The surge of malicious bots poses a significant online security risk for your business. Bots can scrape your website content, spam comments, take down your website with DDoS attacks, and try to force their way into your user or corporate accounts. These attacks have to be taken seriously, because they can result in site crashes, skewed analytics data, increased server costs, data breaches, and worse. 

This is why more and more businesses are turning to bot protection solution. These tools help businesses distinguish human traffic from bot traffic, allowing them to identify and stop all types of bot and fraud threats. In this article, we will go over what techniques these tools use, what key features to look for, and which bot detection tools are considered among the best. 

Top 10 Bot Detection Tools:

1. DataDome
2. HUMAN
3. Arkose Labs
4. Netacea
5. Cloudflare
6. Akamai
7. Imperva
8. F5
9. Radware
10. Cheq

Techniques Used in Bot Detection

Bot detection tools use a wide variety of techniques to differentiate humans from bots:

• Behavior Analysis: This technique involves the analysis of user activity patterns. Humans and bots tend to behave differently. For example, a human might move their mouse or scroll a webpage in a certain way that a bot would not. By analyzing these patterns, detection tools can identify potential bot activity.

• CAPTCHA Challenges: CAPTCHA challenges require users to complete tasks that are easy for humans but difficult for bots. This can include recognizing distorted text or images. While it does introduce some friction for the human user, a single CAPTCHA challenge can stop many (unsophisticated) bots.

• IP Reputation: Bot detection tools often maintain databases of IP addresses known for malicious activity. By checking incoming traffic against these databases, the tools can identify potential bot traffic.

• Artificial Intelligence: Many bot detection tools use artificial intelligence to identify bots. For instance, machine learning can identify patterns in large datasets, such as traffic logs, to spot abnormal behavior indicative of bot activity. It can also identify a new type of bot and immediately spread that knowledge to all the other endpoints it protects.

Key Features to Look for in Bot Detection Tools

When choosing a bot detection tool, several key features should be considered:

• Uses AI and machine learning (ML). More and more malicious bots use AI to get around your digital security setup. Modern bot detection tools must also use AI to identify and block those threats, as well as machine learning to automatically update its database whenever it encounters a new threat. Fight fire with fire.

• Integrates with your other systems. The best bot detection tool integrates quickly with your existing IT Infrastructure, Security tools and other IT systems. If it doesn’t, you risk security blind spots that malicious bots will eventually find their way through.

• Is easy to deploy and maintain. The best bot detection tool is easy to install, fully protects you against all automated threats, and doesn’t require constant maintenance. If you frequently need someone to adjust your bot detection tool against the latest threats, you may want to consider another tool.

• Is flexible and customizable. A bot detection tool should be capable of monitoring your websites, mobile apps, and APIs in real-time. Additionally, it should allow you to create custom rules to tailor its detection processes to your requirements. The best bot detection tools allow for such significant flexibility and customizability.

• Is always getting better. The bot landscape changes every day and hackers are always developing new techniques such as leveraging Bot-as-a-service, ChatGPT or hu-bots to punch through your digital security. A bot detection tool should evolve at least as fast as the malicious bots do. Ask yourself, does the vendor of the bot detection tool you’re considering have a proven record of product innovation and performance? Does the solution leverage collective intelligence across its global footprint to improve its detection models for other customers?

• Is compliant with data privacy frameworks. Not all bot detection tools are automatically compliant with data privacy frameworks like GDPR or CCPA. Make sure the bot detection tool you choose meets regulatory requirements and is flexible enough to meet future compliance changes and challenges.

• Real-time, Every Time Monitoring: The tool should be capable of monitoring every single request coming to your websites, APIs, and mobile apps in real time. This allows it to detect and respond to potential threats as soon as they emerge, thereby minimizing potential damage.
• Scalability: The tool should be able to handle increases in traffic without latency and without impacting customer experience. This is especially important for growing businesses, flash sales events or businesses under severe and frequent bot attacks.

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Disclaimer: The information presented in this article is based on online research (e.g. user reviews) and was last updated August 2023. We have not manually tested each software solution listed below. While we strive for accuracy, we cannot guarantee the current relevance of the information provided. If you have any updates or requests for changes, please feel free to contact us.

10 Best Bot Detection & Mitigation Solutions

1. DataDome Bot Detection Solution

• Best for: Comprehensive bot and fraud protection
• Ease-of-use: 9/10
• Pricing: Starts from $3,490 a month

DataDome provides state-of-the-art bot and online fraud protection for companies of all sizes and industries. It protects its customers against DDoS attacks, credential stuffing, scraping attacks, SQL injections, and all other forms of automated attacks.

Key Features of DataDome

• Real-time bot management. DataDome detects and blocks automated bot threats in milliseconds. It does so for your websites, mobile apps, and APIs.
• Effortless integration. DataDome’s documentation gives you an idea of how many technologies it supports and how easily you can install it. 
• Full protection for websites, mobile apps, and APIs. DataDome protects all your publicly-facing assets against security threats. No need for multiple solutions.
• 24/7 global customer support. DataDome has offices worldwide and is readily available to answer your questions with 24/7 support from our security operation centers.
• Powerful dashboard. DataDome comes with an insights dashboard that gives you both the general overview and a detailed analysis of every threat it blocked.

Pros

• Advanced machine learning & AI capabilities
• User-friendly interface
• Customizable dashboards.
• Powerful integrations & compatibility

Cons

• No hardware or software instances that are deployed on-premise
• Specialized solution, not your one-stop shop (CDN, WAF, DDoS, …)

Choose DataDome if:

You want a comprehensive bot and fraud solution that protects you against all forms of automated threats and is easy to integrate in your existing tech architecture for your websites, mobile apps, and APIs.

2. HUMAN (PerimeterX)

• Best for: Low, steady volumes of traffic
• Ease-of-use: 8.8/10
• Pricing: HUMAN does not publicly disclose pricing information

HUMAN offers a behavior-based bot management solution that protects websites, mobile applications, and APIs from automated attacks.

Key Features

• Sophisticated Bot detection. HUMAN uses machine learning and AI algorithms to differentiate human traffic from sophisticated bot traffic, which makes it capable of robust protection against automated attacks.
• Real-time decision making. HUMAN typically offers real-time decisioning capabilities, which allows it to respond to threats as they emerge.
• Broad integration options. HUMAN can integrate with a variety of platforms and applications, providing a flexible solution for different business needs.

Pros

• Can block bad traffic and malicious bots to prevent account takeovers, DoS, and DDoS attacks
• Fast and easy integration
• Responsive, knowledgeable, accommodating support team
• Breadth of use cases supported

Cons

• Not always clear why the solution blocks certain requests
• Becomes expensive when scaling, relies heavily on inflexible contracts
• Not every request is inspected —a good way to get bypassed by human-bot hybrid attacks. 
• 95% of API request times take longer than 35-50 milliseconds.

Choose HUMAN if:

Your volume of traffic is low or expected to remain steady. HUMAN’s pricing model is unpredictable. High volumes of traffic will lead to sudden spikes in the cost of HUMAN’s bot solutions.

3. Arkose Labs

• Best for: Companies with simple website taxonomies
• Ease-of-use: 8.2/10
• Pricing: Arkose Labs does not publicly disclose pricing information

Arkose Labs detects and blocks online bot fraud. It does so by analyzing the context, behavior, and past reputation of all incoming requests.

Key Features

• Prevents attacks in real-time. Arkose Labs triages suspicious traffic for a dynamic attack response to distinguish real users from fraudsters and their automated traffic.
• Dynamic decision engine. Arkose Labs continuously takes in feedback to understand new threats, which it then uses to train its decision engine in real-time.
• Human support. Arkose Labs wants to work with you as a partner in fighting fraud, and will tailor its solution to the context of your company.
• Credential stuffing warranty. Arkose Labs offers a warranty of up to $1 million in recovery costs if you suffer from a successful credential stuffing attack with their software.
• Enhanced Proprietary Captcha: Arkose MatchKey is engineered to counter contemporary threats. It dynamically offers a range of challenges, adjusting the difficulty based on the perceived threat level.

Pros

• Known for preventing credential stuffing and account takeovers
• Proven success in reducing fraud rates for many organizations
• Customer orientated with personalized level of support

Cons

• Latency issues for synchronous events
• Many consider their CAPTCHA challenges hard to solve
• Unclear whether they’re letting through good bots (like the Googlebot)
• Not as good for use cases outside credentials stuffing & fake account creation

Choose Arkose Labs if:

Your website taxonomy is fairly simple. Arkose Labs restricts the usage of each API Key to one path, domain or subdomain. If clients wish to use their services across more than one domain or subdomain, they need to purchase additional API Keys.

4. Netacea

• Best for: Companies looking for a fully bespoke solution
• Ease-of-use: 8.6
• Pricing: Netacea does not publicly disclose pricing information

Netacea bot protection offers detection and mitigation against rapidly evolving automated threats in real-time.

Key Features

• Multi-channel defense. Netacea’s solutions cover a wide range of channels, including web, mobile, and APIs. This ensures a broad defense against bots, regardless of how they try to access your systems.
• Prioritization of legitimate users. Netacea’s bot management ensures that genuine users always receive the best experience. By effectively managing bot traffic, it helps to ensure that server resources aren’t wasted on dealing with bots, thereby improving the experience for human users.
• Detailed insights. Netacea provides comprehensive reporting and analytics. These insights can help you better understand the scale and nature of the bot traffic you’re dealing with, allowing you to make more informed decisions about your security strategies.

Pros

• Agentless in nature. Easy to test and implement
• Real-time metrics and data
• An attentive support team
• Good reviews of their bot/threat detection 

Cons

• Their AI models take time to develop, leaving you exposed to threats
• Poor dashboard UX. Can feel overwhelming
• Much smaller vendor when compared to others, limited deployments
• Doesn’t offer its own Captcha, customers must use reCaptcha or hCaptcha

Choose Netacea if:

You are not looking for a plug and play solution. There are a number of configurations that need to be completed on every property that Netacea protects. Depending on the configured rules, some require more frequent updates to remain fully effective.

5. Cloudflare

• Best for: Small companies who are still scaling
• Ease-of-use:
• Pricing: Cloudflare does not publicly disclose pricing information

Cloudflare is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that provides cloud security through the use of web application firewalls (WAF) and other optimization features. They also have a built-in bot solution.

Key Features

• JavaScript and non-JavaScript challenges. Cloudflare uses a range of challenge mechanisms to confirm whether a user is human or a bot. These include CAPTCHAs, JavaScript tests, and cookie challenges.
• Broad spectrum coverage. Cloudflare’s bot management solution operates at the network edge, meaning it can defend websites, mobile applications, and APIs against bot attacks.
• IP reputation analysis. Cloudflare maintains a large database of IP addresses and their associated reputations, which is used to block traffic from known malicious sources.
• Free CAPTCHA Alternative. Cloudflare Turnstile delivers frustration-free, CAPTCHA-free web experiences to website visitors – with just a simple snippet of free code.

Pros

• Bot management solution seamlessly integrates with their WAF, DDoS, and CDN products
• Instant protection against a range of bot attacks without Javascript injection and mobile SDK
• Offers a free option good for small companies who are still scaling
• Uses behavioral analysis, machine learning and fingerprinting for botnet detection

Cons

• Bot management offering is not their main focus. It lacks forward-thinking practices
• Only works together with their CDN
• Bot detection is basic, lots of bad bots are going through
• Analytics are not good as the others on this list

Choose Cloudflare if:

You already use them as your CDN and are willing to give up bot accuracy for price. Cloudflare’s bot solution can only be used as an add-on to their security offering. Customers have also noted high false positive rates and poor attack responses.

6. Akamai

• Best for: Users of the Akamai CDN
• Ease-of-use:
• Pricing: Akamai does not publicly disclose pricing information

Akamai is a CDN and cloud service provider responsible for serving between 15% and 30% of all web traffic. They are a content delivery network, cybersecurity, and cloud service company, providing web and internet security services.

Key Features

• Behavioral analysis. Akamai’s Bot Manager uses behavioral-based anomaly algorithms to analyze and identify unusual patterns in traffic that may indicate bot activity.
• Device fingerprinting. Bot Manager can identify devices associated with repetitive bot behavior and track them to prevent attacks.
• Rate controls. This feature of Akamai’s Bot Manager allows you to limit the request rates for individual client IPs or for a specific user agent, helping you manage server resources effectively.

Pros

• Strong reputation as a CDN
• Easy enablement of Bot Manager for any Akamai customer
• Powerful ecosystem of products. Hard for a customer to move away.

Cons

• Customers are locked in. Akamai Bot Manager doesn’t protect anything that uses another CDN
• Limited detection capabilities. Sophisticated bots can bypass their solution
• No in-house challenge solution (like a CAPTCHA)
• Can be pricey due to the necessity of involving the Akamai Team for rule implementation and optimizations.

Choose Akamai if:

If bot protection is a low security risk in your organization and if you already use them as a CDN. Akamai Bot Manager protects traffic that goes through Akamai only, which means it has slower response rates for new and emerging bot attacks.

7. Imperva

• Best for: Your traffic is not international
• Ease-of-use: 8.8
• Pricing: Imperva does not publicly disclose pricing information

Imperva’s product provides layered protection for companies that operate online. Their solutions include WAFs, Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP), API Security, bot management, account takeover (ATO) protection, attack analytics, and application delivery.

Key Features

• Client-side fingerprinting. The solution uses client-side fingerprinting to identify and track individual bots, including the bots that use advanced techniques to mimic human behavior.
• CAPTCHA. Imperva can challenge suspected bots with a CAPTCHA, a simple test that most humans can pass but most bots cannot.
• Custom rules. Imperva allows you to create custom security rules to match your specific needs. You can set up rules to block or challenge traffic based on various attributes such as geolocation, IP reputation, or request headers.

Pros

• Global presence with POPs in many countries
• Offers geo-IP blocking to cut down on bot traffic coming from foreign countries
• Runs well and addresses the most common bot issues seen in the market
• Offers load balancing, DDoS, and WAF capabilities as part of their product portfolio

Cons

• Struggle with frequent site interruptions
• Frequent routing issues reported from servers in Europe
• Reporting and filtering could be more robust. Dashboard UI has room for improvement
• Just got acquired by Thales, some disruption/turnover to be expected

Choose Imperva if:

You’re already using their other services such as DDoS or WAF. You must be certain international traffic is not a concern. Otherwise you risk site interruptions due to routing issues from their international points of presence.

8. F5

• Best for: Companies in the finance and airline industry
• Ease-of-use:
• Pricing: Annual contract. F5 does not publicly disclose pricing information

F5 offers bot management as part of its legacy WAF as well as through a service offering (formerly Shape). F5’s bot protection protects against a broad set of bot-based attacks, including account takeover, carding, inventory hoarding, gift card bots, and scrapers.

Key Features

• Integration with F5 WAF. F5 offers Bot Management as part of its legacy WAF as well as ’s bot protection solution integrates with their WAF, providing an integrated approach to web security.
• Reporting and analytics. F5 provides detailed traffic reports, including analytics about bot traffic, to help businesses understand their threat landscape and make informed decisions.
• Flexibility. F5’s solution can be deployed on-premise, in public or private clouds, as a service, or in hybrid environments, offering flexibility to businesses.

Pros

• Well-established vendor in app security
• Loyal customer base in the finance and airline industries
• Offer a broad set of professional and support services. Hands-on vendor support

Cons

• Requires substantial effort and downtime for configuration changes to bot responses
• Solution isn’t learning. Only hard blocks, which means less accurate detection
• UI, reporting, and dashboard is seen as limited and complex
• Doesn’t scale very well

Choose F5 if:

You are in the finance/airline industry and want an on-premise solution that hard-blocks any malicious bot (with some risk of blocking genuine users too). Or if you are looking for a white-glove service/support and are willing to invest in it.

9. Radware

• Best for: Companies that know exactly what type of traffic they want to let through
• Ease-of-use:
• Pricing: Radware does not publicly disclose pricing information

Radware’s bot protection solution uses intent-based deep behavioral analysis (IDBA) to protect against account takeover (credential stuffing, brute force etc.), denial of inventory, DDoS, ad and payment fraud, and web scraping.

Key Features

• Real-time signature updating. Radware’s solution updates bot signatures in real-time, allowing it to provide timely protection against evolving threats.
• Intent-based Deep Behavior Analysis (IDBA). This patented technology helps in understanding the intent of complex bots. By studying the behavioral characteristics of bots, it accurately detects and mitigates malicious bot activity.
• Customizable actions. When the system detects a suspected bot, it can take a variety of actions, like serving alternate content, redirecting, delaying, or blocking the request, based on your preference.

Pros

• Simple implementation
• Low number of false positives
• Good real-time monitoring

Cons

• Blocks good traffic from known web crawlers like Bing
• Customers would like more data around events in the portal
• Not much customization can be done in the dashboard
• Niche player, bot protection isn’t much of a focus

Choose Radware if:

You have already meticulously identified all good traffic and whitelisted them on your network. Otherwise, you risk the chance of mistakenly blocking useful traffic and missing out on revenue.

10. Cheq

• Best for: You care primarily about click fraud
• Ease-of-use: 8.6/10
• Pricing: From $149 a month

Cheq’s Essentials bot protection product blocks invalid traffic and click fraud from your Google, Meta, and Microsoft ads. It protects ad budgets for companies running online campaigns.

Key Features

• AI-Driven detection. Cheq uses AI algorithms to analyze and detect bot activity. The system learns from each interaction, improving its accuracy over time.
• Real-time analysis. Cheq provides real-time analysis and protection to prevent bots from clicking on your ads. It deals with them as they appear.
• Ad fraud prevention. One of Cheq’s main applications is in advertising. The solution works to detect and prevent ad fraud to make sure that your advertisements are being viewed by real humans and not by bots.

Pros

• Easy to implement. Simply add the JavaScript directly on your website or Google Tag Manager
• Supports all major PPC channels
• Known for having a very accommodating and knowledgeable customer success team

Cons

• Primarily made for Ad Fraud, not as efficient on other threats such as Account Takeover, Scraping, DDoS, …
• Dashboard is not very user friendly and simplifies the data
• Steep learning curve to understand the platform

Choose Cheq if:

You already have a team of analysts or plan to hire a team of analysts to interpret their dashboard  and if you care primarily about click fraud.

Key Takeaways

Robust bot detection tools will safeguard your websites, mobile apps, and APIs against bots. The best solutions use AI and ML to counter advanced threats and continually stay ahead, easily integrate with your existing tools and systems and are always compliant with regulatory frameworks. They are easy to deploy and maintain, are flexible and customizable, and ensure scalability to handle traffic surges without compromising user experience. 

It may seem like a long list of requirements, but that’s what it takes to stay protected nowadays. And there are bot detection tools that fit all these requirements, and then some. In fact, you may be on the website of one such tool. Book a live product demo to see how DataDome may be the bot detection tool you’ve been looking for.