Akamai Technologies
Information Technology
37
out of 100. Number 327 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Akamai Technologies does well
- Arbitration 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- Data retention 3 of 15. Few problems found.
- No forced arbitration or class-action waiver anywhere in the Terms: disputes go to ordinary courts (England/Wales, Singapore, or Delaware/Massachusetts), which is rare and consumer-friendly.
- Akamai cannot unilaterally rewrite the core agreement — amendments require 'a written document signed by Akamai and Customer' (Section 15); only referenced policies like the AUP can be updated, with a promise not to materially degrade core functionality during the current term.
- The Data Processing Addendum (July 21, 2026 version) commits Akamai to 'not sell, rent, disclose, release, transfer, make available or otherwise communicate, Agreement Personal Data to a third party for monetary or other valuable consideration.'
- Consumer Customers (Section
- get auto-renewal disclosed before initial purchase, an online cancellation mechanism, a 7-day grace period on failed payments, penalty-free termination before any fee increase, and preservation of nonwaivable consumer-protection rights.
Your prices go up 3% every year automatically, even if nothing changed about the service.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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Your prices go up 3% every year automatically, even if nothing changed about the service. On top of that, Akamai can amend its published pricing on just 30 days' written notice and pass through third-party cost increases the same way.
Unless otherwise agreed in a Transaction Document, the rates set forth in each Transaction Document shall automatically increase by three percent (3%) of the then-current rates on each anniversary of the Billing Effective Date of such Transaction Document.
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You pay for the full contract term even if you never use the service, and if the deal ends early, everything you would have owed for the rest of the term becomes due immediately as a lump sum.
Customer acknowledges and confirms that the fees set forth in the Transaction Document are committed for the Term and will become payable regardless of actual use of Services. Upon termination of a Direct Order by Akamai as permitted under Section 6.2, all fees for Services specified in the applicable Transaction Document, whether outstanding or due during the remainder of the Term, shall automatically accelerate and be immediately due and payable in full.
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Contracts silently roll over into another full term unless you give at least 60 days' notice — a longer escape window than the usual 30 days, so missing it locks you into another whole cycle.
The 'Term' is set forth in the applicable Transaction Document and with respect to a Direct Order automatically renews for successive terms of equal duration unless either Party notifies the other of its intent not to renew at least sixty (60) days prior to the expiration of the then-current Term.
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Whatever you type into Akamai's AI services can be stored and used to improve Akamai's own AI products — your prompts may train their models.
Customer grants Akamai the right to process and store such data for the operation of that Akamai AI Service with respect to Customer, including improvement of that Service, and monitoring for and preventing abusive or harmful uses or outputs of that Service.
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Akamai shares your contact details and device/usage data with business partners so those partners can market co-branded products to you.
Akamai may share personal data about you as may be necessary to complete the purpose of data processing as defined above or to fulfill legal obligation as applicable. ... We share some Contact Information and Device and Usage Data with our business partners in order to be able to offer you co-branded products and services that may be of interest to you.
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Akamai can hand your confidential information to a wide circle of third parties — including outside security researchers and threat-intel sharing groups — when it decides a security event warrants it, and it only has to tell you about it 'where legally permitted.'
Akamai may disclose Confidential Information to the minimum extent reasonably necessary to investigate, prevent, mitigate, or respond to a suspected or actual security, privacy, fraud, abuse, or integrity event ... with its and its Affiliates' personnel, subprocessors, service providers, incident response and forensic firms, security researchers under a responsible disclosure program, threat-intelligence sharing organizations, law enforcement, regulators, affected customers or users, and other stakeholders ... where legally permitted, will provide prompt notice to Customer of any disclosures that identify Customer.
How these were found
Akamai is a B2B CDN/cloud-infrastructure company with almost no consumer-facing surface; scoring is based on its customer Terms & Conditions and website Privacy Statement, not consumer subscription practices. Terms & Conditions read directly via browser_open (Version 08/2026 — current). The Privacy Statement PDF (Last Updated: April 30, 2022) had garbled text extraction (overlapping columns), so privacy quotes were taken from verbatim search-result snippets served from the official akamai.com domain; a current HTML version was not accessible through the fetch tool. Data Protection Addendum quotes (July 21, 2026 version) also came from akamai.com search snippets. B2B contracts are negotiable in practice: many clauses apply 'unless otherwise agreed in a Transaction Document,' so real customer deals may differ from the default terms quoted here.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.