Arbor DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS comparison

NETSCOUT and Fortinet are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. NETSCOUT is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.1, while Fortinet is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0. NETSCOUT holds a 6.1% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Fortinet’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of NETSCOUT users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Arbor DDoS and Fortinet FortiDDoS compete in the realm of DDoS protection. Arbor DDoS holds the advantage due to its superior reporting, traffic visualization, and flexible deployment options.

Features: Arbor DDoS provides advanced reporting, real-time packet capture, and a hybrid protection approach, making it suitable for ISPs and large enterprises. Its precise traffic filtering significantly enhances security. Fortinet FortiDDoS offers specific protection resources and support, beneficial for targeted network defense, despite not offering the high-level insights that Arbor provides.

Room for Improvement: Arbor DDoS could improve its auto-mitigation to reduce the impact on legitimate traffic and enhance scalability with better integration with non-Arbor technologies. Fortinet FortiDDoS requires upgrades to manage higher bandwidths efficiently and could benefit from improved application traffic management beyond network layer protection.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Arbor provides multiple deployment options, including hybrid cloud and on-premises, whereas Fortinet offers only on-premises deployment. Both receive positive remarks for customer service and technical support, although Arbor's support team is highly rated for its expertise and resolution efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: Arbor DDoS is priced higher but is seen to provide positive ROI, especially for larger enterprises, justified by comprehensive features. Fortinet FortiDDoS is cost-effective yet still expensive for SMBs, with limitations in scalability. Both solutions help maintain uptime and reduce potential financial losses from DDoS attacks, though Arbor's ROI stands out in larger deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

June 2026

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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

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 Arbor DDoS is 6.1%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiDDoS is 1.9%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	12.4%
Arbor DDoS	6.1%
Fortinet FortiDDoS	1.9%
Other	79.6%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

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.

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reviewer1331304

Director Of Research And Development at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

Automated threat intelligence and flow-based mitigation have improved our DDoS defense

A very useful feature in Arbor DDoS is its ability to send flow spec announcements to routers. For example, if it is clear that a Layer 3 or Layer 4 attack is occurring and the attack pattern is identified through source and destination IP addresses and ports, you can generate flow spec filters. These filters are transferred through BGP to border routers, which automatically build filters, mitigating the attack even at the network's boundary and preventing it from reaching the TMS. This allows the TMS to focus on other tasks. This is a highly effective feature that can mitigate huge volumetric attacks; for example, we experienced a 32-gigabit attack, and all those 32 gigabits were dropped by our border routers, not by Arbor DDoS itself. The flow spec announcement was generated by Arbor DDoS, and as far as I know, the same technology is used by Radware, but it comes under a different feature and a different license. At the time, we were told that flow spec mitigation was an additional very expensive license to purchase from Radware, while Radware included everything in one package.

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Marcos AntonioOliveira

IT Analyst at Evapco, Inc.

Reliable protection and smooth setup enhance company security

Currently, I have two firewalls, with one located in Sorocaba, model 90D, and the other in São Paulo, model 30D. They are connected by VPN. I use the firewalls for VPN and final protection for my company, and my equipment is maintained by an internet company called Multiprox The equipment works…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

"The solution is a great fit for customers who want unlimited bandwidth."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

More Cloudflare pros

"Because this Arbor DDoS product is the best, I do not need to spend time supporting it."

"The solution provides good protection against volumetric DDoS attacks."

"Overall, it's a great product."

"There were huge attacks in October, around 62 attacks at 30 gigabits per second, at one of our banks. We used Arbor DDoS to mitigate these attacks, and it performed great."

"Analytics and its attack mitigation capabilities are valuable features of the solution."

"In the GUI, the packet capture is a very good option, as is the option to block an IP address."

"The stability is okay and we have not encountered problems with the solution."

"Using standard BGP, NetFlow and SNMP ensure wide compatibility. There are also peering traffic reports that can help identify upstream peering opportunities. The ATLAS aggregation service allows us to contribute to the global DDoS data and benefit from overall trends."

More Arbor DDoS pros

"Among its key features: Detects and mitigates DDoS attacks at L3 to L7; negligible to zero false-positives; Generates and sends reports without the need for an expensive third-party solution."

"It allows me to see all the traffic on my network."

"I find this product the best on-premises (in-line) DDoS mitigation solution that suits my current and future requirements."

"The pricing of this solution is better than that of Cisco and other software on the market, which are very expensive."

"It is a user-friendly product in terms of monitoring and updating policies."

"The product allows the users to adjust the thresholds."

"We use it to protect our users and their data."

"Packet inspection has been effective for mitigating DDoS attacks."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS pros

Cons

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"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."

"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."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

"I think they have failed with their technical support."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"For the services I am using, it is a bit expensive."

More Cloudflare cons

"Auto mitigation is a feature provided when DDoS is observed on any of link/customer (configured under auto mitigation). It automatically starts mitigation with default filters; in default filter mode, there could be an impact on the customer’s link, e.g., if we have enabled monitoring of internal traffic for that link/customer, it starts mitigation on legitimate traffic."

"The implementation should be made easier."

"I think the diversity of protection is extremely limited. It must be expanded in future upgrades and versions."

"The product could have end-to-end platform visibility."

"In the default filter mode, there could be an impact on a customer’s link."

"This is a disadvantage of Arbor DDoS, as it operates merely as a flow collector, generating alerts only after a violation occurs."

"On the main page there are alerts that we are unable to clear, even though the issue has been resolved."

"For troubleshooting problems, it's not so intuitive. It's not straightforward."

More Arbor DDoS cons

"I find that there have been issues in the past year with the solution hanging. It freezes often."

"The challenge lies within the customer environment, particularly in Brazil, where companies have stringent security requirements for implementing solutions."

"There aren't really any aspects of the solution we are unhappy with. It's been a positive experience overall."

"Technical support isn't too good with Fortinet. They could be more responsive and helpful overall."

"The solution can be a little more user-friendly and it can be more affordable."

"The web interface could be much better."

"The only thing they need to do is to automate it. Today, you must create tools that do not require the use of an expert or anyone with special skills."

"Earlier versions of firmware had bugs that limit my options."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"We are using the free version."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"There is room for improvement with the pricing. It is an expensive solution. The issue with the pricing is more the way it is built. Right now we're paying per router, and there's a limitation there. I would like to see bundle-pricing where there is an overall solution cost."

"Regarding pricing, I would rate it as average. Arbor DDoS offers good value for money with our DDoS filter device. For higher protection needs, Arbor’s CloudMeter’s DDoS mitigation or hardware devices might be more expensive, but customers who need them are usually prepared for the cost and the additional resources required."

"Our customers always complain about the price of the product."

"Arbor's products are very expensive. Their competitors are cheap when compared with Arbor."

"The licensing of a complete Arbor solution, including fire-walling and unified site management, can get expensive."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap."

"The price of Arbor DDoS depends on many parameters. It depends on the physical capacity of the environment, and it is not a straight-line price. It's fairly competitive in the market on the price."

"It is an expensive product. I use this product for its different features."

More Arbor DDoS pricing and cost advice

"It's quite pricey."

"The solution is reasonably priced."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Comms Service Provider

14%

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	29

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Large Enterprise	6

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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other soluti...

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arbor DDoS?

The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiDDoS?

Fortinet FortiDDoS offers lower costs compared to other solutions. The licensing costs are annually renewed.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiDDoS?

There is a need for more features that protect personal information, especially given the PDP issue in Indonesia.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiDDoS?

I am looking for a UTM for my customers as I am from a system integrator company.

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 31% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Link11 vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Radware DDoS vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 11% of the time

Corero vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 7% of the time

A10 Thunder TPS vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 5% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 4% of the time

NetWitness Platform vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 4% of the time

More Arbor DDoS Competitors

Radware DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 14% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 8% of the time

VMware NSX vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 7% of the time

Nexusguard DDoS Protection vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 6% of the time

Check Point DDoS Protector vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 6% of the time

More Fortinet FortiDDoS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

August 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS

August 2026

Download Arbor DDoS product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

August 2026

Download Fortinet FortiDDoS product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Arbor Networks SP, Arbor Networks TMS, Arbor Cloud for ENT

Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Arbor DDoS offers a comprehensive defense system against DDoS attacks, integrating a user-friendly GUI and advanced threat mitigation technologies for enhanced network protection.

Arbor DDoS is recognized for its ability to manage high-volume DDoS attacks efficiently, providing extensive protection through real-time traffic analysis and automated threat detection. It utilizes advanced techniques such as blackhole and BGP Flowspec for effective threat management. Arbor's cloud signaling allows users to handle and mitigate volumetric attacks while maintaining service availability. Though it provides robust security features, users note potential improvements in auto-mitigation, scalability, and AI integration. Challenges like an outdated graphical interface, hardware stability, and false positives need addressing to further enhance its usability and integration with third-party systems.

What are the key features of Arbor DDoS?

User-Friendly GUI: Provides an intuitive interface for ease of use.
Effective Mitigation: Combats high-volume DDoS attacks effectively.
Predefined Filters: Simplifies threat management with pre-configured settings.
Real-Time Traffic Analysis: Offers insights into traffic patterns and potential threats.
Automated Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats without manual intervention.
Able to Handle High-Volume Attacks: Ensures extensive protection even under large-scale attacks.
Packet Capture and Integration: Facilitates comprehensive security analysis.
Cloud Signaling: Enhances attack traffic management through hybrid deployments.

What benefits should users expect from Arbor DDoS?

Enhanced Protection: Safeguards networks from diverse DDoS threats.
Improved Service Availability: Maintains business operations without disruptions.
Timely Reporting: Delivers detailed attack reports for proactive prevention.
AI Capabilities: Leverages AI for smarter threat mitigation strategies.
Comprehensive Security: Combines on-premise and cloud deployments for optimal defense.

Internet service providers and telecom companies commonly adopt Arbor DDoS to protect their networks and infrastructure from DDoS attacks. It is also implemented in financial and government sectors to ensure web application security and maintain high availability. Arbor DDoS supports a hybrid approach, utilizing both on-premise and cloud solutions to manage traffic efficiently and sustain service quality during attacks.

NETSCOUT

Fortinet FortiDDoS provides comprehensive protection against DDoS attacks across layers 3 to 7. It efficiently minimizes false positives and is valued for real-time attack monitoring, cloud DDoS scrubbing, and multi-layer security, leveraging purpose-built ASICs for high performance.

Fortinet FortiDDoS is favored for its robust defense capabilities in DDoS detection and mitigation, supporting sophisticated security infrastructures. Its purpose-built ASICs ensure effective performance without reliance on signature-based detection. While it offers strong features like attack monitoring and cloud scrubbing, users identify challenges with its complex setup and web interface. Additionally, the need for simplified features, enhanced application traffic management, and better alerts is crucial especially when handling sensitive data. Priced competitively, it presents scalability concerns particularly in on-premises environments.

What are Fortinet FortiDDoS's key features?

DDoS Detection: Protects infrastructure from layers 3 to 7 with minimal false positives.
Real-Time Monitoring: Enables instant attack detection and response.
Cloud Scrubbing: Offers cloud-based DDoS mitigation to cleanse traffic.
Purpose-Built ASICs: Ensures performance without reliance on signatures.
Multi-Layer Protection: Comprehensive security across different network layers.

What benefits should users expect from Fortinet FortiDDoS?

Enhanced Security: Protects against a wide range of DDoS threats.
Performance Optimization: Improves network traffic management.
Cost Efficiency: Competitive pricing with powerful capabilities.
Effective Mitigation: Reduces risks with real-time threats monitoring.
User Data Protection: Safeguards personal and sensitive information.

Fortinet FortiDDoS is widely used in internet datacenters with multiple upstreams to protect infrastructure and customers from potential threats. Companies deploy Fortinet appliances for managing network traffic and ensuring optimal performance. They rely on it for safeguarding web pages, web services, and networks while benefiting from ease of troubleshooting and effective VPN connections, critical for application-based attack defense.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Xtel Communications

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

June 2026

Free Report: Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

Find out what your peers are saying about Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

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