# DDoS protection for small business buyers: what AI models recommend, September 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "DDoS protection service" and as "DDoS mitigation provider", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a small B2B company. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/network/ddos-protection/smb/

**Standing:** Cloudflare leads with 89% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 45 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloudflare | 89% | 0% | 71 |
| 2 | Gcore | 4% | 9% | 11 |
| 3 | Sucuri | 2% | 0% | 37 |
| 4 | AWS Shield | 2% | 14% | 56 |
| 5 | Azure DDoS Protection | 2% | 13% | 23 |
| 6 | Flowtriq | 0% | 0% | 13 |
| 7 | Google Cloud Armor | 0% | 12% | 17 |
| 8 | Fastly | 0% | 33% | 12 |
| 9 | Imperva | 0% | 50% | 24 |
| 10 | Radware | 0% | 73% | 15 |
| 11 | Akamai Prolexic | 0% | 67% | 36 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: Cloudflare; alternatives AWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Gcore, Imperva
- GPT-5.4 mini: Cloudflare; alternatives AWS Shield, Akamai Prolexic, Azure DDoS Protection, Google Cloud Armor
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Cloudflare; alternatives Indusface AppTrana, Sucuri
- Perplexity Sonar: Cloudflare; alternatives Gcore, Sucuri
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Cloudflare; alternatives AWS Shield, Sucuri
- Mistral Small: Cloudflare; alternatives Gcore
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Cloudflare; alternatives AWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Google Cloud Armor
- Llama 4 Maverick: Cloudflare, Gcore
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Cloudflare; alternatives Gcore
- Kimi K2: Cloudflare; alternatives AWS Shield, Sucuri
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Cloudflare; alternatives AWS Shield, Sucuri
- MiniMax M2.5: Cloudflare; alternatives AWS Shield, Azure DDoS Protection, Radware

## Sources the answers cite

62 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- cyberpress.org: 50 answers, 54 citations
- flowtriq.com: 42 answers, 91 citations
- cybersecuritynews.com: 41 answers, 41 citations
- geekflare.com: 33 answers, 33 citations
- esecurityplanet.com: 25 answers, 30 citations
- indusface.com: 16 answers, 18 citations
- cloudflare.com: 15 answers, 23 citations
- gartner.com: 15 answers, 15 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://cyberpress.org/ddos-protection-services-to-consider (48 answers)
- https://cybersecuritynews.com/ddos-protection-tools (41 answers)
- https://geekflare.com/cybersecurity/ddos-protection-service (33 answers)
- https://esecurityplanet.com/products/distributed-denial-of-service-ddos-protection-vendors (25 answers)
- https://flowtriq.com/ddos-protection-facts (25 answers)
- https://flowtriq.com/blog/best-cloud-ddos-protection (17 answers)
- https://gartner.com/reviews/market/ddos-mitigation-solutions (15 answers)
- https://eastbaycyber.com/content/compare-best-ddos-protection-services-2026 (13 answers)
- https://comparitech.com/net-admin/best-ddos-protection-service (12 answers)
- https://flowtriq.com/blog/ddos-protection-small-business (12 answers)

## Warned against

- Akamai Prolexic: 24 of 36 labels 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: 11 of 15 labels 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: 12 of 24 labels negative. "Avoid these for now. These solutions are designed for large corporations" (Gemini 3.5 Flash, paraphrase prompt)
- AWS Shield: 8 of 56 labels negative. "What to Avoid: ... AWS Shield Advanced ($3,000/month) – Only justified if you're a heavy AWS user" (Kimi K2, direct prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.