Every category where a model named Akamai App & API Protector for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Web application firewalls	Network and edge	0%	7 of 87	0%	8	under 10 labels · led by Cloudflare at 55%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Akamai App & API Protector yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Akamai App & API Protector across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	1	1	2
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	1	0	1
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	1	0	1
Mistral Small	0	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	0	0	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	0	1
Kimi K2	0	1	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct5 labels1

Paraphrase6 labels5

Comparative13 labels1not counted in share

Budget-constrained5 labelsNone

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative4 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative34 labels in all, every segment counted; 6 of the 7 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Akamai and Imperva are the most complete WAAP platforms.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · WAF · comparative prompt · first choice

“Enterprise-scale WAF from a CDN pioneer, with advanced threat intelligence and global infrastructure.” Mistral Small · WAF · comparative prompt · alternative

“Choose Akamai if you are a massive global enterprise with complex traffic demands” Gemini 3.5 Flash · WAF · comparative prompt · alternative

“Choose Akamai if you are a large enterprise needing the highest scale DDoS protection” Kimi K2 · WAF · comparative prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Akamai App & API Protector, over the 34 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Akamai App & API Protector was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS WAF25 of 340Not in the top three

Cloudflare WAF17 of 349Not in the top three

Fastly Next-Gen WAF14 of 341Not in the top three

Imperva13 of 340Not in the top three

Fortinet FortiWeb11 of 340Not in the top three

Google Cloud Armor9 of 340Not in the top three

Cloudflare8 of 344Not in the top three

F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF7 of 340Not in the top three

Radware Cloud WAF7 of 340Not in the top three

Microsoft Azure WAF5 of 340Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Akamai App & API Protector. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 29 of the 34 answers that named Akamai App & API Protector and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

expertinsights.com24

cybersecuritynews.com21

wafplanet.com20

openappsec.io16

imperva.com15

cyberpress.org13

guptadeepak.com13

radware.com12

guideflow.com8

akamai.comYour site7

142 of the 149 domain citations in answers naming Akamai App & API Protector came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-web-application-firewalls24

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-solutions/amp16

wafplanet.com/15

imperva.com/blog/best-waap-solutions14

openappsec.io/post/best-waf-solutions-in-2024-2025-real-world-comparison14

cyberpress.org/waf-solutions-by-business-size13

guptadeepak.com/tools/top-5-waf-web-application-firewall-tools-202613

cybersecuritynews.com/best-web-application-firewall-waf11

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Akamai App & API Protector's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Akamai App & API Protector, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at akamai.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.