AWS Shield vs Azure DDoS Protection comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.4, while Microsoft is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 7.0% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Microsoft’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Azure DDoS Protection and AWS Shield offer robust solutions for DDoS protection. AWS Shield appears to have an upper hand due to its feature-rich offerings despite higher costs.

Features: Azure DDoS Protection offers automatic attack mitigation, integration with Azure Monitor for analytics, and customizable policies. AWS Shield provides two tiers with AWS Shield Advanced offering 24/7 access to a dedicated DDoS Response Team and detailed attack diagnostics.

Room for Improvement: Azure DDoS Protection could enhance real-time attack detection capabilities, improve threat intelligence, and expand on proactive responses. AWS Shield could improve integrations outside of the AWS ecosystem, simplify deployment processes, and offer more competitive pricing schemes for small businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure DDoS Protection benefits from easy deployment within the Azure ecosystem and has accessible customer service channels. AWS Shield, although more complex to deploy, benefits from AWS’s global infrastructure and offers specialized support for Shield Advanced users.

Pricing and ROI: Azure DDoS Protection offers competitive pricing models for scalability, providing good ROI for Azure-centric enterprises. AWS Shield provides a basic free-tier option and a premium Shield Advanced service, which, while more costly, delivers comprehensive protection and support seen as a strategic investment by businesses needing extensive security features.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Azure DDoS Protection Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Azure DDoS Protection

March 2025

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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 April 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.4%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 7.0%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure DDoS Protection is 4.0%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Manikandan-R

Senior Project Manager at Synopsys Inc

Solution provides essential protection with good support and a simple setup

I have noticed a pattern developing in approximately five minutes. If it were possible to provide these patterns with historical data spanning six months, three months, or two months directly from the console, it would be extremely beneficial. It would allow for easy inquiries and facilitate the retrieval of relevant parts without having to manually check logs or examine movements. Instead, if all historical data were available, I could consult six months' worth of identified patterns efficiently through AWS without relying on external sources. This solution is particularly suitable for startups or medium-sized startups. I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.

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Venkat Raju Mallipudi

Group Chief of Enterprise Architecture & S/W Engineering/ CTO at Aventra Group

Acts as an additional layer of protection, provides endpoint security but not very easy to configure

It's not very easy to configure, in my view. We have to do some work behind the scenes. It's not very simple. We have to do it very carefully, and we need to monitor this enablement as well. But apart from that, I didn't see any kind of challenges. So, in my opinion, configuration is the main trouble for them. It is something that can be done to be better. Not just configuration. You need an expert who knows the ins and outs of these security solutions. In my experience, people struggle with configuration. While configuring, we get this error, we get that error, and then we try to fix those issues. I have seen those. It's not straightforward.

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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

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

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

"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 attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

More Cloudflare pros

"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."

"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."

"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."

"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."

"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."

"The product is easy to use."

"The integration of various tools with Azure Firewall, like DDoS Protection, Web Application Firewall, and Azure Front Door, is quite effective."

"Azure DDoS Protection offers superior protection against denial-of-service attacks."

"DDoS Protection is simple to deploy and integrates seamlessly with the Azure environment. Ease of deployment is a crucial feature for us."

"The most valuable feature of Azure DDoS Protection is that it performs well."

"Azure is easy to set up and widely used by our clients."

"The integration of various tools with Azure Firewall, like DDoS Protection, Web Application Firewall, and Azure Front Door, is quite effective."

"This solution is the best option for us because we use a lot of Microsoft products. So, it is easy for us to deploy or integrate any features or products."

More Azure DDoS Protection pros

Cons

"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."

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

"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."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"DNS Management."

More Cloudflare cons

"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."

"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."

"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."

"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."

"The product is expensive."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."

"It's not very easy to configure, in my view."

"The implementation of Azure DDoS Protection results in a decrease in our bandwidth capacity and should be optimized to reduce resource consumption."

"I suggest adding more services and additional services, which would be beneficial."

"Azure DDoS Protection could improve on the reporting."

"Sometimes, it is hard for our staff to keep track of changes (in the GUI) between different projects, because there are constant changes. As a result, it is hard to manage, recall, and see all the features because they have been moved from one place to another."

"The dashboard lacks insights and user-friendliness, as most data is logged into metrics like Log Analytics workspaces."

"The visibility could be better. We would like to have better metrics, so we could see all the information in a central place."

"I have noticed some false positives with the Web Application Firewall yet not with DDoS Protection."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

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

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

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"A free version of the solution is available."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."

"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."

"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"The tool is cheap."

"It is an expensive solution."

"You can test it for a certain period of time free of charge. You can have a free account. You can test it to compare its pros and cons with other products that you are testing."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS Shield?

We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't de...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?

The tool is cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a si...

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure DDoS Protection?

Azure DDoS Protection offers superior protection against denial-of-service attacks.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure DDoS Protection?

The pricing is somewhat costly, usually around $3,000 to $4,000 per month. Managing this expense is tough, especially...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure DDoS Protection?

The dashboard lacks insights and user-friendliness, as most data is logged into metrics like Log Analytics workspaces...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 21% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 4% of the time

Fortinet FortiDDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

Prolexic vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Azure Firewall vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 7% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure DDoS Protection Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

April 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

April 2025

Download AWS Shield product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure DDoS Protection

April 2025

Download Azure DDoS Protection product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“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. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Azure DDoS Protection, combined with application design best practices, provides defense against DDoS attacks.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

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

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Azure DDoS Protection

March 2025

Free Report: AWS Shield vs. Azure DDoS Protection

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Azure DDoS Protection and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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