Every category where a model named AWS Shield 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
DDoS protection	Network and edge	0%	4 of 51	12%	59	accepted challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for AWS Shield 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 AWS Shield across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	2	0	0	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	3	0	0	3
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	5	0	1	6
Perplexity Sonar	0	3	0	0	3
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	5	0	0	5
Mistral Small	1	3	1	0	5
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	4	1	2	7
Llama 4 Maverick	0	1	2	0	3
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	4	1	2	7
Kimi K2	0	4	1	2	7
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	6	0	0	6
MiniMax M2.5	0	5	0	0	5

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

Direct27 labelsNone

Paraphrase31 labelsNone

Comparative36 labels1not counted in share

Budget-constrained33 labelsNone

Scale-constrained21 labels1

Negative18 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative166 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 3 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.

“Cloudflare, Akamai Prolexic, and AWS Shield are noted for offering unmetered or more predictable pricing” Mistral Small · DDoS · negative prompt · first choice

“Use cloud‑native protection (AWS Shield Standard, Azure DDoS Basic) if you’re running workloads in those clouds.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · DDoS · budget prompt · alternative

“If your infrastructure is already on AWS: - AWS Shield Standard ($0) — automatic L3/L4 protection” DeepSeek V4 Flash · DDoS · budget prompt · alternative

“AWS Shield/Azure DDoS Protection - If you're already heavily invested in AWS or Azure infrastructure” MiniMax M2.5 · DDoS · paraphrase 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.

“What to Avoid on a Limited Budget ... AWS Shield Advanced: ~$3,000/month” Kimi K2 · DDoS · budget prompt · hard negative

“Do not upgrade to AWS Shield Advanced, which costs $3,000/month” Gemini 3.5 Flash · DDoS · budget prompt · hard negative

“native shields (AWS Shield Advanced, Azure DDoS Protection) exist, they are often best used as a secondary layer behind a specialized provider” Qwen 3.7 Flash · DDoS · direct prompt · soft negative

“you would eventually need to pay for their advanced tiers (e.g., AWS Shield Advanced), which can get expensive ($3,000+/month)” Qwen 3.7 Flash · DDoS · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as AWS Shield, over the 157 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and AWS Shield was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Cloudflare156 of 157135Not in the top three

Akamai Prolexic116 of 1576Not in the top three

Imperva89 of 1571Not in the top three

Azure DDoS Protection87 of 1570Not in the top three

Radware59 of 1570Not in the top three

Sucuri41 of 1571Not in the top three

Google Cloud Armor40 of 1570Not in the top three

Fastly31 of 1570Not in the top three

Flowtriq16 of 1570Not in the top three

Gcore14 of 1570Not 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 AWS Shield. 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 131 of the 157 answers that named AWS Shield and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cybersecuritynews.com101

cyberpress.org97

flowtriq.com87

esecurityplanet.com57

gartner.com53

geekflare.com46

cloudminister.com44

myrasecurity.com39

expertinsights.com29

radware.com29

582 of the 582 domain citations in answers naming AWS Shield came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cybersecuritynews.com/ddos-protection-tools100

cyberpress.org/ddos-protection-services-to-consider93

esecurityplanet.com/products/distributed-denial-of-service-ddos-protection-vendors56

gartner.com/reviews/market/ddos-mitigation-solutions53

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/ddos-protection-service46

cloudminister.com/blog/a-technical-comparison-of-ddos-protection-services-cloudflare-aws-s44

flowtriq.com/ddos-protection-facts40

flowtriq.com/blog/best-cloud-ddos-protection38

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as AWS Shield

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as AWS Shield; a claim can dispute any of them.

AWS Shield Advanced 16AWS Shield Standard 7AWS Shield (Advanced) 3AWS Shield (Standard) 2AWS Shield & AWS WAF 1AWS Shield Standard + Premium 1Shield Advanced 1

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 AWS Shield'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 AWS Shield, 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 aws.amazon.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.