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Akamai Edge DNS vs Cloudflare comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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 Edge DNS
Ranking in Managed DNS
10th
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudflare
Ranking in Managed DNS
1st
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
5th
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), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of Akamai Edge DNS is 2.2%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 23.9%, down from 34.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed DNS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare23.9%
Akamai Edge DNS2.2%
Other73.9%
Managed DNS
 

Featured Reviews

YA
Head of Service Delivery at onme
Ensures global distribution and DDoS protection while offering seamless integration and low latency DNS responses
For user experience, Akamai Edge DNS should allow notes to be added for each record, as this is something Infoblox supports. Without notes, managing changes in DNS records can be difficult, especially for large companies with over 1,000 records, as they may not know who requested changes without proper documentation. I requested this feature two years ago, but it has not been added yet. Akamai Edge DNS could also improve its AI capabilities.
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.

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 very stable solution since it has a security feature that allows you to recover zone files if you accidentally delete them."
"We can maintain control of the configuration, and it seems to be covering the use case that we need."
"I haven't had any problems with the stability of Akamai Edge DNS in the past five years."
"I recommend Akamai Edge DNS because it is distributed globally and prevents DDoS attacks."
"The high availability of Akamai Edge DNS is impressive due to their numerous POPs, which help in supporting all attacks, including DDoS counterattacks."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"We're partners with Cloudflare; this solution is the best product and it does not charge you for any kind of attack on your traffic, only for good traffic, and it can mitigate up to 30 TBPS of DDoS attacks."
"In my opinion, CloudFlare is one of the best CDN networks I have ever used."
"The aggressive caching and DDOS mitigation are the most valuable features offered by Cloudflare."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"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."
 

Cons

"The only area that needs improvement is the pricing for DNS zones. The price is higher than competitors, and Akamai should offer a better pricing model."
"CNAME flattening is a feature that Akamai does not support."
"The solution has a fairly complex setup with our cloud vendors, including Microsoft, Salesforce, and Oracle."
"Akamai Edge DNS is expensive, and the pricing is higher compared to Infoblox."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"With CDN loads, sometimes we get an error that the host server is unavailable when the connection between CloudFlare and the server timed out."
"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"Support response time could be improved."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"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."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since Akamai is the industry leader, I imagine the solution would be a little more expensive than some other vendors."
"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."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"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 price is reasonable."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"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."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
6%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Akamai Edge DNS?
For user experience, Akamai Edge DNS should allow notes to be added for each record, as this is something Infoblox supports. Without notes, managing changes in DNS records can be difficult, especia...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Edge DNS?
As a reseller company for Akamai, my typical use case for Akamai Edge DNS is its distribution worldwide, providing DDoS attack prevention which is crucial in current times.
What advice do you have for others considering Akamai Edge DNS?
I recommend Akamai Edge DNS and rate the overall solution a ten out of ten. Akamai Edge DNS should improve its AI more to enhance the product's capabilities.
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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Akamai Fast DNS
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Otto Group
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Edge DNS vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
912,022 professionals have used our research since 2012.