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Akamai vs Bunny Shield

A detailed comparison to help you choose between Akamai and Bunny Shield.

Quick Verdict

4.1/5

Akamai

0 reviews

3.8/5

Bunny Shield

0 reviews

Akamai is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.8). Akamai invented the CDN industry in 1998. 340,000+ servers in 130+ countries. Enterprise CDN, edge security, and media delivery at massive scale. Acquired Linode for cloud compute. Bunny Shield is the security layer of Bunny.net: WAF, DDoS mitigation, rate limiting, bot detection, access lists, and upload scanning for sites and APIs served through Bunny's edge network. Free Basic tier; Advanced $9.50/month, Business $99/month.

Akamai

Akamai

The original CDN — 4,400+ edge PoPs across 130+ countries

Bunny Shield

Bunny Shield

DDoS protection and Web Application Firewall for content delivery

Overview
Rating4.1 (0 reviews)✓3.8 (0 reviews)
Pricing modelpaidfreemium
Starting priceFree tier availableFree tier available
Best forGlobal media and streaming platforms, gaming backends, and attack-prone enterprises that need the largest edge footprint and top-tier DDoS scrubbing under enterprise contractsBunny CDN customers — especially UGC and media platforms — who want WAF, bot, and rate-limit protection without a second security vendor
Features
IPv6✓
DDoS protection
Automated backups
Snapshots
Managed option
Bare metal
GPU available
S3-compatible
Hourly billing
Free tier✓
Tags
Tags
ddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter
free tierddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter
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Akamai

Pros

  • + Unmatched edge reach: 4,400+ PoPs across 130+ countries and 1,200+ networks
  • + Prolexic DDoS scrubbing is the industry reference: 20+ Tbps dedicated capacity, zero-second mitigation, 100% platform availability SLA
  • + Two decades-plus of delivery track record at the largest media and event scale
  • + Aggressive egress pricing on the Akamai Cloud compute side, inherited from the Linode acquisition
  • + Edge compute (EdgeWorkers, Functions) plus core and distributed compute regions under one network

Cons

  • - No public pricing — quote-based enterprise procurement with real sales-cycle overhead
  • - Not an option for individuals, small businesses, or anyone who wants self-serve onboarding
  • - Dense, modular product catalog that is easy to over-buy or misconfigure
  • - Volume commitments can make traffic overruns expensive
  • - Compute breadth is thin compared with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
View full Akamaireview →

Bunny Shield

Pros

  • + Free Basic tier is genuinely protective: 71 WAF rules, 25M requests/month, upload scanning included
  • + Full published feature matrix with explicit overage rates — pricing clarity above the category norm
  • + Runs on the same 119-center edge as Bunny CDN, so protection adds no second network hop
  • + Upload scanning for malware and CSAM is rare outside enterprise UGC platforms' tooling
  • + API Guardian validates and authenticates API traffic at the edge before it reaches origin

Cons

  • - Only protects properties served through Bunny's network — no stand-alone mode
  • - Bot mitigation and inspection depth tier-gated: complex bots require the $99/month Business plan
  • - Custom WAF rules capped at 10 (Advanced) and 25 (Business); access lists capped by entries
  • - Request-based billing keeps metering during attacks unless limits are configured
  • - Younger product with less community depth and fewer documented edge cases than Cloudflare's WAF
View full Bunny Shieldreview →

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