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Azure DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Azure DDoS Protection offers cost-effective security for public IPs, benefiting users with ROI despite varying enterprise costs.
Sentiment score
6.1
Cloudflare improves performance, security, and financial outcomes with affordable plans, enhancing user satisfaction and operational efficiency significantly.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
Owner at Hga consulting
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Educational institutions commend Azure DDoS Protection's swift support, while others experience slower response times affecting satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.9
Cloudflare's customer service is praised for promptness, but technical support feedback varies, especially favoring Enterprise tier users.
The response time is very slow, especially when multiple teams are required to collaborate on a case.
Cloud Architect at Vision Bank
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
Owner at Hga consulting
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
General Manager at bKash Limited
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Azure DDoS Protection excels in scalability and reliability, ideal for large enterprises, enhancing security in extensive environments.
Sentiment score
7.9
Users praise Cloudflare's scalability, flexibility, and seamless tier transitions for maintaining high performance under increasing traffic and demands.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Azure DDoS Protection is highly stable, rated 8/10, with minimal configuration issues and no downtime or false positives reported.
Sentiment score
7.5
Cloudflare is generally stable and reliable, with some initial setup challenges but excellent performance and positive user feedback.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
 

Room For Improvement

Azure DDoS Protection requires improved interface consistency, reporting, configuration simplicity, bandwidth optimization, enhanced services, and AI-driven auto-remediation.
Cloudflare needs enhancements in speed, support, reliability, pricing, and documentation, while expanding integration, security, and analytics capabilities.
It would be beneficial to have more detailed insights available directly on the dashboard.
Cloud Architect at Vision Bank
I have noticed some false positives with the Web Application Firewall yet not with DDoS Protection.
Azure Consultant at cloudshift
I suggest adding more services and additional services, which would be beneficial.
Senior Manager at Ernst & Young
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group
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.
General Manager at bKash Limited
Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
 

Setup Cost

Azure DDoS Protection offers expensive but comprehensive protection with trial, special pricing for education, and no extra fees for some uses.
Enterprise users find Cloudflare cost-effective, with valuable upgrades and competitive pricing, despite unclear enterprise price lists.
If used with Front Door or Web Application Firewall, DDoS Protection is included without additional cost.
Azure Consultant at cloudshift
The pricing is somewhat costly, usually around $3,000 to $4,000 per month.
Cloud Architect at Vision Bank
Compared to competitors, it is good.
Senior Manager at Ernst & Young
I find it to be cheap.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Azure DDoS Protection offers seamless integration, robust security, and scalability, despite higher costs, providing significant ROI for vulnerable environments.
Cloudflare provides caching, DDoS protection, and CDN services with enhanced security features, making it vital for optimized web performance.
The security architecture with Azure DDoS Protection is critical for safeguarding our financial organization's infrastructure.
Cloud Architect at Vision Bank
The ability to do research and development quickly without waiting for infrastructure is a plus.
Senior Manager at Ernst & Young
The integration of various tools with Azure Firewall, like DDoS Protection, Web Application Firewall, and Azure Front Door, is quite effective.
Azure Consultant at cloudshift
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure DDoS Protection
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (27th)
Cloudflare
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Azure DDoS Protection is 3.1%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 16.7%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare16.7%
Azure DDoS Protection3.1%
Other80.2%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Dinesh Jaisankar - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at Vision Bank
Security architecture shields infrastructure but dashboard needs enhancement
The Azure DDoS Protection plan is essential for environments like ours that are highly exposed to potential attacks, especially since DDoS attacks have become common. The security architecture with Azure DDoS Protection is critical for safeguarding our financial organization's infrastructure. Although implementing it is pricier, it is worth using since our applications are entirely in Azure.
M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
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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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 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure DDoS Protection?
The pricing is somewhat costly, usually around $3,000 to $4,000 per month. Managing this expense is tough, especially since we haven't received everything we need for our capital expenditure manage...
What needs improvement with Azure DDoS Protection?
The dashboard lacks insights and user-friendliness, as most data is logged into metrics like Log Analytics workspaces. It would be beneficial to have more detailed insights available directly on th...
What is your primary use case for Azure DDoS Protection?
We are a bank with Internet banking and corporate banking portals, which exposes multiple applications externally. These exposed applications come under the Azure DDoS Protection plan, integrated w...
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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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