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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

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 October 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 11.3%, down from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 5.2%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon CloudFront5.2%
Akamai11.3%
Other83.5%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

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's most valuable feature is that it has been quite helpful in our company, especially when it comes to applications needing updates frequently."
"The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions."
"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."
"Akamai has been providing this service for 20 years and they have never had a substantial outage, they even have some products that have an uptime of over 20 years, the stability is very good."
"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."
"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."
"We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."
"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."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"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."
"It is an expensive product with valuable features."
"The UI and the functionality in AWS for CloudFront is much better as compared to Azure and GCP."
"CloudFront provides a common access point, manages routing to different methods, and serves as an access point plus API routing."
"It has built-in DDoS protection, which protects against DDoS attacks."
"The solution has good security features."
"This scalability has positively reflected in my customer's web performance and user experience, allowing for better loading times."
 

Cons

"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy."
"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
"Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"On the commercials and pricing based on the region, they might have to work a bit because sometimes we lose on commercials."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"The lack of seamless integration made the setup process more complex and required additional research to manage all the services properly."
"There is room for improvement in customer service and support."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Its price is really high and can be improved. From the technology perspective, they should have some multi-platform integration."
"The product could support any network load balancer. At present, we can use only Amazon’s load balancer application."
"There is a bit of a workaround required for custom domain management on CloudFront."
"It might benefit from multi-region support to enhance performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"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"
"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."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"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."
"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 product has a mid-range pricing."
"The solution’s price is reasonable."
"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."
"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."
"Amazon CloudFront costs less than third-party services."
"Compared to competitors like Azure and Google, we find AWS pricing to be advantageous."
"The product could improve its price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

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 could make some cases less complex to set up. There could be improvements in ho...
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 where AWS is one of the targets. We are building up websites that we are pointing to...
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 CloudFront global content delivery network was the better fit for us. We decided to go w...
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 expensive.
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 a bit confusing at first—there are a lot of settings, and it’s not always clear ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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: September 2026.
917,382 professionals have used our research since 2012.