10 Best DDoS Protection platforms in 2024 (free and paid)

A DDoS attack can harm or even cripple your online business. Discover the top 10 DDoS protection platforms to help safeguard your assets and stop bad actors in their tracks.

DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks are a big challenge faced by most online businesses. A DDoS attack simply disables a website or application by overloading it with requests.

A website that receives 1,000 requests per day on average, might suddenly find itself trying to handle 500,000+ requests every second. Some attacks even go into the millions of requests per second. Worldwide, there were over 10 million estimated DDoS attacks in 2022, with businesses risking losses of $100,000+ for each hour under attack.

DDoS protection systems work by analyzing web traffic to detect abnormalities and take respective actions. This post explores the 10 best DDoS protection platforms and includes tips and tricks to help you get maximum security for your business website or other investments.

DDoS Protection Choosing Tips

Choosing the right DDoS protection platform can be a difficult affair, as there are many issues to consider.

  • Identify Your Needs: Are you looking to protect a single application, a website, or a network of connected services? Know your needs first and decide on the most comprehensive protection to seek.
  • Consider Scalability: All DDoS attacks are not equal, some are bigger than the rest, while others are massive. Ensure that your chosen platform has the network capacity to automatically scale and meet the size and complexity of possible attacks.
  • Analyze Cost Vs Value: This one depends on your situation and individual needs. You need to analyze the DDoS protection platform prices and the coverage they offer to make sure that they are worth it for you or your business.
  • Customer Support: You want customer service that is fully available during an attack. So, make sure to check the quality of the platform’s support system before signing up.

Best DDoS Protection Platforms

RankNameHighlightsLocationPricingWebsite
1.CloudflarePopular, CDN, edgeCloudFreemiumcloudflare.com
2.AppTranaScanning, remediationCloud$99/mindusface.com
3.AWS ShieldCustomized, always onCloudFreemiumaws.amazon
4.SucuriMalware removalsCloud$9.99/msucuri.net
5.AkamaiEnterprise solutionsHybridVariesakamai.com 
6.Google Cloud ArmorGoogle Cloud solutionCloudPAYGcloud.google.com
7.Link11Fast AI-based solutionCloudVarieslink11.com 
8.ImpervaComprehensive featuresCloudVariesimperva.com 
9.Edge NextTailored solutionsCloud/EdgeBy requestedgenext.com
10.AzureAzure client’s solutionCloudPAYGazure.microsoft.com
FAQs

1. Cloudflare

Best For: All business sizes

Features:

  • Robust DDoS protection for all websites
  • The content delivery network is included
  • Customizable web application firewall rules
  • Load balancing and traffic analysis

Deployment: Cloud

Price: Freemium, from $20 per month

Free Trial: By request

Cloudflare is a cloud-based content delivery network with edge-hosting services that offers DDoS protection using a freemium model. The network processes over 46 million HTTP requests per second, with 30% of the Fortune 1000 companies relying on their service.

Hobby users and non-business critical applications can use the system’s free tier and profit from its many services. You get free DNS, unmetered DDoS protection, CDN, a universal SSL certificate, and a web application firewall.

The Pro plan costs $20 per month, while the Business plan costs $200. Each includes more features – such as image optimization, accelerated mobile pages, and up to 20-page rules on the Pro plan, while the Free plan includes only 3 page rules. Also, Cloudflare’s Free plan can only handle simple bots, while the Pro plan can manage more advanced bots, and so on. 

In addition to its standard plans, Cloudflare further offers additional CDN features at extra cost. These include load balancing, smart routing, caching, and more.

2. AppTrana

Best For: Security scanning & remediation, real-time alerts

Features:

  • Unlimited DDoS and bot protection
  • Web application firewall to filter and monitor traffic
  • Real-time threat monitoring and alerts
  • Vulnerability assessment and automated remediation

Deployment: Cloud

Price: From $99 per month

Free Trial: 14 days

AppTrana is a comprehensive security solution that offers a range of features to protect your web applications from diverse threats. It includes a web application firewall, a managed CDN, unmetered DDoS mitigation, bot protection, minimal downtime, and a zero false-positive promise.

The AppTrana platform utilizes AI learning techniques to deliver a quality threat detection system. It offers real-time alerts, vulnerability detection and instant patches, API security, and 24×7 customer support.

Over 5,000 customers in 95 countries trust AppTrana. Plans start from $99 per month and app for the Advance plan with 2 custom rules, while the Premium plan costs $399 per month with unlimited rules and many more extras.

3. AWS Shield

Best For: AWS customers

Features:

  • Free level 3 & 4 protection for AWS customers
  • Application layer protection is also available
  • Always-on global DDoS protection

Deployment: Cloud/Premise

Price: Freemium

Free Trial: Available

AWS Shield is an Amazon web services solution that enables you to automatically detect and mitigate sophisticated DDoS threats. It helps you gain lots of insights into your AWS resources and is highly customizable.

You can monitor and protect up to 1,000 resource types using AWS Shield. There are the Standard and the Advanced plans. AWS Shield Standard is free for all AWS customers and includes comprehensive protection for layer 3 and 4 attacks. Higher levels of protection against application attacks require an Advanced subscription.

Obviously, AWS Shield is the best solution for Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers, but the Advanced plan can also be employed to protect assets outside of AWS.

4. Sucuri

Best For: Hacked websites

Features:

  • DDoS protection and web firewall
  • Hack & malware removal by experts
  • Security monitoring

Deployment: Cloud/Premise

Price: From $9.99 per month

Free Trial: 30 days

Sucuri is a website security and performance platform that offers DDoS protection, web application firewalls, website backups, monitoring, and performance boosts.

Its Basic Firewall plan costs $9.99 per month and covers just one site. There is also a Pro Firewall plan with $19.98 per month.

However, the major plans start at $199 per year for the Basic Platform and $299 per year for the Pro Platform plans. These platform plans cover unlimited malware and hack removals for one site, as well as ongoing security scans, malware, and other anomaly detection.

5. Akamai

Best For: Medium to enterprise clients

Features:

  • Various service packages to choose from
  • Simple and adaptive solutions
  • Flexible and reliable solutions for cloud and on-premises

Deployment: Cloud/Premise

Price: Varies

Free Trial: 30 days

Akamai is a popular content delivery network provider with a wide range of services. In addition, it offers many security and optimization services, including its 3 major DDoS protection products – App & API protector, Prolexic, and Edge DNS.

The App & API protector package combines a web application firewall with API security, bot mitigation, and Layer 7 DDoS protection, while the Prolexic offers a flexible and comprehensive solution with 20+ Tbps dedicated defense capacity.

Akamai’s DDoS protection pricing is not fixed, as it depends on your needs. They offer a 30-day free trial though.

6. Google Cloud Amor

Best For: Google Cloud Customers

Features:

  • Google Scale DDoS and WAF
  • Adaptive protection and bot management
  • Pre-configured WAF rules
  • Also includes a managed tier

Deployment: Cloud

Price: Pay-as-you-go

Free Trial: Yes

Armor is the DDoS protection service of the Google Cloud Platform. Backed by the power and experience of Google, it was able to fend off a Layer 7 DDoS attack in June 2022 which peaked at 46 million requests per second.

Google Cloud customers can use Armor to leverage Google’s global scale and capacity for DDoS protection and web application firewalls running on a pay-as-you-go pricing model or using the Managed Protection option.

Armor is billed at $0.75 per 1 million requests or only $0.60 for requests with regional security policies. Security policies cost $5 per policy per month, while rules cost $1 per rule per month.

The Managed Protection Plus subscription starts from $3,000 per month and includes 100 protected resources with unlimited requests for one year.

7. Link11

Best For: AI-based detection

Features:

  • Fast AI-based solution
  • Thwarts unknown vector attacks in 10 seconds or less
  • 99.99% SLA uptime guarantee

Deployment: Cloud

Price: By request

Free Trial: N/A

Link11 uses a patented AI-based approach to provide zero time mitigation for known attack vectors and under 10 seconds for new ones.

The company offers two solutions – infrastructure DDoS and web DDoS protection. Combined, they provide 360-degree DDoS protection, with a 99.99% SLA guaranteed service uptime. Furthermore, Link11 is 100% compliant with the EU data protection directive.

8. Imperva

Best For: Comprehensive security solution

Features:

  • Comprehensive feature set
  • Multi-terabit scrubbing capacity
  • Effective against OWASP top 10 vulnerabilities
  • SLA of 99.999% availability

Deployment: Cloud

Price: Varies

Free Trial: Available

The Imperva DDoS protection platform offers a comprehensive solution for protecting applications, individual IPs, and networks against attacks.

It includes a multi-terabit scrubbing capacity, with full blocking at edge locations for attacks of any size. Imperva DDoS offers instant attack notifications via mail and SMS, easy network monitoring, and Layer 3, 4, and 7 attack management.

9. Edge Next

Best For: Tailored CDN solutions

Features:

  • Tailored CDN and DDoS protection solutions
  • Region-specific solutions
  • Highly customizable features

Deployment: Cloud/Premise

Price: BY request

Free Trial: N/A

Edge Next is a content delivery network that offers tailored solutions for specific industries – including gaming, telcos, e-commerce, e-learning, and entertainment. Edge Next also has region-specific solutions for the Middle East, China, and Southeast Asia.

The platform offers DDoS protection, multi-conditional filtering and access control, web page protection, traffic cleansing, and acceleration features.

10. Azure DDoS Protection

Best For: Microsoft/Azure clients

Features:

  • Works seamlessly with Azure services
  • Easy to deploy and manage
  • Detects even the most complex attacks

Deployment: Cloud

Price: PAYG

Free Trial: Yes

Microsoft and Azure clients will find the Azure DDoS protection solution a natural addition to their infrastructure, as it works seamlessly with other Azure services.

Basic DDoS protection on Azure is free and enabled by default. The standard plan, however, offers advanced features, including logging, alerting, and configurations. It can mitigate volumetric, protocol, and resource layer attacks.

DDoS Attacks FAQs

Here is a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about DDoS attacks and methods of protection.

Does DDoS protection work?

Yes, DDoS protection works in most cases to reduce the risk of a potential attack from becoming successful. However, since all attacks are not equal in complexity and intensity, 100% protection is unfortunately not possible.

Why do DDoS attacks occur?

Bad actors use DDoS attacks for many reasons, including extortion, knocking out a competitor, revenge, political reasons, distraction away from other issues, and promoting a particular ideology or cause.

What are the common types of DDoS attacks?

There are many types of DDoS attacks, and they include volumetric attacks like UDP and PING flooding, protocol attacks like SYN and DNS flooding, as well as application layer attacks like HTTP flooding and recursive GET attacks.

Can DDoS protection platforms impact legitimate traffic?

Yes, false positives can occur, leading DDoS protection platforms to impact legitimate traffic. This depends, however, on the effectiveness of the algorithms or techniques used.

Are there free DDoS protection services?

Yes, platforms such as AppTrana and Cloudflare offer free basic services.

Can I implement DDoS protection by myself?

A: Sure you can, but its efficiency is the issue. There are equally open-source solutions like CrowdSec and GateKeeper that you can work with.

Conclusion

Rounding up this list of the best DDoS protection platforms, you have seen the easy-to-use and highly flexible offers. You have equally seen the free and advanced systems designed for all business sizes.

Where you go from here and which service you choose is up to you, depending on your organization’s unique requirements or the value you place on security.

Receive techie stuffs

Tech trends, startup trends, reviews, online income, web tools and marketing once or twice monthly