AWS Shield vs Cloudflare One comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Cloudflare are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.8, while Cloudflare is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cloudflare users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 12, 2024

Cloudflare One and AWS Shield compete in the network security and performance category. Cloudflare One has the upper hand in supporting multi-cloud environments due to its broader applicability and competitive pricing, while AWS Shield excels in AWS ecosystem integration and advanced protection features.

Features: Cloudflare One offers zero-trust security, integrated threat intelligence, and seamless performance optimization. AWS Shield provides advanced DDoS mitigation, automatic scaling, and deep AWS service integration.

Room for Improvement: Cloudflare One could improve AWS-specific integration, more advanced threat detection capabilities, and further customization options for enterprise needs. AWS Shield may benefit from enhanced multi-cloud support, more predictable pricing models, and expanded features beyond DDoS protection.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Shield integrates effortlessly with AWS services but may require AWS expertise. Cloudflare One simplifies deployment across multiple platforms and offers strong customer support suitable for multi-cloud strategies.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudflare One offers affordable setup costs and high ROI, appealing for cost-effective solutions. AWS Shield's pricing is higher due to specialized features but offers justified ROI for companies heavily utilizing AWS-centric security.

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare One

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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

General Manager at bKash Limited

A large network of servers that can improve the security, performance, and reliability of anything connected to the Internet

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.

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SteveNg

Head of Strategic Alliances at Quantum Security

The solution automatically scales according to traffic, only takes minutes to deploy, and is maintenance-free

Ultimately, the cost of the solution goes up as we add features, but I believe over time AWS has been adding more frequently asked features. Depending on the website, if our website has more transactions, more sensitive information, and more value, then, of course, we need more features. For us, we only require basic information, a website, some custom consumer, end user, and front-facing purposes. We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need. The pricing of the solution can be improved.

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Leandro Soares Costa

Coordinator of the Architecture Security Team at TOTVS

Replaces traditional VPN and enables endpoint exposition

It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it.

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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

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."

"Cloudflare has many features."

"It's very user-friendly."

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

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

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

"The technical support is good."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

More Cloudflare pros

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

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

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

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

"The product is easy to use."

"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."

"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."

"Enables me to work from two locations."

"The simplicity of the solution is its valuable features as almost no effort was needed to learn the configurations. It is also one of the cheapest firewalls available in this category."

"It is a stable solution."

"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."

"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."

"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."

"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."

More Cloudflare One pros

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 pricing could be improved."

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

"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."

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

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

"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."

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

More Cloudflare cons

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

"The time taken to detect anomalies must 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."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."

"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."

"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."

"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."

"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."

"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."

"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."

"The response time for support must be reduced."

More Cloudflare One cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"A free version of the solution is available."

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

"We are using the free version."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

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

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

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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

"The tool is cheap."

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

"The tool's pricing is good."

"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"The solution is not that expensive."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."

"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."

"The prices are slightly expensive."

"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

16%

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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...

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

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 de...

See all answers

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

The tool is cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced. The tool has a few parameters based on which it tries to understa...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare Access?

The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Access?

The price of Cloudflare Access is the same as compared to Akamai, but I get better performance from Cloudflare. My co...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?

Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 48% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Infoblox DDI vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

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Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Compared 25% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

Fortinet FortiDDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Twingate vs Cloudflare One

Compared 12% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cloudflare One

Compared 8% of the time

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 6% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 4% of the time

Prolexic vs Cloudflare One

Compared 4% of the time

More Cloudflare One Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

January 2025

Download AWS Shield product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One

January 2025

Download Cloudflare One product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform

Learn More

Cloudflare

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Cloudflare

Overview

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

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.

Cloudflare One is a single-vendor Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that enables Zero Trust security and any-to-any connectivity across enterprise applications, users, devices, and networks. Cloudflare One helps organizations simplify, modernize, and consolidate their IT architecture by converging security and networking services on our single global network and control plane.

Many organizations start by adopting our Security Service Edge (SSE) services — like ZTNA, SWG, CASB, and DLP — to reduce their attack surface, stop threats like phishing and ransomware, protect data, and apply identity-based Zero Trust verification across web, SaaS, and private app environments. Others prioritize simplifying network connectivity across offices, data centers, and cloud environments with our WANaaS.

Every service is available for customers to run in every location across Cloudflare’s global network, which today spans 330+ cities in 120+ countries, so you can scale connectivity with fast, consistent protections everywhere.

Sample Customers

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

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

23andMe

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare One

January 2025

Free Report: AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare One

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare One and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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