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Akamai vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 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
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in CDN
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th), API Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 11.3%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 2.3%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Akamai11.3%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services2.3%
Other86.4%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

JV
Sr. Strategic Accounts Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Improved security and faster operations with a seamless integration
They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best. We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai. It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view. It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere. The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side. On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.
US
Senior Network Consultant at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Unified cloud security has reduced bot attacks and is improving multi‑channel protection
There is always room for improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services. Sometimes the UI/UX console navigation is a bit tricky, and the deep configuration menus can feel overly complex and could be simplified. Additionally, expanding regional presence should be done in specific local telecom markets to further lower the latency of our hyper-local load latency workloads. Long-term log retention and cold storage analytics need to improve. Native SIEM log retention on the console is limited. Introducing deeper built-in historical analytics would avoid having to offload all raw security logs to external SIEMs such as Splunk for long-term compliance audits. Regarding backend TLS verification enforcements, custom edge routes strictly enforce TLS validation on backend endpoints, which requires manual management and uploading of private and public root CAs rather than providing simple certificate bypass toggles for development environments.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai has been providing this service for 20 years and they have never had a substantial outage, they even have some products that have an uptime of over 20 years, the stability is very good."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"It's a scalable and reliable solution."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."
"We have received excellent support from their team; I have not worked with any other applications where they have delivered professional services as good as them."
"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."
"The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions."
"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"I appreciate the UI of F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the backend cost, alongside the actual value proposition that they provide with the load balancer, which is excellent."
"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"In terms of return on investment for F5 Distributed Cloud Services, we have seen at least a 30% reduction in infrastructure and compute costs, with 20 to 30% engineering time saved and 85% reduction in support desk overheads."
 

Cons

"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"The solution can be improved by creating a communication pathway with technical engineers because when we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
"I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."
"The user console is quite overloaded, sometimes it's hard to find your way around."
"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services still does not have the same flexibility as BIG-IP. It does not have iRules."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
"One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced."
"Sometimes the UI/UX console navigation is a bit tricky, and the deep configuration menus can feel overly complex and could be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Akamai?
Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they could make some cases less complex to set up. There could be improvements in ho...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets where AWS is one of the targets. We are building up websites that we are pointing to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai?
The pricing is good, with no complaints about costs, which is essential when deciding to have Akamai in your network.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, the confidence level on API security that F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for securing my infrastructure with layer 7 protection, which F5 provides. Th...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
912,006 professionals have used our research since 2012.