Kasada vs DataDome for scraping, credential stuffing, and account creation

Kasada’s Bot Defense listing names credential stuffing, scraping, account takeover, carding, checkout abuse, inventory denial, and application DDoS, and it says the defense removes the need for a CAPTCHA. Kasada’s fake-account page uses the same client sensors on registration. DataDome’s intent-based protection page puts credential stuffing, fake account creation, and scraping in one threat table with payment fraud, scalping, and spam. Its threat-detection doc gives login and account-creation endpoints their own models.

Those three jobs come first. The response a person can be shown is the split. Kasada’s bot defense page describes proof of execution inside an obfuscated virtual machine and session models in less than 2ms. DataDome’s response list has nine types, including Captcha, Block, and Device Check. The AWS listing sold by DataDome says analysis is under 2 milliseconds. An allow from either product is not a card authorization. The payment service still approves the charge.

	Kasada	DataDome
Primary use case	Stop credential stuffing, scraping, fake account creation, account takeover, and checkout abuse on web, mobile, and API traffic without a CAPTCHA	Stop the same classes of abuse. Intent detection names credential stuffing, fake account creation, and scraping beside payment fraud and scalping. Responses include a CAPTCHA, a block, and a device check
What a scripted session hits	Client-side sensors and a proof of execution. Session models on the bot defense page return in less than 2ms. A CAPTCHA is not the published response	A server-side module asks the DataDome API. Enforcement can be allow, CAPTCHA, block, or a device-check interstitial. Login and account-creation endpoints have dedicated models
What an allowed agent gets	A directory, Web Bot Auth, and permissions by HTTP method. Endpoint-level permissions are marked coming soon on the product page. This is additional to the bot decision	A trust score and a policy, including per endpoint. Allow, time-box, and rate-limit responses are limited to custom rules, verified bots, and AI agents. Agent Trust needs the server module and the client tag
Day-to-day workflow	Place the client integration. Bot decisions run without a puzzle. Someone still decides which verified agents may read or transact	Place the server module and the tag. Response rules and agent policies are edited in Access Control. A monetize rule hands paid access to a partner
License/pricing	One public contract: Bot Defense, $99,000 for 12 months, up to 20,000,000 requests in that year. See Editions	Four Bot Protect contracts, each a monthly request ceiling on a 12-month term. See Editions. Overage is printed per request
Who operates it	Whoever ships the client integration, plus the person who writes agent permissions. The card charge is still the payment service	Whoever ships the module and the tag, plus the person who sets response rules and agent policy. The card charge is still the payment service

We reviewed Kasada’s bot defense page, fake-account use case, AI Agent Trust page, and 21 January 2026 launch post; the AWS Marketplace listing sold by Kasada; DataDome’s intent-based protection page, threat-detection doc, rule-response doc, and Agent Trust materials; and the AWS Marketplace listing sold by DataDome. We also read three Hacker News comments. All of that was on 3 Oct 2026. We did not install either product, so this is not a hands-on benchmark.

Kasada

DataDome

Kasada is still sold under that name. On 3 February 2026 Kasada announced a $20 million financing round led by EQT. That round is not a change of control, and no completed acquisition of Kasada was on the sources opened 3 Oct 2026. DataDome is still sold under that name. Its company history runs from the 2015 founding through 2026 product milestones and does not record a sale. The AWS listing checked the same day is still sold by DataDome.

Editions and pricing

The dollars below are the AWS Marketplace contracts opened 3 Oct 2026. Kasada sells Bot Defense as $99,000 (USD) for a 12-month contract covering up to 20,000,000 requests in that year. Web, mobile, and API calls share that cap. DataDome sells Bot Protect as a 12-month contract with a ceiling of requests in each month. The two allowances match only under an even-month assumption: divide Kasada’s 20,000,000 by 12 and the average month is 1,666,666.67 requests. DataDome Essentials allows 100 million requests in each month, which is 60 times that even-month figure. A spiky month, or a Kasada private offer for a different volume, is outside the assumption. The 60-times figure is not a discount, and the products are not the same package.

	Kasada	DataDome
How you buy it now	The public contract found is Kasada Bot Defense. Account Intelligence, AI Agent Trust, and Kasada IQ for Fraud are connected names on the site. Those names are not on the Bot Defense contract	DataDome Bot Protect on AWS Marketplace has four dimensions: Essentials, Advanced, Premium, and Enterprise. The contract table does not split Agent Trust out as its own dimension
Public price (3 Oct 2026)	$99,000 (USD) for 12 months, up to 20,000,000 requests in that year, product Kasada Bot Defense. Past the cap, added capacity is arranged with Kasada. The listing does not print an overage price	Essentials: up to 100 million requests a month, $45,960 (USD) for 12 months, product Bot Protect. Advanced: up to 200 million, $104,040. Premium: up to 300 million, $121,920. Enterprise: up to 500 million, $159,240. Dividing those 12-month totals by 12 is an even split, not a separate monthly SKU: $3,830, $8,670, $10,160, and $13,270. The listing prints overage at $0.119, $0.107, $0.091, and $0.051 per request, in that tier order
What the count includes	Each inspected client request, human or bot, on websites, mobile apps, and APIs. The listing’s private-offer line is for a different volume than the published 20 million	Each dimension is a monthly ceiling on a 12-month term. A private offer is also offered. DataDome’s own pricing page did not render on 3 Oct 2026, so feature bullets beside those amounts were not re-read there
Overage unit	No per-request overage dollar is printed. Budget added volume only after Kasada states the unit	The overage column says per request. One request past the Essentials ceiling is $0.119 on that reading. The column does not say per thousand or per million. A budget that converts the unit first is not using the printed rate

The comment is from someone who says they run DataDome and accept the price as the cost of shared retooling. It does not name a tier. A comment the day before, from someone operating a large non-profit site, says they priced DataDome and HUMAN from their own logs at at least $250,000 a year and did not buy. That $250,000 is their estimate, not a row on the AWS contract. At the Essentials ceiling of 100 million requests a month, the published 12-month total is $45,960, so a quote above that is a different volume or a different package.

Scraping, stuffing, and new accounts

	Kasada	DataDome
Credential stuffing	Named on the Bot Defense listing with account takeover. Detection is client sensors plus proof of execution, not a puzzle	Named on the intent-detection threat table. Login endpoints have their own models. The response can be a CAPTCHA, a block, or a device check
Fake account creation	A Kasada use-case page says registration bots are caught with the same sensors, including client and server checks for tampering	Named on the intent table. Account-creation endpoints have their own models. Define those endpoints or the specific model does not apply
Scraping	Named on the Bot Defense listing. The same invisible challenge is the published response	Named on the intent table as bulk extraction of content, pricing, or proprietary data. Signature models also name scrapers and scraping-as-a-service user agents
A request that never runs the client code	Kasada’s comparison with Akamai, read 3 Oct 2026, says that in one deployment 90% of requests were bad bots and 98% of those never executed Kasada’s JavaScript. That is Kasada’s account of its own deployment, not an independent test	A block can still be returned from the server module. The July 2026 comment below is a person blocked on the first request, with no rule screenshot attached

The comment is a shopper hitting sites that use DataDome, not an admin showing the response rule. A block on request one drops a login, a registration, or a scrape the same way it drops a guest cart. Kasada’s Akamai writeup is the other side of that gap: traffic that never ran the client code can still be most of what one vendor calls bots.

How an agent gets a policy

Agent policy matters after the three jobs above, when a known agent should pass and a script should not. On 21 January 2026 Kasada launched AI Agent Trust: a directory of crawlers, assistants, and agents, support for Web Bot Auth, and permissions per bot by HTTP method (read-only, specific actions, or block). The product page checked 3 Oct 2026 says endpoint-level permissions are coming soon. Verification runs from cryptographic Web Bot Auth signatures down to a user agent or an IP range. AI Agent Trust is not named on the Bot Defense contract.

DataDome’s changelog says Agent Trust was designed as part of the core bot product, not as a second brand. The text retrieved on 3 Oct 2026 does not print a calendar day. A diagram on that page is stored under a May 2026 upload path. In the first 2 months of 2026, that changelog says the network processed nearly 8 billion AI agent requests. That figure is DataDome’s own count. The changelog names four buckets: AI Crawler, AI Assistant, Agentic Browser, and Autonomous Agent. Access-control policies include Intent-Based, Allow, Block, Rate Limit, Time-Box, and Monetize. Intent-Based still blocks a request the model calls fraudulent, including credential stuffing or scraping, even from an agent you otherwise allow. Allow, time-box, and rate-limit are limited to custom rules, verified bots, and AI agents.

	Kasada	DataDome
What you can set today	Allow, restrict, or block by HTTP method for a verified agent. Endpoint-level permissions are marked coming soon	A default policy per known agent, plus per-endpoint rules. Intent-Based still blocks requests the model calls fraudulent
Identity versus behavior	The product page ranks signals from a cryptographic signature down to a user agent or IP range	A verified identity is still limited by what the session is trying to do. The 100-point score moves as new abuse is observed
Paid agent access	Not described on the 21 January 2026 launch post or the product page checked 3 Oct 2026	A Monetize response calls a partner. The detection decision stays in DataDome
Main buying consideration	Are HTTP-method permissions enough until endpoint permissions ship, and is that capability on the Bot Defense contract?	Do you need per-endpoint rules and a monetize path on a Bot Protect install that is already complete?

Choose Kasada when stuffing, scraping, and fake account creation have to stop without a CAPTCHA, HTTP-method permissions are enough for agents you will allow, and 20 million inspected requests in the 12-month Bot Defense contract cover those properties. Choose DataDome when the answer on those same jobs has to be a CAPTCHA, a device check, or a block, and you have matched a monthly Bot Protect ceiling, with overage read as the printed per-request rate.