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Akamai Bot Manager vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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

Akamai Bot Manager
Ranking in Bot Management
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in Bot Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
CDN (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Bot Management category, the mindshare of Akamai Bot Manager is 12.6%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 15.3%, down from 19.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Bot Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform15.3%
Akamai Bot Manager12.6%
Other72.1%
Bot Management
 

Featured Reviews

Denis Burnaev - PeerSpot reviewer
SecOps Engineer at El Al
Uses real-time dashboards to manage bot traffic and has provided a reliable first layer of defense
Because we are an airline, we have various attacks on our website and application, and we really have to involve our experience and try to find attacks by ourselves. These days attacks are very sophisticated and they are trying to manipulate in the same way as humans, so the anomaly feature is not really helpful. Bots are very clever these days and they move through the website the way humans do. We are not really using it because again, the attacks are sophisticated. We need something that involves different AI models that can try to find similarity in all the data that we are getting from Akamai Bot Manager to understand where exactly we can find similarities between the ways bots are reacting on the website. The most valued feature these days is getting research on all the data as fast as possible and trying to find similarities to understand which bots are trying to manipulate or abuse my website. We are going toward AI solutions because it is the fastest, but it should be a very sophisticated model. Bots these days move the way humans do, so it's really hard to understand which of them is a bot and which is human. Bots can go through the challenges you are putting on the website, and it seems nothing can stop them.
reviewer1247523 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation
Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai Bot Manager has two valuable features: BMS (Bot Manager Standard) and BMP (Bot Manager Premier)."
"Akamai Bot Manager has more advanced rules that allow it to detect and block bot scrapers."
"In terms of the security provided, the benefits from the use of the product are immediately visible."
"Akamai Bot Manager is helping us understand how many bots are accessing our websites or applications, and we can manage the dashboard to differentiate on a quick view and see how much good bots get access compared to bad bots trying to reach our website."
"The best feature is the BNP. That is what Manager Premium does, protection of transactional endpoints."
"The most valuable features of Akamai Bot Manager are the seamless integration and accuracy with which it detects the bots that can make attacks."
"Akamai Bot Manager is very easy to scale. Adding new domains or subdomains is a super easy process."
"Based on the telemetry, Akamai Bot Manager gives a rough estimate of all the hits and requests we get, which are suspected bots."
"An improvement has been to our website: It increases the speed of our response, the capacity of the site, and optimizes the bandwidth.​"
"An improvement has been to our website: It increases the speed of our response, the capacity of the site, and optimizes the bandwidth."
"Anti-DDoS protection, as well as other protections like SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and antiscanner, are valuable to the business due to the daily attacks on our portals that often cannot be seen without a tool like this."
"Imperva Incapsula has many valuable features. One, it protects the top 10 OWAS vulnerability, the open web application software platform, this is standard. Secondly, it protects against broken authentication. As well, it has remote execution of code."
"The Web Application firewall is a valuable feature as the security features are mostly what we're interested in."
"Their support team is great and you get a response/resolution within five minutes of submitting a support ticket."
"There are quite a few useful Imperva Incapsula features. For example, one of them is the reports. The graphics are very good and it's easy to configure. The whole process is very fast and reliable too. They have good tech support as well."
"There is no need to have an in-house WAF to manage and maintain; we are now able to bring a new website live within minutes, without false positive alerts, and it has improved user/customer experience and website performance."
 

Cons

"In my opinion, the UI of Akamai Bot Manager is a bit unconventional and not as intuitive as one might expect."
"I would say there is definitely a need of improvement because I think some start of this year or even, like one and a half years. But now have enough resources at their end especially with the, advanced AI and everything. So they have enough resources to launch basic bot attacks. And whenever we do some type of fine tuning, they are always somehow able to evade it or just fly under the threshold. And from our end, we also have to maintain those threshold so that we still do not start blocking the real general customer. So every time when they try to do something else, we have to see their traffic patterns and then find you in our solution.When these bot attacks happen, what we have to do is we have to check their, traffic patterns, their IT sees and then do the proper analysis. And based on that, the fine tuning is done. So I would say, like, based on these bot traffic, if there is a automatic fine tuning. With the help of machine learning at all, then that would be much more easier of beneficial. So this needs improvement."
"There is a clear need for improvement. Over the past year or so, we've observed an increase in the sophistication of attacks, with some occurring at the start of this year or even extending back one and a half years. Despite having ample resources, particularly with the advent of advanced AI, these entities can now execute basic bot attacks."
"Akamai Bot Manager Premier has some additional functionalities, particularly for web telemetry, but they don't have it for app telemetry."
"We cannot block illegitimate web scrapers because Akamai Bot Manager does not provide detailed information about various origins and remote VPNs they come through."
"The anomaly feature is not really helpful. Bots are very clever these days and they move through the website the way humans do."
"I feel that customer support has certain concerns where improvements are required."
"There are other rules that are user-friendly, however, many of the things have a learning curve. This is not something you enter into lightly."
"If they can bring in generative AI features, that would be useful."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by providing better features, such as improved prevention of zero-day attacks. Additionally, it should include a VR meta-analysis."
"The API is lackluster but especially for customers."
"Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."
"Users would benefit from better documentation. There is official documentation, but sometimes we need more detail. We have some use cases that are not so run of the mill. It would be great if there was a knowledge base that we could go to for more answers."
"I guess the GUI could be improved a little, as it’s not always simple to get."
"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have to pay a bundled cost."
"The price of Akamai Bot Manager could improve."
"Akamai Bot Manager requires a separate license that sits on top of Kona or Akamai Web Application Protector."
"Akamai Bot Manager is a very expensive solution."
"You buy a license of the product based on a certain volume, but if you hit the volume and go above it, then you are charged additional for each GB you use. I think you need to pay 20,000 per month."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."
"There are a couple of different licensing models."
"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Retailer
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business84
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise62
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Bot Manager?
Akamai Bot Manager is not cheap. From what I know, Akamai Bot Manager is not so cheap.
What needs improvement with Akamai Bot Manager?
Because we are an airline, we have various attacks on our website and application, and we really have to involve our experience and try to find attacks by ourselves. These days attacks are very sop...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Bot Manager?
I'm working at an airline company, so Akamai Bot Manager has been used in our company for approximately 20 years.
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise. For example, the initiation of an attack on the endpoint level cou...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Luisa Via Roma, Gymgrossisten, Rakuten, U.S. News & World Report, Japan Airlines
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Bot Manager vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.