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Akamai App and API Protector vs Nexusguard DDoS Protection 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
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
Nexusguard DDoS Protection
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
12th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.8%, up from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.2%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nexusguard DDoS Protection is 1.6%, down from 2.2% 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 (%)
Cloudflare18.8%
Akamai App and API Protector4.2%
Nexusguard DDoS Protection1.6%
Other75.4%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
ShashikaKodikara - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution requiring straightforward maintenance while remaining cost-effective compared to its competitors in the market
I am not in a position to speak about the areas where the solution needed improvement because I resigned during the implementation phase. At that time, the implementation was ongoing, and everything seemed to be going well. Using the solution, our team managed to transfer a couple of routers through a few areas. However, I believe the migration is still ongoing. Nonetheless, the first phase of the implementation was successful before my departure. There was a certain level of performance degradation in the solution, which I don't know if it can be tuned. This is because I was working for a short period on the solution. In my experience, it is an area that can be improved while also considering the stability and scalability aspects of the solution. If one wants to scale up, then one needs to change their plan. However, the thing is, one can always go for the larger scale based on one's anticipation of future traffic.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."
"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."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"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."
"The solution can scale extremely well."
"The most valuable feature is the custom rules feature. This is because many of our customers require a lot of custom rules. Because it's a very customized project for our customers, I think they have the best of everything already."
"All the solution's features are very good."
"The features are powerful and better than F5."
"The support that we got from their technical team has been fantastic. I have never experienced this level of support from other CDN providers."
"We are getting security for each and every API."
"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."
"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."
"The managed service allows us to confidently rely on Nexusguard’s professional team to take relevant actions as and when required to make sure DDoS attacks are successfully mitigated, ensuring 100% uptime of our service."
"Based on the support received for implementation, I rate the solution's technical support a nine out of ten."
"The support team was helpful."
"Filters can be customized depending on the characteristics of the attack traffic. This feature has made it easier for Nexusguard's SOC team to further isolate any specific attack that can't be blocked by pre-configured mitigation."
"Cloud Diversion is another good feature packaged with the whole solution. When attack traffic is detected, Cloud Diversion triggers to automatically route our prefix to Nexusguard’s scrubbing center, ensuring that all attack traffic is dropped in the shortest time possible."
 

Cons

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The custom rules must be improved."
"The pricing could be reduced a bit."
"The solution could offer even more integrations."
"We are experimenting with EdgeWorkers to write our own code at the Edge level. It could grow to be much better."
"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."
"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."
"Could integrate more features for each security."
"If we talk about application layer attacks, including WAF, CloudFlare is leading. Akamai can focus a bit more on the application layer attacks and how to protect them."
"One of the features that should be added to the next release is report generation. Currently, reports can be downloaded every month and are only available at the beginning of each month. It would be nice to generate the reports based on specific dates that we prefer and not have to wait until the next month for the current month’s report."
"The solution must provide features for the post-processing of the traffic type and the traffic quality."
"The mitigation scope of Origin Protection is not fully efficient as there could be delays in activating the countermeasures."
"There was a certain level of performance degradation in the solution, which I don't know if it can be tuned...In my experience, it is an area that can be improved while also considering the stability and scalability aspects of the solution."
"One thing that we would like to improve from them is to provide more training to SOC team for them to have a deep understanding of the solution so that they would always be ready to answer anything without the need to escalate queries to senior personnel."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"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."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"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 cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."
"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."
"The product is expensive, but it is worth the money."
"One reason not all people use Akamai is that it is a little bit more expensive than some other providers."
"The product’s price is high."
"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."
"Akamai is very expensive."
"The solution is not expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one represents a cheap option, and ten represents an expensive option, I would rate the solution a seven in terms of cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Performing Arts
6%
Comms Service Provider
33%
Media Company
12%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
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...
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 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.
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?
It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.
What needs improvement with Nexusguard?
The solution must provide features for the post-processing of the traffic type and the traffic quality.
What advice do you have for others considering Nexusguard DDoS Protection?
Our traffic is not that high. There haven’t been any huge attacks that the solution has solved or protected us from. ...
 

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
21st Century Technologies, Netpluz, REDtone, SNOC, StarHub, aamra
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Nexusguard DDoS Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.