Bunny Shield vs Akamai
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Bunny Shield and Akamai.
Quick Verdict
3.8/5
Bunny Shield
0 reviews
4.1/5
Akamai
0 reviews
Akamai is rated higher (4.1 vs 3.8). 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 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 DDoS protection and Web Application Firewall for content delivery |  Akamai The original CDN — 4,400+ edge PoPs across 130+ countries | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.8 (0 reviews) | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | paid |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | Bunny CDN customers — especially UGC and media platforms — who want WAF, bot, and rate-limit protection without a second security vendor | Global media and streaming platforms, gaming backends, and attack-prone enterprises that need the largest edge footprint and top-tier DDoS scrubbing under enterprise contracts |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ✓ | |
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter | ddos protectioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter |
| Visit Bunny Shield → | Visit Akamai → | |
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
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
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