Azure DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare One comparison

Microsoft and Cloudflare are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Microsoft is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3, while Cloudflare is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7. Microsoft holds a 4.1% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Cloudflare’s 4.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cloudflare users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 12, 2024

Azure DDoS Protection and Cloudflare One are protection solutions in the cloud security category. Cloudflare One appears to have the advantage with a more comprehensive feature set, encompassing broader security capabilities than Azure DDoS Protection.

Features: Azure DDoS Protection provides integrated DDoS monitoring, adaptive real-time tuning, and extensive analytics designed for seamless scalability with Azure services. Cloudflare One offers a robust feature set with DDoS protection, Zero Trust Network Access, and a Secure Web Gateway, delivering an all-encompassing security solution. Cloudflare One is regarded as more feature-rich due to its expansive security functionalities beyond DDoS.

Room for Improvement: Azure DDoS Protection could enhance its compatibility with non-Azure services and improve its cost-effectiveness for smaller enterprises. More flexible pricing options might increase its appeal. Cloudflare One may benefit from refining customization options for specific security configurations and expanding support for complex network architectures. Offering reduced setup costs might make Cloudflare One more accessible to smaller organizations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure DDoS Protection benefits from smooth integration with Azure environments and existing customer support channels. However, Cloudflare One is distinguishable by its straightforward deployment across various platforms and responsive customer service. Cloudflare's agility in deployment suits diverse environments, while Azure offers streamlined incorporation into Azure-native systems.

Pricing and ROI: Azure DDoS Protection is priced competitively, offering value for businesses within the Azure ecosystem due to its predictable ROI. Cloudflare One incurs higher initial costs due to its extensive features, yet provides superior ROI attributed to its broad security coverage. Many users perceive Cloudflare's comprehensive suite as having a better return on investment given its wide-ranging protection.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure DDoS Protection vs. Cloudflare One Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure DDoS Protection 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

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.8%, down from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure DDoS Protection is 4.1%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare One is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Venkat Raju Mallipudi

Group Chief of Enterprise Architecture & S/W Engineering/ CTO at Aventra Group

Acts as an additional layer of protection, provides endpoint security but not very easy to configure

It's not very easy to configure, in my view. We have to do some work behind the scenes. It's not very simple. We have to do it very carefully, and we need to monitor this enablement as well. But apart from that, I didn't see any kind of challenges. So, in my opinion, configuration is the main trouble for them. It is something that can be done to be better. Not just configuration. You need an expert who knows the ins and outs of these security solutions. In my experience, people struggle with configuration. While configuring, we get this error, we get that error, and then we try to fix those issues. I have seen those. It's not straightforward.

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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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

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

"The technical support is good."

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

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

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

"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 DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

More Cloudflare pros

"AI capabilities are very good. I would rate them an eight out of ten."

"Azure DDoS Protection offers superior protection against denial-of-service attacks."

"This solution is the best option for us because we use a lot of Microsoft products. So, it is easy for us to deploy or integrate any features or products."

"The most valuable feature of Azure DDoS Protection is that it performs well."

"DDoS Protection is simple to deploy and integrates seamlessly with the Azure environment. Ease of deployment is a crucial feature for us."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform removes the risk of exposing the applications to the public."

"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."

"The blocking feature is very good."

"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."

"Cloudflare is by far the most effective solution that I have come across."

"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."

"This solution is easy to understand and easy to configure."

"It is a stable solution."

More Cloudflare One pros

Cons

"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."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

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

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

"DNS Management."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"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."

More Cloudflare cons

"The implementation of Azure DDoS Protection results in a decrease in our bandwidth capacity and should be optimized to reduce resource consumption."

"Azure DDoS Protection could improve on the reporting."

"Sometimes, it is hard for our staff to keep track of changes (in the GUI) between different projects, because there are constant changes. As a result, it is hard to manage, recall, and see all the features because they have been moved from one place to another."

"It's not very easy to configure, in my view."

"The visibility could be better. We would like to have better metrics, so we could see all the information in a central place."

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

"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."

"Lacks a VPN feature to provide a secure connection to the data center."

"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."

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

"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."

"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."

"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."

More Cloudflare One cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"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."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"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 price is reasonable."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"It is an expensive solution."

"You can test it for a certain period of time free of charge. You can have a free account. You can test it to compare its pros and cons with other products that you are testing."

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

"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 solution is not that expensive."

"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

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

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...

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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...

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 Azure DDoS Protection?

Azure DDoS Protection offers superior protection against denial-of-service attacks.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure DDoS Protection?

It is an expensive solution. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is a cheap solution and ten is an...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure DDoS Protection?

It's not very easy to configure, in my view. We have to do some work behind the scenes. It's not very simple. We have...

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 49% 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

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

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AWS Shield vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 26% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 8% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 7% of the time

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Twingate vs Cloudflare One

Compared 12% of the time

AWS Shield vs Cloudflare One

Compared 8% 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

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Azure DDoS Protection

January 2025

Download Azure DDoS Protection 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

Microsoft

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

Azure DDoS Protection, combined with application design best practices, provides defense against DDoS attacks.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

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.

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Buyer's Guide

Azure DDoS Protection vs. Cloudflare One

January 2025

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