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Akamai App and API Protector vs Check Point DDoS Protector comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (23rd), Cloud and Data Center Security (16th)
Check Point DDoS Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 12.4%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 5.0%, up from 4.2% 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
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare12.4%
Akamai App and API Protector5.0%
Check Point DDoS Protector1.1%
Other81.5%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2753559 - PeerSpot reviewer
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%.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support on offer is excellent; they are very helpful and responsive, and we are quite happy with the level of service they provide to their customers."
"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."
"I have not had a DDOS attack since, or at least not become unavailable due to DDOS which means my ROI is pretty good."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"Their free account offers an awful lot of functionality and savings alone, before you get on to the minimal $20 a month for a Pro account which comes with its own great list of features."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it."
"CloudFlare has positively improved my site's speed, performance and security."
"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."
"Akamai App and API Protector exceeds expectations in terms of AI capabilities, and it genuinely combines a plethora of advanced features."
"I like that the charges are all based on usage and labor costs. For the time that we spend onboarding almost 252020 FQDN, Akamai charges us only for the traffic usage, but it's only charging us for the labor costs for onboarding."
"All the solution's features are very good."
"The product has a good UI."
"The features are powerful and better than F5."
"The product has a good user interface."
"Site Defender service helps prepare, respond, and optimize against modern-day web attacks."
"I can attest to its benefits in terms of understanding and mitigating threats...The solution's technical support team seems to be pretty responsive."
"Check Point DDoS Protector has positively impacted my organization by improving uptime, reducing incidents, and providing cost savings."
"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."
"The initial setup takes two hours."
"It uses several layers of security."
"The is a really low level of the false-positive alerts (when the clean traffic is marked as DDoS) due to some advanced techniques used by Check Point under the hood."
"Currently, we have fewer incidents with viruses. We improved our IQ operations and security using this solution. Our company's better after using Check Point."
"Check Point DDoS Protector is a product that uses machine learning and behavior analysis."
"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."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"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."
"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."
"Yes, there were a few times when some of their CDN nodes would fail, creating serious speed issues with the site without any warning or notification from their side."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"The WAF features definitely have a lot of room for improvement."
"It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console."
"The effectiveness of Akamai's bot management in reducing unauthorized access is quite good, although it does require a lot of fine-tuning and tweaking, which involves spending ample time with their support teams to tailor the configuration to our applications."
"There are some issues with pushing configurations across a network. It still takes about 20 minutes and that means to retract it's another 20 minutes."
"I do not see any area for improvement. Akamai is already maintaining its own databases for the security concerns, vulnerabilities, and attacks that are there. If anything, they should have a solution in the infrastructure security area as well. They should not be only in cloud cybersecurity; they should also be in infrastructure security."
"The interface is a little bit clunky and can be improved."
"The custom rules were difficult to use."
"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 product is expensive."
"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."
"Check Point DDoS Protector can be improved in that initial fine-tuning of policies can be complex and may require expertise."
"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."
"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."
"Monitoring and reporting are the things that can be introduced in the future."
"The mitigation part could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"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."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"We are using the free version."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"It's more expensive than others, but the ROI is good for large-scale infrastructure."
"Akamai is very expensive."
"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."
"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."
"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."
"The price they are offering is quite reasonable for premium customers, but it's very expensive if you're a small and medium-sized enterprises."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"The solution is expensive."
"The appliance comes with a loaded hardware license, and additional options such as SSL can be purchased and enabled."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
35%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

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 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 advice do you have for others considering Akamai Web Application Protector?
The primary way Akamai App and API Protector helps manage evolving cyber threats is by considering the impact on reve...
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...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Check Point DDoS Protector and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.