IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index › Network and edge › DDoS › Small business › September 2026 Edition

DDoS protection for small business buyers

Asked as “DDoS protection service”, and as “DDoS mitigation provider”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 45 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Cloudflare
Clear leader
89% of first choices, clear leader.
ShowinginAll 67 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businessCloudflare89%Clear leaderThis pageMid-marketCloudflare93%Clear leaderStanding →EnterpriseCloudflare80%Clear leaderStanding →

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Cloudflare89%0%71endorsed leader
02Gcore4%9%11accepted challenger
03Sucuri2%0%37accepted challenger
04AWS Shield2%14%56accepted challenger
05Azure DDoS Protection2%13%23accepted challenger
Show the six products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
10Radware0%73%15criticized challenger
11Akamai Prolexic0%67%36criticized challenger
09Imperva0%50%24criticized challenger
08Fastly0%33%12criticized challenger
07Google Cloud Armor0%12%17accepted challenger
06Flowtriq0%0%13accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.

One product takes 89% of first choices here, so the chart would put ten markers in one corner and one at the far edge. The two measurements it plots are columns in the standing above: share, and the negative label rate. Four products carry a negative rate above 25% in this category. Jump to the standing

02What they warned about

Ten of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Mistral Small and Llama 4 Maverick changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Akamai Prolexic
67%
24 of 36 labels negative · 12 of 12 models · 8 hard negative
“Akamai Prolexic is not suitable for small businesses due to its high cost and extensive features that exceed typical small business needs” Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt
Radware
73%
11 of 15 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“**Avoid over-paying** – services like Akamai Prolexic, Radware, and F5 are excellent for massive enterprises but are rarely justified for a small team.” GLM 4.7 FlashX, comparative prompt
Imperva
50%
12 of 24 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“**Avoid these for now.** These solutions are designed for large corporations” Gemini 3.5 Flash, paraphrase prompt
AWS Shield
14%
8 of 56 labels negative · 5 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“What to Avoid: ... AWS Shield Advanced ($3,000/month) – Only justified if you're a heavy AWS user” Kimi K2, direct prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

62 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 5 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 687 links across 120 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

cyberpress.org
50 answers · 54 citations · 10 models
flowtriq.com
vendor site · Flowtriq42 answers · 91 citations · 10 models
cybersecuritynews.com
41 answers · 41 citations · 10 models
geekflare.com
33 answers · 33 citations · 9 models
esecurityplanet.com
25 answers · 30 citations · 10 models
indusface.com
vendor site · Indusface16 answers · 18 citations · 6 models
cloudflare.com
vendor site · Cloudflare15 answers · 23 citations · 8 models
gartner.com
15 answers · 15 citations · 6 models
g2.com
13 answers · 18 citations · 7 models
eastbaycyber.com
13 answers · 13 citations · 7 models
comparitech.com
12 answers · 12 citations · 7 models
technwz.com
11 answers · 13 citations · 7 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

cyberpress.org/ddos-protection-services-to-consider
48 answers · 10 models
cybersecuritynews.com/ddos-protection-tools
41 answers · 10 models
geekflare.com/cybersecurity/ddos-protection-service
33 answers · 9 models
esecurityplanet.com/products/distributed-denial-of-service-ddos-protection-…
25 answers · 10 models
flowtriq.com/ddos-protection-facts
25 answers · 9 models
flowtriq.com/blog/best-cloud-ddos-protection
17 answers · 8 models
gartner.com/reviews/market/ddos-mitigation-solutions
15 answers · 6 models
eastbaycyber.com/content/compare-best-ddos-protection-services-2026
13 answers · 7 models
comparitech.com/net-admin/best-ddos-protection-service
12 answers · 7 models
flowtriq.com/blog/ddos-protection-small-business
12 answers · 7 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best DDoS protection service for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which DDoS mitigation provider would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top DDoS protection services for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best DDoS protection service for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating a DDoS protection service. What should we look at?”Negative“Which DDoS protection services should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Cloudflare
Four alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Gcore, Imperva
CloudflareHeld
One alternativeAkamai Prolexic
Cloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Flowtriq
Cloudflare
Three alternativesFlowtriq, Indusface AppTrana, Sucuri
no first choiceagainst: Akamai Prolexic
GPT-5.4 miniCloudflare
Five alternativesAWS Shield, Akamai Prolexic, Azure DDoS Protection, Google Cloud Armor, Radware
CloudflareHeld
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Google Cloud Armor
against: Akamai ProlexicCloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection
against: FastlyCloudflare
One alternativeAWS
against: Google Cloud Armorno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashCloudflare
Two alternativesIndusface AppTrana, Sucuri
against: AWS Shield, Azure DDoS ProtectionCloudflareHeld
Two alternativesIndusface AppTrana, Sucuri
against: AWS Shield, Akamai Prolexic, ImpervaCloudflare
Five alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Fastly, Project Shield, Sucuri
against: AWS ShieldCloudflare
Six alternativesAWS Shield, AWS WAF, Azure DDoS Protection, Gcore, Google Cloud Armor, Sucuri
Cloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Imperva, Sucuri
against: Akamai Prolexic, Imperva, Radware
Perplexity SonarCloudflare
Two alternativesGcore, Sucuri
CloudflareHeld
One alternativeFlowtriq
against: Akamai Prolexic, RadwareCloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Google Cloud Armor, Sucuri
against: Imperva, RadwareCloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Flowtriq
no first choiceagainst: AWS Shield, Akamai Prolexic, Azure DDoS Protection, Fastly, Google Cloud Armor, Imperva/App Protect, NETSCOUT Arbor, Radware
Grok 4.1 FastCloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Sucuri
against: Akamai Prolexic, ImpervaCloudflareHeld
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Sucuri
against: ImpervaCloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Gcore, Sucuri
against: Akamai Prolexic, ImpervaCloudflare
Four alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Google Cloud Armor, Sucuri
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAWS Shield, Akamai Prolexic, Imperva, Sucuri
against: Akamai Prolexic, DDoS-Guard, Gcore, Hyperfilter, OhzCloud, Path.net
Mistral SmallCloudflare
One alternativeGcore
Cloudflare, GcoreChanged
One alternativeFlowtriq
against: Akamai ProlexicCloudflare
Four alternativesAWS Shield, Flowtriq, Google Cloud Armor, Sucuri
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Flowtriq, Google Cloud Armor
no first choicenothing named
DeepSeek V4 FlashCloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Google Cloud Armor
against: Akamai Prolexic, RadwareCloudflareHeld
Four alternativesAWS Shield, Imperva, Indusface AppTrana, Sucuri
AWS Shield, Cloudflare
Two alternativesAzure DDoS Protection, Google Cloud Armor
against: Akamai Prolexic, ImpervaCloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Sucuri
against: AWS Shield, Akamai ProlexicCloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Fastly, Imperva
against: Akamai Prolexic, Radwareagainst: Akamai Prolexic, Radware
Llama 4 MaverickCloudflare, Gcoreno first choiceChangedCloudflare
Two alternativesGcore, Sucuri
Sucuri
Two alternativesCloudflare, Flowtriq
Cloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Akamai Prolexic
against: Akamai Prolexic
Qwen 3.7 FlashCloudflare
One alternativeGcore
against: Akamai ProlexicCloudflareHeld
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Bunny.net
Cloudflare
Four alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Google Cloud Armor, Sucuri
against: Imperva, RadwareCloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Sucuri
against: Fail2ban, UFWAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protectionagainst: CentrixNodes, DDoS-Guard, Webyne, koddos.net
Kimi K2Cloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Sucuri
against: AWS Shield, Akamai ProlexicCloudflareHeld
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Sucuri
against: AWS Shield, Akamai Prolexic, Fastly, ImpervaCloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Sucuri
against: ImpervaCloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Sucuri
Cloudflare
One alternativeAWS Shield
against: NETSCOUT Arbor, Radwareagainst: Akamai Prolexic, DDoS-Guard, F5 Distributed Cloud DDoS, Gcore DDoS Protection
GLM 4.7 FlashXCloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Sucuri
against: ImpervaCloudflareHeld
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Sucuri
against: Akamai Prolexic, ImpervaCloudflare
Five alternativesAWS Shield, Fastly, Google Cloud Armor, Imperva DDoS Protection, Sucuri
against: Akamai Prolexic, Azure DDoS Protection, F5, Nexusguard, RadwareCloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Sucuri
no first choiceagainst: Gcore DDoS Protection
MiniMax M2.5Cloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Radware
CloudflareHeld
Three alternativesFlowtriq, Gcore, Sucuri
Cloudflare
Two alternativesAWS Shield, Sucuri
Cloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Flowtriq
Cloudflare
Three alternativesAWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Imperva
against: AWS Shield, Akamai Prolexic, F5 Silverline, Fastly, Radwareagainst: Akamai Prolexic
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:31yes910 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:03yes34 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:58yes716 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:27yes206 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:15yes149 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:02yes55 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 14:11yes811 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:03yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:32yes1448 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:13yes1224 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:24yes13310 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:11yes523 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:17yes98 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:25yes37 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:11yes1224 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:17yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:37yes1512 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:33yes54 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:42yes1519 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:58yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:30yes534 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:27no036 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:42yes1046 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:53yes1022 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:57yes1712 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:00yes78 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:15yes1525 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:32yes209 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 14:02yes2618 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:46yes58 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:02yes1626 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:13yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 14:12yes526 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:16yes1449 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:41yes1175 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:24yes829 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:31yes99 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:23yes54 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:53yes1622 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:01yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:42yes2613 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:30yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 14:04yes1018 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:50yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:04no037 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:52yes1032 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:56yes24136 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:11yes526 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:02no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:12no012 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:06no012 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:40yes2010 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:53yes129 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:20no07 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:05yes717 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:37yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:30no035 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:35no052 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:50yes1321 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:52no078 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:03yes1712 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:11no04 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:05yes2327 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:45yes2011 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:51yes3216 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:08yes139 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:38yes1822 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:58yes52 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:47yes1447 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:59yes2241 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:19yes2640 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:44yes518 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
Akamai read as Akamai Prolexic
Akamai (Prolexic) read as Akamai Prolexic
Azure DDoS read as Azure DDoS Protection
Google Cloud read as Google Cloud Armor
Netscout read as NETSCOUT Arbor
Unresolved, counted raw
CentrixNodes
F5 Distributed Cloud DDoS
F5 Silverline
Imperva/App Protect
UFW (Uncomplicated Firewall)
koddos.net
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in network and edge

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
← CDNFirewalls →