Best content delivery networks for bot management

Bot traffic makes up an increasingly large portion of internet traffic, some of it with malicious intent. As these bots become more sophisticated, organizations can turn to content delivery networks (CDNs) to help tackle bot management concerns. Because CDNs sit directly in the traffic path of bot traffic, where attacks can be detected and mitigated before they impact applications, CDN-based bot management serves as a great solution for organizations wishing to get a better handle on bot traffic. CDN-based bot management operates at the edge, stopping bad bots before they reach origin infrastructure. 

This guide provides key considerations for choosing the right CDN. 

What makes a CDN good for bot management?

A CDN is good for bot management when it can accurately detect malicious automation at scale, stop it early at the edge, and do so without impacting real users or performance. The most effective bot-management CDNs share several key characteristics:

Edge-based bot detection. A strong CDN stops bots before they reach your origin, analyzing traffic at the edge to reduce load, latency, and attack impact.

Behavioral analysis. Modern bots mimic real browsers. The best CDNs use:

• Request timing patterns

• Mouse/keyboard behavior

• Navigation flows

• Interaction anomalies

This allows detection of sophisticated bots that bypass basic rules.

Accurate bot classification. Top CDNs can distinguish:

• Bad bots (scrapers, credential stuffers, scalpers)

• Good bots (search engines, monitoring tools)

• Unknown automation (headless bots)

This minimizes false positives and protects SEO and integrations.

Real-time response and control. The best platforms enable:

• Instant blocking, rate limiting, or challenges

• Custom rules per endpoint or application

• Real-time visibility and tuning

Speed matters during active bot attacks.

Scalability under attack. Bot attacks often come in bursts. A good CDN can absorb massive traffic spikes without performance degradation or downtime.

Low latency and user transparency. Bot mitigation should be invisible to legitimate users, adding minimal latency and avoiding unnecessary CAPTCHAs or friction.

Strong threat intelligence. Access to global IP reputation, fingerprint databases, and attack telemetry improves detection accuracy across customers.

Integration with security controls. The best CDNs integrate bot management with:

• WAF rules

• DDoS mitigation

• API protection

• Identity and access controls

This creates layered, adaptive defense.

Observability and reporting. Clear dashboards, bot scoring, and logs allow teams to:

• Understand bot behavior

• Tune policies

• Prove ROI and security effectiveness

How CDNs handle bot management

• Edge security: They inspect traffic at their distributed points-of-presence (PoPs) before it reaches your origin server, stopping threats early.

• Detection techniques: Use machine learning, behavioral analysis, fingerprinting, and signature matching to spot bot patterns.

• Actionable controls: Allow blocking, challenging (with CAPTCHAs), or throttling malicious bots, while also managing good bots to optimize performance.

• Integration: Often integrate with specialized bot defense services for enhanced protection beyond standard CDN features.

What to look for in a CDN-based bot management solution 

Edge-based Protection
A CDN-based bot solution should stop bots at the CDN edge before they reach your origin, reducing load and latency.

Behavioral and ML-driven detection

It should be able to identify sophisticated bots using behavior analysis, fingerprinting, and/or machine learning, not just IPs or signatures.

Accurate bot classification
It should be able to clearly distinguish bad bots from good bots (search engines, monitoring tools) to minimize false positives.

Real-time response and control
It should enable instant blocking, rate limiting, or challenges as bot behavior changes.

Integrated security stack
It should work seamlessly with WAF, DDoS protection, and API security for layered defense.

Scalability under attack
It should handle traffic spikes and large-scale bot attacks without performance degradation.

Low impact on legitimate users
It should mitigate bots with minimal latency and avoid unnecessary friction for real users.

Visibility and analytics
It should provide clear insight into bot activity, trends, and mitigation effectiveness.

Customization and policy flexibility
It should allow fine-grained rules by endpoint, traffic type, or risk level.

API and mobile traffic protection
It should protect APIs and mobile endpoints, not just web pages.

Best CDN Providers for bot management

Fastly

Fastly’s bot management leverages their high-performance edge network to identify and mitigate automated threats before they reach your origin infrastructure. By combining real-time traffic inspection, behavior-based detection, and programmable edge logic, Fastly can distinguish malicious bots from legitimate users with precision, protecting APIs, web assets, and dynamic applications while preserving performance and user experience.

Key Capabilities

• Global edge-level detection and enforcement. Blocks bots at the network edge before they hit the origin.

• Behavioral and pattern analysis. Detects suspicious automation using request timing, navigation flow, and other behavior signals.

• Programmable edge logic. Users can customize bot handling workflows using edge compute.

• Real-time responses. With instant blocking, rate-limiting, or challenging of malicious traffic based on live conditions.

• High precision and low false positives. Fine-grained controls help differentiate between good bots and malicious ones.

• Scalable performance under load. Fastly handles traffic surges and bot floods without degrading performance.

• Observability and analytics. Real-time logs and metrics provide visibility into bot behavior and mitigation effectiveness.

• API and dynamic content protection.  Fastly applies bot controls to APIs and real-time content without breaking functionality.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare’s bot management uses a combination of global traffic intelligence, machine learning, and edge-level enforcement to detect and mitigate malicious automation in real time. By analyzing behavioral patterns, fingerprints, and request characteristics across its extensive global network, Cloudflare can accurately distinguish harmful bot traffic from legitimate users and beneficial crawlers, protecting web apps, APIs, and mobile traffic without slowing performance.

Key capabilities

Edge-level bot detection. Cloudflare Stops bots at the network edge before they reach origin servers.

Machine learning and behavioral analysis. Cloudflare uses traffic patterns and fingerprinting to identify sophisticated bots.

Bot scoring and risk assessment. Cloudflare assigns risk scores to requests, enabling tailored responses.

Real-time enforcement. Cloudflare instantly blocks, challenges, or rate-limits bot traffic.

API and mobile traffic protection. Cloudflare applies bot controls across web, API, and app endpoints.

Custom rules and policy tuning. The solution offers fine-grained rule sets per route, bot type, or application.

Analytics and visibility. Dashboards and logs enable insight into bot traffic volume and mitigation impact

Akamai

Akamai’s bot management leverages their global networks to identify and disrupt malicious automation before it ever reaches origin infrastructure. By combining global threat intelligence, behavioral analysis, and adaptive machine learning, Akamai detects complex bot activity at high volume with precision and scale.

Key capabilities

• Global threat intelligence. Leverages aggregated data across Akamai’s extensive network for high-fidelity bot detection.

• Edge-level enforcement. Blocks malicious bots before they reach origin infrastructure, reducing load and risk.

• Real-time response and custom policies. Enables instant mitigation and finely tuned rules by application or endpoint.

• Protection for APIs and mobile traffic. Extends bot controls across web, API, and mobile channels.

• Scalability for high-volume traffic. Designed to handle bursts, global events, and bot floods without performance impact.

• Reporting and Analytics . Provides insight into bot patterns, blocked traffic, and enforcement effectiveness.

Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront, the CDN offering from AWS, delivers bot management primarily through integration with AWS WAFand AWS Shield at the edge. While CloudFront itself focuses on global, low-latency content delivery, its bot protection is realized by combining edge-level traffic filtering, custom rule sets, and threat intelligence within AWS WAF, blocking malicious automation before it reaches your origin and reducing load on backend systems.

Key Capabilities

Edge-level filtering via AWS WAF. Blocks malicious traffic at CloudFront edge locations before it hits origin servers.

Custom rule sets. You can define tailored rules to identify and mitigate bot behavior.

Rate limiting and throttling. You can control excessive request rates typical of scraping or credential-stuffing bots.

Integration with AWS Shield. DDoS mitigation and bot detection support ensure layered protection.

Centralized AWS security management. Maintain bot policies alongside WAF, Shield, IAM, and other AWS security controls.

Vendor capability comparison chart 

How Fastly can help

Fastly Bot Management provides deep bot visibility and protection for today’s modern web. Fastly’s advanced intelligent bot detection gives you deep visibility into your bot traffic. It continuously updates a list of verified bots, analyzes server-side signals, and monitors client-side behavior to accurately distinguish between legitimate users, benign bots, and malicious ones. This helps catch even the most sophisticated bots, reduces false positives, and ensures you can confidently decide which bots to allow or block.