Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cloudflare vs Google Cloud DNS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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
Ranking in Managed DNS
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Google Cloud DNS
Ranking in Managed DNS
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 35.5%, up from 34.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud DNS is 6.4%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed DNS
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Shikar Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Constantly improving and adapting to customer needs
The effectiveness of Google Cloud DNS largely depends on where an organization stands in its cloud journey and its overall technology landscape. For those heavily invested in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and already embracing cloud solutions, Google Cloud DNS can be rated quite high, ranging from seven to nine out of ten.Deployment times for Google Cloud DNS can vary depending on the complexity of the infrastructure and configuration requirements. For straightforward setups and cloud-ready cases, deployment can typically be completed within a few minutes to an hour. However, in more complex infrastructure scenarios involving extensive configuration, deployment may take longer, possibly spanning days or weeks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"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 most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The scalability is good."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The tool is well integrated. We don’t need the interface of another provider. The product helps me manage my domain and write in Google Cloud."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"The most significant features are the internal and external endpoints using Google Cloud DNS, which are very beneficial for dependent apps."
"Google Cloud DNS continues to evolve based on customer feedback and technological advancements."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"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."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"More features around rules-based configurations would be beneficial."
"The cost of using Google Cloud DNS can be relatively high compared to other options, especially considering the cloud environment."
"It needs to provide better integration."
"The solution's price could be better."
"The UI is tricky to understand for people who have not worked with DNS records. People with little to no experience with DNS records can find it hard to understand. For example, you need to know the hallmarks to input records since they need to be matched in a specific format."
"Migrating away from Google Cloud DNS can be difficult."
"The UX of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"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 product's pricing is cheap."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The cost of using Google Cloud DNS can be relatively high compared to other options, especially considering the cloud environment. I would rate it 6 out of 10. Cheaper alternatives might be desirable, but the decision depends on various factors such as vendor lock-in, organizational adaptability, and alignment with other technologies in use."
"I am not sure about the pricing. However, I can give you a rough estimate which is like ten cents per month per zone."
"It is expensive but cost-effective."
"The product is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed DNS solutions are best for your needs.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

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 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 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.
What do you like most about Google Cloud DNS?
Google Cloud DNS continues to evolve based on customer feedback and technological advancements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud DNS?
Pricing and support are really good. There are no complaints about the pricing.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud DNS?
I am not heavily involved with Cloud DNS, but from an end-user perspective, the customization part could be improved. More features around rules-based configurations would be beneficial.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
MeilleursAgents
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Google Cloud DNS and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.