Arbor DDoS vs Prolexic comparison

NETSCOUT and Akamai are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. NETSCOUT is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.1, while Akamai is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.0. NETSCOUT holds a 7.2% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Akamai’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of NETSCOUT users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Akamai users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

In the field of DDoS protection, Prolexic and Arbor DDoS are competing solutions. Arbor DDoS is viewed as superior due to comprehensive features, whereas Prolexic leads in pricing and customer support.

Features: Prolexic offers real-time monitoring, a robust global infrastructure, and advanced threat intelligence. Arbor DDoS provides comprehensive analytics, automated defense mechanisms, and superior integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Prolexic could improve its analytics capabilities and deployment flexibility and expand its integration options. Arbor DDoS might enhance its pricing competitiveness, simplify its deployment process, and improve user interface intuitiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prolexic features easy deployment with strong customer support. Arbor DDoS offers a flexible model that adapts to various network architectures and provides tailored deployment solutions for diverse environments.

Pricing and ROI: Prolexic presents competitive setup costs with significant ROI due to efficient threat mitigation. Arbor DDoS has a higher initial investment but provides considerable ROI based on expansive features, making the choice reliant on budget and organizational priorities.

To learn more, read our detailed Arbor DDoS vs. Prolexic Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS vs. Prolexic

April 2026

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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 May 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 14.0%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Arbor DDoS is 7.2%, down from 13.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 2.6%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Arbor DDoS	7.2%
Cloudflare	14.0%
Prolexic	2.6%
Other	76.2%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Q&A Highlights

it_user553896

Works at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Jan 13, 2017

Prolexic vs. Arbor Networks: How do they compare?

Both Prolexic and Arbor are OK solutions. Both have a very limited number of PoPs (Only 4-6 global locations, adds significant latency) and both have trouble reacting to attacks quickly and automatically (without human intervention). Also both will have trouble handling Application layer attacks over TLS. Arbor will also requires on-premise equipment which is a lot of hassle and doesn't scale. I would highly recommend checking out Impreva Incapsula, which is a more modern solution that's more equipped to deliver a premium service (at reasonable prices). Disclosure: I work for Imperva.

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Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

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.

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Sanjin Zuhric

Team Lead Network Engineer at Artco Group d.o.o Sarajevo

Reliable protection ensures robust network defense and simplifies DDoS management

I am not sure if we plan to use additional features because we have many vendors and platforms that we support. We use the main function and that is it. The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss that prices are very high. A potential improvement could be establishing a contract with Cisco to sell via their channel. This could be beneficial because we work extensively with Cisco. If you are a Cisco partner, you can sell Arbor DDoS. That would be good for customers that are Cisco-based because many customers in Bosnia are Cisco-based customers. BH Telecom, our main customer, sells Arbor DDoS to other customers for protection. They buy Arbor and sell the product services to others via Internet links. They sell add-on DDoS protection via Arbor DDoS. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Arbor DDoS is not present in many customers. Some customers try to sell it, but they sell other vendors such as F5. Arbor DDoS is mainly seen in telecom operators but not much in other customers.

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Gavin Pinho

Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Has faced challenges with bot detection while benefiting from strong threat monitoring and compliance support

Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance. We utilize the real-time monitoring of the solution. Real-time monitoring helps us identify network vulnerabilities by allowing us to see a spike in traffic and understand the traffic levels compared to this time last month or last week. If we notice a sudden increase, we investigate further to determine if it indicates a DDoS attack or a card testing situation. In terms of threat detection capabilities, they are very good because Akamai has a SOC service that we have tapped into for active threat detection and threat hunting, and they monitor everything carefully 24/7. Scrubbing is done by Akamai as a backend service, and we utilize their SOC, which is a service that you pay additional fees for, allowing us to have our queries prioritized. Prolexic features help maintain business continuity during high-volume attacks by having built-in threat detection capabilities in its bot detection and other functionalities, as attacks usually occur through intelligent bots trying to infiltrate the system.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If it was not for CloudFlare, I would have to hire a dedicated resource to manage all this for me."

"I didn’t have to pay anything for better website security and reduced server load."

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

"The API gives us the ability to remote control our DNS settings."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

"If you don't want to spend too much time hosting your own DNS server or managing the domain, Cloudflare is a great way to rapidly get websites and services online."

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

More Cloudflare pros

"We found what we wanted in Arbor DDoS; it met our expectations as IT users of different types of complex environments and fit our needs."

"Reporting is quite good. There are several pages of reporting on DDoS attacks, and you can find all the details that you need."

"Arbor DDoS's best feature is that we can put the certificates in, and it will look at layer seven and the encrypted traffic and do the required signaling."

"The analytics part of Arbor DDoS is great, and we are satisfied with the reporting and analytics part, especially the new version."

"It improves our organization by preventing attacks and improving the availability of the network on services, which provides a better service to customers."

"We used Arbor DDoS to mitigate these attacks, and it performed great."

"I have a lot of experience with the technical support for multiple vendors (HPE, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Imperva, etc.) and the Arbor support is really good; usually, they respond with the workaround for your issue."

"Arbor DDoS offers security features that automatically detect and prevent DDoS attacks."

More Arbor DDoS pros

"Prolexic technical support is second to none."

"The support from Akamai is great, and they provide excellent information and mitigation services."

"Akamai's most valuable features include being industry recognized and PCI compliant, which is really great; their cloud is PCI compliant, and having a vendor that is PCI certified is crucial for organizations focused on PCI compliance."

"The solution does not have hardware or maintenance requirements and is very easy to scale."

"They've scrubbed DDoS traffic that was blasting us offline, thus allowing legitimate traffic through and letting our service return online."

Cons

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"The product needs to improve its automation."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"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."

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

"I think they have failed with their technical support."

"Several features that I think is essential is not available in the free and business package."

More Cloudflare cons

"Their RESTful API is still a work-in-progress."

"If we want to see live traffic, we can see do so. But once an attack that lasts for five minutes is done, the data is no longer there. It would be an improvement if we could see recent traffic in the dashboard. We can check and download live traffic, but a past attack, with all the details, such as why it happened and how to mitigate and prevent such future attacks, would be helpful to see."

"Arbor DDoS could improve out-of-the-box reporting, it could be better."

"It could include a lot of enhancements related to AI and automation."

"Sometimes it blocks legitimate traffic. If a legitimate user is trying to access the server continuously, the product suspects that this is a DoS traffic file."

"I think the diversity of protection is extremely limited. It must be expanded in future upgrades and versions."

"Arbor Pravail APS devices do not sync features or config the backup enough. This needs to be improved."

"There is some room for AI to take place."

More Arbor DDoS cons

"The reports provided don’t give detailed information about DDoS mitigations, bandwidth utilization, etc."

"It's expensive, though."

"In bot management, there are times when attackers find ways to bypass Akamai, which is a continuously evolving challenge."

"The web portal for checking status and traffic needs improvements."

"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"A free version of the solution is available."

"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 product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

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

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"I don't deal with the pricing, but it seems that you need to get basic support in order to upgrade the software and implement some patches."

"As far as I know, they are the best in this sector, in DDoS protection. They know it, I know, because their service prices are too high. They provide cloud DDoS protection for ISPs, but that is also too expensive."

"Regarding pricing, I would rate it as average. Arbor DDoS offers good value for money with our DDoS filter device. For higher protection needs, Arbor’s CloudMeter’s DDoS mitigation or hardware devices might be more expensive, but customers who need them are usually prepared for the cost and the additional resources required."

"I believe that the price of Arbor DDoS falls under the bracket of medium to high price."

"There is room for improvement with the pricing. It is an expensive solution. The issue with the pricing is more the way it is built. Right now we're paying per router, and there's a limitation there. I would like to see bundle-pricing where there is an overall solution cost."

"The price of Arbor DDoS depends on many parameters. It depends on the physical capacity of the environment, and it is not a straight-line price. It's fairly competitive in the market on the price."

"We do not use the Arbor Cloud DDoS solution because it is too costly."

"The price is a little high."

More Arbor DDoS pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is a pay-as-you-go model that is charged by the hour."

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Answers from the Community

it_user553896

Works at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Jan 13, 2017

Prolexic vs. Arbor Networks: How do they compare?

2 out of 11 answers

it_user411600

Works

Dec 14, 2016

Hi Dennis, Will you reply to the underneath please. Rgds, Arthur

Read full answer

it_user476130

Works with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 14, 2016

Hi, I would suggest looking at Radware and their solutions as they provide solutions in this space. This includes Cloud WAF, Always-on Cloud DDoS Protection, On-Demand Cloud DDoS Protection and Hybrid Cloud DDoS Protection consisting of both On-Premise mitigation and On-Demand Cloud DDoS. Prolexic – use Radware Attack Mitigation Solutions as part of their DDoS Mitigation solution. This same Attack Mitigation solution is OEM’d by both Checkpoint – Checkpoint DDoS Protector, and Cisco – integrated into the Cisco Firepower 9300 and 41xx Platforms. Note – I am a Radware employee. Thanks Dean,

Read full answer

See all 11 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Comms Service Provider

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Comms Service Provider

16%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	29

No data available

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...

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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...

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other soluti...

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arbor DDoS?

The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss...

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What needs improvement with Akamai Prolexic Routed?

For the DDoS protection, I don't see any areas for improvement because they are pretty solid there, though in bot man...

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What is your primary use case for Akamai Prolexic Routed?

The main use case for DDoS protection is to mitigate risks, and there are multiple ways Akamai provides DDoS protecti...

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What advice do you have for others considering Akamai Prolexic Routed?

We have a couple of products, including DDoS protection, WAF, and Bot Manager. There are two ways Akamai does DDoS pr...

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Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 39% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Wiz vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

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Radware DDoS vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 13% of the time

Corero vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 7% of the time

Fortinet FortiDDoS vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 5% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 5% of the time

A10 Thunder TPS vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 5% of the time

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Akamai App and API Protector vs Prolexic

Compared 17% of the time

StackPath DDoS Protection vs Prolexic

Compared 9% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare One vs Prolexic

Compared 8% of the time

Azure DDoS Protection vs Prolexic

Compared 6% of the time

More Prolexic Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS

May 2026

Download Arbor DDoS product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

April 2026

Download Prolexic product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Arbor Networks SP, Arbor Networks TMS, Arbor Cloud for ENT

Akamai Prolexic Routed

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

Arbor DDoS offers a comprehensive defense system against DDoS attacks, integrating a user-friendly GUI and advanced threat mitigation technologies for enhanced network protection.

Arbor DDoS is recognized for its ability to manage high-volume DDoS attacks efficiently, providing extensive protection through real-time traffic analysis and automated threat detection. It utilizes advanced techniques such as blackhole and BGP Flowspec for effective threat management. Arbor's cloud signaling allows users to handle and mitigate volumetric attacks while maintaining service availability. Though it provides robust security features, users note potential improvements in auto-mitigation, scalability, and AI integration. Challenges like an outdated graphical interface, hardware stability, and false positives need addressing to further enhance its usability and integration with third-party systems.

What are the key features of Arbor DDoS?

User-Friendly GUI: Provides an intuitive interface for ease of use.
Effective Mitigation: Combats high-volume DDoS attacks effectively.
Predefined Filters: Simplifies threat management with pre-configured settings.
Real-Time Traffic Analysis: Offers insights into traffic patterns and potential threats.
Automated Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats without manual intervention.
Able to Handle High-Volume Attacks: Ensures extensive protection even under large-scale attacks.
Packet Capture and Integration: Facilitates comprehensive security analysis.
Cloud Signaling: Enhances attack traffic management through hybrid deployments.

What benefits should users expect from Arbor DDoS?

Enhanced Protection: Safeguards networks from diverse DDoS threats.
Improved Service Availability: Maintains business operations without disruptions.
Timely Reporting: Delivers detailed attack reports for proactive prevention.
AI Capabilities: Leverages AI for smarter threat mitigation strategies.
Comprehensive Security: Combines on-premise and cloud deployments for optimal defense.

Internet service providers and telecom companies commonly adopt Arbor DDoS to protect their networks and infrastructure from DDoS attacks. It is also implemented in financial and government sectors to ensure web application security and maintain high availability. Arbor DDoS supports a hybrid approach, utilizing both on-premise and cloud solutions to manage traffic efficiently and sustain service quality during attacks.

NETSCOUT

Prolexic provides industry-leading DDoS protection, ensuring businesses maintain secure and uninterrupted connectivity. It offers robust defense mechanisms designed to mitigate cyber threats effectively, allowing enterprises to focus on their core operations with confidence.

Prolexic delivers a comprehensive suite of defenses against distributed denial-of-service attacks. Leveraging a global network, it quickly mitigates threats before they affect your networks. The rapid integration and real-time threat analytics facilitate swift, intelligent responses to protect infrastructure from both sophisticated and high-volume attacks. With an emphasis on scalability and reliability, Prolexic addresses the security demands of modern enterprises, minimizing downtime and potential revenue loss.

What are the key features of Prolexic?

Global Threat Intelligence: Provides up-to-date insights into emerging threats.
Customizable Protection: Offers tailored configurations to meet specific needs.
24/7 Monitoring: Ensures constant vigilance and rapid response to incidents.
Traffic Scrubbing: Filters malicious traffic while allowing legitimate traffic through.
Real-Time Reporting: Delivers actionable insights on threat activity and trends.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Reduced Downtime: Minimizes disruptions to maintain productivity and service delivery.
Enhanced Security: Strengthens defenses against cyber threats to protect critical assets.
Cost Efficiency: Lowers potential financial impact of attacks by preventing service outages.
Scalability: Adapts to the evolving needs of growing businesses, ensuring continuous protection.
Ease of Integration: Seamlessly fits into existing networks to streamline implementation.

In industries like finance and e-commerce, Prolexic is crucial due to high threat levels. Financial services leverage its protection to secure sensitive data and ensure transaction integrity, while e-commerce platforms benefit from uninterrupted service during traffic peaks, preserving user experience and transaction volumes.

Akamai

Sample Customers

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

Xtel Communications

Fidor Bank

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS vs. Prolexic

April 2026

Free Report: Arbor DDoS vs. Prolexic

Find out what your peers are saying about Arbor DDoS vs. Prolexic and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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