Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Akamai vs Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudflare comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 14.7%, down from 15.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 6.4%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.0%, down from 22.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare19.0%
Amazon CloudFront6.4%
Akamai14.7%
Other59.900000000000006%
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.
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.

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."
"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 most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively."
"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."
"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."
"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."
"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."
"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."
"Edge configuration and availability are vital features for easy content drop-off requests"
"The most valuable feature is the number of servers they can put your content in while being reliable."
"The support team is knowledgeable."
"The speed and usability of the solution are valuable."
"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."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to deliver content to users nearby."
"It has built-in DDoS protection, which protects against DDoS attacks."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the speed of delivery."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"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. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"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."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
 

Cons

"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'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."
"Akamai should improve its integrations."
"It might benefit from multi-region support to enhance performance."
"There is a bit of a workaround required for custom domain management on CloudFront."
"Amazon CloudFront seems to have too many unnecessary products, which makes it cluttered."
"The product should be more intuitive."
"There are some solutions needed for integration that are not free."
"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."
"CloudFront could improve in the areas of auto-scaling, reports, and insights. End clients desire more detailed reports to understand usage patterns better."
"There is room for improvement in customer service and support."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."
"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."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"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 price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"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."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
"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."
"The solution’s price is reasonable."
"For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution."
"The tool is affordable."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."
"Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."
"The policies and prices keep on changing frequently with AWS solutions"
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user69348 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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 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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Cloudflare DNS
 

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
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Imperva, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in CDN. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.