Akamai App and API Protector vs Check Point DDoS Protector comparison

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Check Point DDoS Protector

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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 June 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 13.2%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.7%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Check Point DDoS Protector is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	13.2%
Akamai App and API Protector	4.7%
Check Point DDoS Protector	1.1%
Other	81.0%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

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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Gavin Pinho

Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Has provided strong protection against evolving threats but still needs support for configuration fine-tuning

The standout features of Akamai App and API Protector are rooted in it being the Web Application Firewall, where all traffic gets scanned, including the implementation of web firewall rules, and after this phase, traffic proceeds through the BMP, which is Bot Management. Akamai App and API Protector exceeds expectations in terms of AI capabilities, and it genuinely combines a plethora of advanced features. The area in which Akamai excels compared to other competitors with a WAF is in threat intelligence, as threats continually evolve, requiring ongoing updates to backend algorithms to effectively capture smart bots, and Akamai's commitment in that regard is backed by an excellent team, while other providers are still catching up.

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reviewer2753559

Cyber Security Solution Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Ensures service availability and handles attacks effectively though initial setup needs expertise

The best features that Check Point DDoS Protector offers, which stand out to me the most, are real-time detection and mitigation of application-layer DDoS attacks, easy integration with the existing Check Point security infrastructure, and low latency protection that does not disrupt legitimate traffic. The centralized console makes it easy to manage policy across devices, and the integration is straightforward since it works seamlessly with Check Point firewall and management and other security products. Check Point DDoS Protector has positively impacted my organization by improving uptime, reducing incidents, and providing cost savings. It will reduce the incidents up to 30%.

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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 API gives us the ability to remote control our DNS settings."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

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

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

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

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

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

More Cloudflare pros

"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."

"Adaptive stream delivery and WAF protection are valuable."

"It's a very good solution."

"It gives us a report of traffic. It gives us a report of the day-to-day URL traffic, and it also gives an individual report. If we reach out to Akamai, they give us the IPs as well."

"I have contacted the support team of Akamai... I am happy with their responses and answers to my problems."

"Overall, I am happy with Site Defender because what it's doing, it's doing well."

"The dashboard is the most interesting feature of the Akamai portal where you can have a detailed analysis of all the attacks that are happening. You can drill down an issue and see exactly what is happening, who are the bad guys attacking your website, and how Akamai is protecting the website. That is the most valuable feature."

"I would recommend this solution to potential users."

More Akamai App and API Protector pros

"It can be deployed as a hardware appliance, virtual appliance, or as a cloud service."

"Check Point is one of the solutions that give us the most value, and they are constantly innovating."

"This solution has improved our internet security and external security; Check Point is a good product that has improved a lot of security rules, resulting in fewer security incidents and fewer viruses while improving our operations and overall security."

"We found that Check Point was able to provide us superior capabilities and features on the basis we were evaluating."

"It uses several layers of security."

"This product uses auto-learning and behavioral analysis to establish baselines for legitimate traffic, and automatically detects and blocks traffic behavior that does not conform."

"Now, all the ISP lines are protected and we can switch the users back and forth between them with the same level of security."

"From my experience, the best part of this solution is behavioral DDoS protection. The DDoS Protector can monitor the traffic, and based on the behavior, it can decide which traffic is malicious and which traffic is regular. It works dynamically, and it's a very good solution."

More Check Point DDoS Protector pros

Cons

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

"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."

"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

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

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

"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."

"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."

More Cloudflare cons

"The custom rules must be improved."

"The WAF features definitely have a lot of room for improvement."

"It would be better if there weren't any issues with latency. We had latency issues, but I think they are all solved now."

"One area where Akamai can improve is the captcha part. Cloudflare provides a captcha if there are a certain number of threats. For example, I can assign that if there are 10 requests within a second from a single IP, it should send a captcha to the user. The user should fill in the captcha, and only after that, the user should be able to access our website. This captcha feature should be built into Bot Manager. I love this captcha feature of Cloudflare."

"The pricing could be reduced a bit."

"I think there could be an improvement with the integration of more features for each security."

"Akamai needs to focus on quickly responding to risks, even those that may potentially be of zero threat..Maybe some of the documentation is a little confusing. They have a lot of different places where you can go to get information, and some of the information is quite out of date."

"The solution could offer even more integrations."

More Akamai App and API Protector cons

"Currently, two of the things that I would like would be applications for Android and IOS where we can follow the events, and, if necessary, make changes."

"The public documentation is a detail that must be improved in order to have greater implementations with the best practices in this case of the Check Point manufacturer."

"The mitigation part could be improved."

"It does not provide the capability to upload data for blacklisting/whitelisting in bulk."

"For a long time, there was no software version of R80.10 available for the Check Point DDoS Protector software appliances, and we had to stay on the quite outdated R77.30 version."

"Check Point DDoS Protector can be improved in that initial fine-tuning of policies can be complex and may require expertise."

"The solution should greatly improve its interface."

"Check Point DDoS Protector does not provide the ability to upload data for the blacklist/whitelist in bulk, which is one of the big points that need to be improved to facilitate configurations."

More Check Point DDoS Protector cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."

"The solution is expensive."

"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."

"Akamai is very expensive."

"If you want quality, you have to pay the price. Its price is fair. Their account managers are also very helpful. They help you a lot with pricing even though they are working with Akamai."

"Based on the billing discussions in the DevOps team, Akamai's cost does not seem to be a major thing. However, LOE is an issue. When it comes to support, we know that even all the competitors do this. For a 30-minute issue, they give us a LOE of one or two hours. That is a basic practice, but that is something we worry about."

"It's more expensive than others, but the ROI is good for large-scale infrastructure."

"Its price is slightly high. Every company has a justification for the high price. Overall, it feels worth the money based on how the service has been structured, but we do negotiate it."

More Akamai App and API Protector pricing and cost advice

"The appliance comes with a loaded hardware license, and additional options such as SSL can be purchased and enabled."

"I don't deal with the pricing, but it seems that you need to get basic support in order to upgrade the DDoS database for new attacks and so on."

"It's an expensive solution. It's one of the most expensive solutions in the world. It's cheaper than Palo Alto and Cisco but these are expensive solutions. Fortinet is cheaper."

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900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Comms Service Provider

Performing Arts

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

37%

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	18

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	12
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

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...

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...

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

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Web Application Protector?

The price is higher than others. It could be about 80% to 70% more expensive than other tools. So, it’s not just a sl...

What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?

There are no significant areas for improvement on the WAF side or for Akamai App and API Protector solution; they are...

What is your primary use case for Akamai Web Application Protector?

The main use case for Akamai App and API Protector is serving as the WAF, Web Application Firewall.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point DDoS Protector?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is straightforward with no challenges.

What needs improvement with Check Point DDoS Protector?

Check Point DDoS Protector can be improved in that initial fine-tuning of policies can be complex and may require exp...

What is your primary use case for Check Point DDoS Protector?

My main use case for Check Point DDoS Protector is to protect our network perimeter against DDoS attacks, ensuring se...

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 36% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 3% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

AWS Shield vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 6% of the time

AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 5% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 4% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 3% of the time

More Akamai App and API Protector Competitors

Radware DDoS vs Check Point DDoS Protector

Compared 29% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Check Point DDoS Protector

Compared 23% of the time

Fortinet FortiDDoS vs Check Point DDoS Protector

Compared 17% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Check Point DDoS Protector

Compared 9% of the time

More Check Point DDoS Protector Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Akamai App and API Protector

Download Akamai App and API Protector product report

Check Point DDoS Protector

Download Check Point DDoS Protector product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Akamai App and API Protector provides website security by preventing DDoS attacks, acting as an application firewall, managing content delivery, and monitoring APIs. It adapts to threat profiles and is used for fast media delivery and identifying malicious activities.

Akamai App and API Protector offers strong protection, adaptable security features, and efficient traffic management. Its WAF blocks IP addresses and country-specific threats while preventing SQL injections. Companies utilize it for scalable CDN services and comprehensive traffic analysis. Known for its cost-effectiveness and user-friendly dashboard, this protector stands out for its customizable rules and technical support. Users also highlight the ease of integration and detailed attack insights available through its advanced dashboard.

What are the key features of Akamai App and API Protector?

DDoS Protection: Strong defense against Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
Scalable CDN: Manages content delivery efficiently under high traffic loads.
WAF Capabilities: Blocks specific IPs and countries, prevents SQL injections.
Traffic Filtering: Analyzes and controls incoming requests to maintain security.
Adaptive Stream Delivery: Adjusts content delivery to meet bandwidth needs.

What benefits should users expect?

Cost-Effectiveness: Provides robust security tools at a competitive price.
Enhanced Security: Comprehensive protection against cyber threats.
Scalability: Easily handles increasing traffic and data loads.
Ease of Integration: Simple integration with existing systems.
Insightful Analytics: Offers data-driven insights into traffic and attack patterns.

In media, Akamai App and API Protector ensures smooth streaming by handling high bandwidth demands. E-commerce companies use it to guard against fraud and data breaches. Financial sectors rely on its ability to protect sensitive transactions. Implementations in healthcare focus on safeguarding patient data while maintaining compliance with regulations.

Akamai

Check Point DDoS Protector offers robust defense against DDoS attacks, ensuring seamless service availability by integrating advanced threat detection and mitigation strategies for diverse network infrastructures.

Businesses utilize Check Point DDoS Protector for comprehensive security by leveraging its firewall and antivirus capabilities, hardware-based SSL engine, and machine learning for traffic analysis. It seamlessly integrates with existing systems to provide real-time attack identification and mitigation, addressing both cloud and on-premise threats. While it maintains low latency and reduces false positives, the dashboard's complexity and need for improved real-time traffic information are areas requiring refinement. Support for modular upgrades, enhanced reporting, and better application layer mitigation are also prioritized by users.

What are the key features of Check Point DDoS Protector?

Firewall and Antivirus: Protects against a wide range of threats with integrated security features.
Low Latency Traffic Processing: Ensures responsive network performance even under attack.
Hardware-Based SSL Engine: Enhances SSL encryption processing without compromising speed.
Scalable Protection: Adapts to various network sizes, providing consistent defense across infrastructures.
Machine Learning Analysis: Uses behavioral analysis to detect and mitigate threats effectively.

What benefits can organizations expect from Check Point DDoS Protector?

Improved Uptime: Reduces service disruptions, supporting continuous business operations.
Reduced Incidents: Minimizes the frequency and severity of attacks on network perimeters.
Comprehensive Security: Offers broad protection with integrated modules that handle diverse threats.
Seamless Integration: Works well with existing infrastructures, ensuring smooth integration and functionality.

Industries depend on Check Point DDoS Protector to safeguard network perimeters against DDoS attacks. It is instrumental in protecting data centers and managing web services, addressing volumetric and low-and-slow attacks, and supporting high DNS packet rates. By integrating with scrubbing centers and enabling traffic management by geolocation, organizations can ensure security for both cloud and on-premise environments, including Azure. This proactive defense capability is highly valued for its impact on scalability and management within these sectors.

Check Point Software Technologies

Sample Customers

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

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet

Boston Properties

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Check Point DDoS Protector