Estimate DDoS protection costs for AWS Shield Advanced, Cloudflare, or Azure DDoS Protection. Calculate subscription and data transfer surcharges.
DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks can overwhelm your infrastructure, causing outages that cost thousands per hour in lost revenue and reputation. Cloud DDoS protection services absorb attack traffic before it reaches your servers, but the premium services carry significant costs.
AWS Shield Standard is free and protects against common Layer 3/4 attacks. Shield Advanced costs $3,000/month with a one-year commitment and adds DDoS Response Team (DRT) support, advanced metrics, cost protection, and Layer 7 mitigation. Cloudflare includes DDoS protection in all plans (free tier included). Azure DDoS Protection Standard costs $2,944/month.
This calculator helps you estimate the total cost of DDoS protection including subscription fees and any data transfer surcharges during attacks. Use it to decide whether premium DDoS protection is justified for your risk profile.
This analytical approach supports proactive infrastructure management, helping teams avoid costly outages and maintain the service levels that users and business stakeholders depend on.
DDoS protection is expensive but can be critical for high-value applications. A major DDoS attack can cost $10,000–$100,000+ in downtime. This calculator helps you compare the cost of protection against the potential cost of unmitigated attacks to make an informed risk-based decision. Regular monitoring of this value helps DevOps teams detect anomalies early and maintain the system reliability and performance that users and business stakeholders expect.
Subscription = base_monthly_fee Resource Cost = protected_resources × per_resource_fee Transfer Surcharge = attack_transfer_GB × surcharge_rate Total Monthly = Subscription + Resource Cost + Transfer Surcharge
Result: $3,000.00/month
AWS Shield Advanced at $3,000/month flat fee. With Shield Advanced, there are no per-resource charges for the first 100 resources, and AWS absorbs the cost of scaling during DDoS attacks (cost protection). This gives you 24/7 DDoS Response Team access and WAF credits.
AWS Shield Standard: free, automatic Layer 3/4 protection. AWS Shield Advanced: $3,000/mo, adds DRT access, Layer 7, cost protection, advanced metrics. Cloudflare: free unlimited L3/4; Pro $20/mo for basic L7; Business $200/mo for advanced WAF+DDoS. Azure DDoS Standard: $2,944/mo for 100 resources. GCP Cloud Armor: $5/policy + $1/rule + $0.75/M requests.
Consider Shield Advanced or equivalent if: your application generates over $100K/month in revenue, you are in a frequently targeted industry (gaming, finance, e-commerce), you need compliance certifications requiring DDoS protection, or you have experienced attacks in the past. For smaller applications, Cloudflare's free tier provides excellent protection.
Regardless of protection level, have a documented response plan: escalation contacts, Shield Advanced DRT engagement procedures, traffic baseline documentation, and communication templates for customers. Conduct tabletop exercises quarterly to ensure the team can respond effectively under pressure.
For many workloads, yes. Shield Standard automatically protects against common SYN floods, UDP reflection, and other Layer 3/4 attacks at no cost. Upgrade to Advanced if you need: Layer 7 protection, 24/7 DRT access, cost protection during attacks, or advanced metrics.
Shield Advanced provides: 24/7 access to the DDoS Response Team, proactive engagement for detected events, advanced real-time metrics, cost protection (credits for DDoS-related scaling), and WAF credits. The fee covers your entire AWS Organization, not just one account.
Yes. Cloudflare's free plan includes unlimited Layer 3/4 DDoS mitigation with no traffic caps. Layer 7 protection (rate limiting, bot management) is included in paid plans starting at $20/month. Cloudflare has mitigated some of the largest DDoS attacks on record.
The Ponemon Institute estimates the average DDoS attack costs $40,000/hour in lost revenue and productivity. For e-commerce sites during peak hours, the cost can exceed $100,000/hour. Factor in reputation damage and the $3,000/month for protection may be a bargain.
During a DDoS attack, your infrastructure scales to absorb the traffic, increasing your AWS bill. Shield Advanced cost protection credits your account for the excess charges caused by the attack, covering EC2, ALB, CloudFront, Route 53, and WAF scaling costs.
They complement each other. DDoS protection handles volumetric Layer 3/4 attacks (network floods). WAF handles Layer 7 attacks (HTTP floods, slowloris, application exploits). For comprehensive security, use both. Shield Advanced includes WAF at no additional rule cost.