Akamai vs Cloudflare comparison

Akamai and Cloudflare are both solutions in the CDN category. Akamai is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5, while Cloudflare is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. Akamai holds a 16.3% mindshare in CDN, compared to Cloudflare’s 22.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Cloudflare users who would recommend it.

Akamai

Read 20 Akamai reviews

5,828 Views
5,373 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cloudflare

Read 72 Cloudflare reviews

10,121 Views
7,247 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Akamai

Cloudflare

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Akamai and Cloudflare are competing products in the content delivery network and security services market. Akamai edges ahead with a more extensive global network, while Cloudflare's simplicity and cost-effectiveness make it appealing for small to medium-sized businesses.

Features: Akamai offers advanced features such as extensive security options, global load balancing, and a broad range of functionalities. Cloudflare focuses on ease of use with auto-optimizing site tools, integrated DNS services, and flexible SSL certificates.

Room for Improvement: Akamai could improve its deployment complexity, offer more user-friendly tools, and reduce costs for smaller clients. Cloudflare might enhance DDoS protection for large-scale attacks, provide more in-depth analytics, and expand its feature set to match enterprise-level needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Akamai's complex deployment process often requires dedicated IT staff, while Cloudflare offers seamless setup with intuitive guidance. Akamai provides a structured support system, but Cloudflare's user-friendly approach may result in quicker problem resolution.

Pricing and ROI: Akamai requires a higher initial investment, offering significant returns for large-scale operations. Cloudflare's competitive pricing and lower initial setup costs provide an attractive ROI for businesses focusing on budget management. Akamai's pricing reflects its comprehensive offerings, whereas Cloudflare's affordability appeals to smaller enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Cloudflare

January 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

Akamai

Ranking in CDN

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Cloudflare

Ranking in CDN

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 16.3%, up from 16.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.6%, up from 21.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN

Featured Reviews

XYX ABC

Product Manager at Infozion

Offers great enterprise support, ideal for solutions requiring high scalability and seamless integration with AWS infrastructure

For Akamai, it is definitely one of the best tools out there. However, there are challenges with how their approach is designed for large enterprises. While it's great for solutions with high scalability, like global e-commerce, it's not really built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It has too many options and can be complex for SMBs to utilize. That's the biggest challenge we faced when migrating to Akamai from other solutions, like Cloudflare. It can be difficult to migrate between platforms. Due to its great features but high activation thresholds. So, while it's a powerful tool, it has limitations for some implementations. It was difficult to migrate from and to Akamai. It is challenging when we are building a website.

Read full review

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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 solution's technical support is very prompt and good."

"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."

"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."

"The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively."

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

"Akamai's scalability is good."

"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 is very sustainable and flexible."

More Akamai 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."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"It's very user-friendly."

More Cloudflare pros

Cons

"I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."

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

"While it's great for solutions with high scalability, like global e-commerce, it's not really built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It has too many options and can be complex for SMBs to utilize."

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

"Akamai could improve by providing its own cloud services. We have to use third-party cloud services at this time, such as Amazon AWS. The offering becomes a lot easier for an SMB if everything was in one single platform to be used for the services."

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

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

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

More Akamai cons

"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."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

More Cloudflare cons

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."

"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 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."

"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."

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

"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."

More Akamai pricing and cost advice

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"We are using the free version."

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

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

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

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"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."

More Cloudflare 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

Educational Organization

28%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Akamai?

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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Akamai?

The purpose is to use Akamai as a CDN solution to distribute all the static content we have on our website and all the static pages worldwide. We have about 50 branches around the world, and this e...

See all answers

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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...

See all answers

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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...

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

Comparisons

Azure Front Door vs Akamai

Compared 23% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Akamai

Compared 15% of the time

Fastly vs Akamai

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon CloudFront vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Global Accelerator vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

More Akamai Competitors

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai

February 2025

Download Akamai product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

February 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Also Known As

No data available

Cloudflare DNS

Overview

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

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“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. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“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.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

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

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Buyer's Guide

Akamai vs. Cloudflare

January 2025

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