AWS Shield vs Google Cloud Armor
No clear leader: AWS Shield (49.6) and Google Cloud Armor (47.4) are within the 5-point margin; treat as a tie. The attribute-by-attribute breakdown below, with a source and date on every value, is the honest way to compare them.
Capabilities
Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for ddos protection. “-” means undocumented, not absent.
What each one is
The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.
AWS Shield
A managed DDoS protection service that provides automatic, real-time defense against distributed denial-of-service attacks. Offers a free standard tier for basic infrastructure protection and a premium tier with advanced threat detection, application-layer defense, and expert incident response.
Google Cloud Armor
A managed security service that protects applications from volumetric network attacks and application-layer threats using machine learning-based detection. It supports deployments on Google Cloud and hybrid or multicloud architectures, with integrated bot and fraud protection.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
AWS Shield
Free tier included with AWS account; Advanced tier available (pricing not specified in documentation)
- AWS Shield StandardFree
- Protection against common network and transport layer DDoS attacks
- Deterministic packet filtering
- Priority-based traffic shaping
- Works with CloudFront and Route 53
- AWS Shield Advanced-
- Automatic mitigation of sophisticated DDoS events
- Customized detection based on traffic patterns
- Application-layer attack detection (HTTP floods, DNS query floods)
- Real-time notifications via CloudWatch
- 24/7 Shield Response Team support
- +2 more
Google Cloud Armor
Two service tiers with monthly billing. Specific pricing not publicly listed; free credits available via Google Cloud.
- Standard-
- Enterprise-
Platform & deployment
Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.
Integrations
What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.
AWS Shield
- AWS WAF
- Amazon CloudFront
- Amazon Route 53
- Elastic IP
- Elastic Load Balancing
- AWS Global Accelerator
- Amazon CloudWatch
- AWS Firewall Manager
- Amazon EC2
Google Cloud Armor
- reCAPTCHA Enterprise
- Google Kubernetes Engine
- Cloud Monitoring
AWS Shield or Google Cloud Armor: which one depends on you
A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.
Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works
Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.