Azure DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare One comparison

Microsoft and Cloudflare are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Microsoft is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0, while Cloudflare is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7. Microsoft holds a 4.0% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Cloudflare’s 4.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Cloudflare users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 2025

Azure DDoS Protection and Cloudflare One compete in cloud security, with Azure preferred for integration with the Azure ecosystem, while Cloudflare is favored for its comprehensive feature set and simplicity in configuration.

Features: Azure integrates well with other Azure tools like Firewall and Front Door and offers strong defense against DDoS attacks with scalable solutions. Cloudflare highlights include an advanced rate-limiting feature, integration of WAF, CDN, and zero-trust solutions, all managed through a single console.

Room for Improvement: Azure needs to improve reporting and visibility of metrics and optimize resource consumption to avoid bandwidth issues. Users also desire better configuration experiences. Cloudflare's onboarding process can be initially confusing, WAF rules lack depth, and the company should aim to enhance pricing transparency and support response times.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure allows seamless deployment within its cloud infrastructure, though customer service depends on support tiers and sometimes encounters delays. Cloudflare provides straightforward deployment backed by good documentation, though initial setups may challenge some users and could benefit from improved customer engagement.

Pricing and ROI: Azure suits organizations with large public IP needs, offering cost-effective coverage through subscriptions, though its higher costs are challenging for smaller firms. Cloudflare is generally seen as affordable with competitive licensing and transparent pricing, although setup costs for large deployments can be high. Both show good ROI potential, with Cloudflare standing out for budget-conscious users.

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure DDoS Protection vs. Cloudflare One

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 Azure DDoS Protection is 4.0%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare One is 4.1%, down from 4.6% 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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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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Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

The solution enables seamless security management and fosters a learning environment

Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions. For the solution stopping us for e-learning, I appreciate the concept yet need more resources or courses in Mexico, preferably in Spanish. Certifications are easy, however, I require more real-world environments and instructors.

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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

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."

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

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

More Cloudflare pros

"AI capabilities are very good. I would rate them an eight out of ten."

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

"The Azure DDoS Protection plan is essential for environments like ours that are highly exposed to potential attacks, especially since DDoS attacks have become common."

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

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

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

More Azure DDoS Protection pros

"Cloudflare is by far the most effective solution that I have come across."

"Enables me to work from two locations."

"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."

"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."

"It is a stable solution."

"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform removes the risk of exposing the applications to the public."

"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."

More Cloudflare One pros

Cons

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

"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."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

More Cloudflare cons

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Azure DDoS Protection could improve on the reporting."

"Feedback could be enhanced."

"The software has automated alerts, but the automated alerts are not available in the mobile app."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."

"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."

"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."

"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."

"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."

"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."

More Cloudflare One cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"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."

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

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

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"The price is reasonable."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The solution is not that expensive."

"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."

"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."

"The prices are slightly expensive."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."

"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

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 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...

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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

What do you like most about Cloudflare Access?

The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Access?

The price of Cloudflare Access is the same as compared to Akamai, but I get better performance from Cloudflare. My co...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?

Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...

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

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

AWS Shield vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 29% of the time

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

More Azure DDoS Protection Competitors

Twingate vs Cloudflare One

Compared 10% of the time

AWS Shield vs Cloudflare One

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cloudflare One

Compared 7% of the time

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 7% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 5% of the time

More Cloudflare One Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Azure DDoS Protection

March 2025

Download Azure DDoS Protection product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One

March 2025

Download Cloudflare One product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform

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

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

Cloudflare One is a single-vendor Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that enables Zero Trust security and any-to-any connectivity across enterprise applications, users, devices, and networks. Cloudflare One helps organizations simplify, modernize, and consolidate their IT architecture by converging security and networking services on our single global network and control plane.

Many organizations start by adopting our Security Service Edge (SSE) services — like ZTNA, SWG, CASB, and DLP — to reduce their attack surface, stop threats like phishing and ransomware, protect data, and apply identity-based Zero Trust verification across web, SaaS, and private app environments. Others prioritize simplifying network connectivity across offices, data centers, and cloud environments with our WANaaS.

Every service is available for customers to run in every location across Cloudflare’s global network, which today spans 330+ cities in 120+ countries, so you can scale connectivity with fast, consistent protections everywhere.

Cloudflare

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

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Buyer's Guide

Azure DDoS Protection vs. Cloudflare One

March 2025

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