time

Fastly vs Akamai

Compared 11% of the time

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

More Akamai Competitors

Azure Front Door vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 40% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 5% of the time

Fastly vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Global Accelerator vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon CloudFront Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Akamai

January 2026

Download Akamai product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon CloudFront

January 2026

Download Amazon CloudFront product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

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

December 2025

Free Report: Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront

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

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