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: September 2025).

AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare

September 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

AWS Shield

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

8th

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), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of AWS Shield is 5.4%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.3%, up from 17.5% 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	18.3%
AWS Shield	5.4%
Other	76.3%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Ifeanyi Stanly Nwokoro

Professor at Southwestern University, Nigeria

Has ensured ongoing protection against cyber threats and provides timely automated response while requiring improvements in cost structure and performance transparency

Business inherently involves risk, and it's important that services continue to improve. AWS Shield is not an exception. Regarding advanced Shield protection pricing, there should be cost protection for most DDoS events. The pricing model should be based on service usage rather than a flat monthly rate. The advanced technique package, while premium and not available to every user due to cost implications of $3,000 per month, offers valuable features including real-time attack visibility and 24/7 access to the DDoS response team. Integration is paramount, particularly with the Web Application Firewall's rule-based blocking paradigm that helps in balancing routes, especially route 53 and the global accelerator. AWS Shield uses pattern recognition to analyze traffic, and certain attributes are immediately intercepted. The assessment process is profound, and the service maintains consistent availability. From a software perspective, there are improvements needed regarding antivirus and network security. Additional engineering improvement requirements would benefit AWS Shield.

Read full review

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients

It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on 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

"AWS Shield is aligned with the web application firewall (WAF), and they work seamlessly together, primarily working with Elastic Load Balancer, CloudFront, and Route 53 for CDN and DNS services protection."

"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."

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

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

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

"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, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."

"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."

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

More AWS Shield pros

"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."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"The technical support is good."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

Cons

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

"The product is expensive."

"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."

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

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

"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

"There is an area for improvement regarding health checks. AWS Shield does not come with its own health check functionality."

"AWS Shield Standard requires improvement, particularly regarding its dashboard since it currently provides limited coverage against comprehensive DDoS attacks."

More AWS Shield cons

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

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

"DNS Management."

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

"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."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

More Cloudflare cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cheap."

"The tool's pricing is good."

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

"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."

"We pay $3000 per month for 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."

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

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"We are using the free version."

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

"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."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

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

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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Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

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 22% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 18% of the time

Prolexic vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 53% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Product Reports

Download AWS Shield product report

AWS Shield

November 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

November 2025

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 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

Sample Customers

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

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