A10 Thunder TPS vs AWS Shield comparison

A10 Networks and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. A10 Networks is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.3. A10 Networks holds a 2.0% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Amazon Web Services (AWS)’s 6.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of A10 Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

A10 Thunder TPS and AWS Shield compete in network security. A10 Thunder TPS stands out for comprehensive protection and strong pricing and support ratings, whereas AWS Shield is noted for a robust feature set, offering attractive value in its integration with AWS services.

Features: A10 Thunder TPS is valued for advanced traffic monitoring, DDoS protection, and flexible integration capabilities. AWS Shield offers seamless integration with AWS, scalable protection, and automated traffic analysis. AWS Shield's integration capability is a highlight, whereas A10 Thunder TPS is renowned for its flexibility.

Room for Improvement: A10 Thunder TPS could improve by broadening its integration with more cloud services, refining its user interface, and enhancing automated configuration options. AWS Shield could reduce configuration efforts for non-AWS deployments, enhance real-time attack visibility, and streamline multi-cloud integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: A10 Thunder TPS is praised for efficient deployment and responsive support, making setup straightforward. AWS Shield, integrated with AWS, offers streamlined deployment for AWS users but may require more configuration for non-AWS services. A10 is recognized for supportive customer service, while AWS Shield benefits from AWS's broader support infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: A10 Thunder TPS offers competitive setup costs and strong ROI with adaptable pricing models. AWS Shield has higher costs associated with premium service, justified by extensive AWS integration, appealing to those heavily invested in AWS. A10's cost-effectiveness offers a notable advantage in ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield

July 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 August 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.7%, up from 18.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of A10 Thunder TPS is 2.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 6.4%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

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

David Mello

Technology manager at Folha de S. Paolo

A highly stable solution that can be used for load balancing

We contacted the solution's technical support to maintain and exchange the power supply. A few versions ago, we had some CPU and memory problems. We just started the appliance, and it was already on 70% of CPU usage. We first contacted our reseller in Brazil and then escalated the issue to A10 Thunder TPS support. The reseller in Brazil was a little slow, but the A10 Thunder TPS support was fast.

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Manikandan-R

Senior Project Manager at Synopsys Inc

Solution provides essential protection with good support and a simple setup

I have noticed a pattern developing in approximately five minutes. If it were possible to provide these patterns with historical data spanning six months, three months, or two months directly from the console, it would be extremely beneficial. It would allow for easy inquiries and facilitate the retrieval of relevant parts without having to manually check logs or examine movements. Instead, if all historical data were available, I could consult six months' worth of identified patterns efficiently through AWS without relying on external sources. This solution is particularly suitable for startups or medium-sized startups. I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.

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

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

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

"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."

"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."

"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."

"The technical support is good."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"It's very user-friendly."

More Cloudflare pros

"The GUI is very use-friendly. You can configure it through CLI or GUI, they give you an option to choose. It's a good solution in terms of the appliance itself. It's very light compared to other brands that offer DDoS solutions."

"The most valuable feature of A10 Thunder TPS is load balancing."

"The solution is easy to use and implement in terms of operations."

"The primary benefit that we see from their systems is that their filtering technology has the ability to detect and drop the malicious traffic from the legitimate traffic with a high success rate. That, in combination with the very small effort needed to manage their systems, are the two most important benefits to us."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The response time to an attack is instant. We've used some outsourced solutions in the past, out in the cloud, that weren't so quick. But it's all within our control now. We control how fast it mitigates."

"We can keep track of all the customer's requirements. We can forecast our trails and we can forecast our overall financial things."

"Thunder TPS has automated mitigation and fully managed support in case the device cannot handle the attack. They have engineers available to respond."

More A10 Thunder TPS pros

"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."

"The product is easy to use."

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

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

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

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

Cons

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

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"The pricing could be improved."

"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."

"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."

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

More Cloudflare cons

"The problem here is when you buy another box from A10, they want to put Thunder TPS to run, and it works okay, after which we cannot block it for another solution to be used, which is a problem for me where improvements are needed."

"I rate Thunder TPS seven out of 10 for scalability."

"The upgrade process for the boxes is not efficient. We have to go through the A10 aGalaxy where we have issues, like timeouts. They told me it was fixed in the latest version, but I tried to do it on the Portal and it is not working all the time."

"The solution is a little expensive."

"We currently do not use the solution's machine-learning-powered Zero-day Automated Protection because of an issue with it... We also use the aGalaxy platform, which is a management platform for the TPS devices. The issue is that some TPS features were added at the TPS level but weren't carried over to aGalaxy, and we manage all of our devices through aGalaxy. So we can't actually use some of the new features that are available on the TPS because that functionality doesn't exist in aGalaxy. That is one of my biggest complaints."

"If there's one aspect of A10 that needs improvement it would be the training. All of their training is done online, at least in what we've been exposed to. I would like to have a classroom environment for training... It would give [people] a chance to provision it."

"We have had some issues with implementation. So, it is the only area that needs improvement."

"It is very difficult to implement. It should be made a bit easier to implement. There is also a lack of resources on the internet. They need to develop more resources."

More A10 Thunder TPS cons

"The product is expensive."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

"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."

"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."

"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 solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

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

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Pricing was much higher with Arbor (APS) for the same type of solution."

"We did a price survey, and compared to other solutions, A10 Thunder TPS wasn't cheap."

"We had a customer who was down for six hours and the loss of revenue for him was three times the price he was paying for us per year. The customer just said, "I don't care about paying you because on only one attack I saved money. It's three times better than losing money.""

"We may need to pay fifty percent more if we purchase other solutions. For the payments made to A10 Thunder TPS, we have received three-year support."

"The tool is expensive. If one is low price and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price as a ten."

"The financials are always a challenge with this type of technology. That's not really a product-functionality thing but it's the area where we push A10 the most."

"Pricing is very reasonable."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

36%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 A10 Thunder TPS?

The most valuable feature of A10 Thunder TPS is load balancing.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for A10 Thunder TPS?

I have not seen specific prices, like $10,000 or $20,000. A frustrating aspect is the lack of demo versions. The vend...

See all answers

What needs improvement with A10 Thunder TPS?

I had issues with the user interface because, when putting settings up, the system asked me for strange things like v...

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?

Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a si...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Arbor DDoS vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 44% of the time

Radware DDoS vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 15% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 10% of the time

Fastly vs A10 Thunder TPS

Compared 6% of the time

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Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Compared 23% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 17% of the time

Prolexic vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

Link11 vs AWS Shield

Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

August 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

A10 Thunder TPS

August 2025

Download A10 Thunder TPS product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

August 2025

Download AWS Shield product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

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

Cloudflare

The Thunder TPS is a family of high-performance DDoS defense solutions that detect and mitigate multi-vector DDoS attacks. Unlike traditional DDoS defenses that leave a wake of collateral damage against users, Thunder TPS applies a source-based defense-in-depth mitigation pipeline. This multimodal defense that includes actionable DDoS weapons intelligence, operator definable adaptive policies, and machine learning-powered Zero-Day Automated Protection (ZAP) blocks attackers while protecting real users.

The Thunder TPS is uniquely suited for communication service providers, online gaming, and enterprise network operators who protect large networks and need compact solutions with faster response from a fully automated, zero-touch defense during an attack.

A10 Networks

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)

Sample Customers

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

DDoS defense solution trusted for more than 200 service providers, online gaming, and enterprises including; Bungie, Comcast, KDDI Corporation, Leaseweb, Microsoft Azure, NTT Docomo, Softbank, Turkcell Superonline, Verizon and more.

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

Buyer's Guide

A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield

July 2025

Free Report: A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield

Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Thunder TPS vs. AWS Shield and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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