AWS Shield vs Cloudflare comparison

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AWS Shield

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Cloudflare and AWS Shield compete in the security and content delivery network category. Cloudflare appears to have the upper hand with its emphasis on speed improvements and aggressive caching as well as its flexibility and customization capabilities through SSL and page rules, making it an attractive option for web performance optimization and security.

Features: Cloudflare's CDN speed improvements, aggressive caching, and flexible SSL offer enhanced security and performance. Its page rules and website analytics provide valuable customization and insights. AWS Shield excels in robust DDoS protection, focusing on application layer security. Its comprehensive WAF integration and targeted protection against advanced threats are notable.

Room for Improvement: Cloudflare users see room for improvement in analytics precision, CDN speed, and customer support responsiveness. Improved DNS management and multi-user support are desirable, along with more transparent pricing. AWS Shield could benefit from advanced attack detection and richer security analytics. Access to advanced features in the Standard version and cost reductions are suggested.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloudflare's flexible deployment across public and private clouds is praised for its easy setup and global reach, although technical support may lag. AWS Shield is optimized for public cloud, with strong reviews for its knowledgeable support and clear documentation, though premium support can be expensive.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudflare offers a free-to-premium pricing model ideal for small and medium businesses, enhancing ROI with value-driven services. AWS Shield's pricing depends on scope and usage, with higher costs justified by focused DDoS protection for high-traffic applications, offering distinct benefits based on business scale.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: December 2025).

AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare

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Helped 879,259 peers since 2012

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

AWS Shield

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Cloudflare

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of AWS Shield is 5.2%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 17.8%, up from 17.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cloudflare	17.8%
AWS Shield	5.2%
Other	77.0%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

PranavTelang

Lead Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Has enabled multi-layered threat mitigation but still lacks deeper visibility for advanced application attacks

AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods. It does not provide inherent protection against more sophisticated layer 7 attacks such as HTTP floods. In such cases, integration with WAF is necessary, which results in additional costs for customers. To protect layer 7, layer 4, and layer 3, customers must implement both solutions. The service also has difficulties with static detection thresholds, which may not be sensitive enough to detect smaller application-specific attacks. While AWS Shield is a key security service, AWS should enhance their expert support with 24/7 response for complex attacks, which is currently limited.

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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

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."

"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

"AWS Shield offers numerous protection features that are crucial at the application layer, safeguarding users from distributed denial of service attacks, man-in-the-middle assaults, and hacker orchestrations."

"The product is easy to use."

"I recommend AWS Shield because it has proven helpful in tracking DDoS attacks within both my past and present environments, and without AWS Shield, a business could face potential losses, as this tool helps in identifying and mitigating fake traffic that disrupts applications, ultimately supporting business continuity."

"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."

"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."

More AWS Shield pros

"Cloudflare has many features."

"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

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

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

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

"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."

"The UI is good."

More Cloudflare pros

Cons

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."

"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."

"The network has been experiencing frustrating performance issues today, which is not typical for Nigeria."

"The product is expensive."

"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

"AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."

"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."

More AWS Shield cons

"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."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

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

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

"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."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

More Cloudflare cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."

"The tool is cheap."

"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

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

"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."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"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."

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

"A free version of the solution is available."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The price is reasonable."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.

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879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

12%

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	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	7

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

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Shield?

We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, whi...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?

The pricing structure for AWS Shield is fair, yet it depends on the specific protections chosen. Enabling Shield Advanced on multiple services such as CloudFront, network load balancer, or Route 53...

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

Services always benefit from improvements, including AWS Shield. With respect to the Web Application Firewall, current rule-based setups may not be adequately defined or classified. Enhancement of ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Comparisons

Compared 21% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 16% of the time

Prolexic vs AWS Shield

Compared 6% of the time

Radware DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 6% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

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Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 52% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% 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

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

AWS Shield

Download AWS Shield product report

Download Cloudflare product report

Also Known As

No data available

Cloudflare DNS

Overview

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.

Sample Customers

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code

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

AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare