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A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs HAProxy comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Lightning ADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
17th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (7th), Service Mesh (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 2.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 8.3%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy8.3%
A10 Networks Lightning ADC2.2%
Other89.5%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

RONALDO DE MELO - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Account Executive at l8
Efficient application security while optimizing connections
The initial setup is simple; it is not complex. The configuration itself is simple and can be done in a couple of hours. However, the migration of the system to A10 Networks takes longer due to critical applications. Clients prefer to move them one by one, which is why it takes a significant amount of time. The configuration itself is simple, especially for this application.
Shrinivas Devarkonda - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
Handles high traffic efficiently and simplifies complex routing with rule-based logic
I think HAProxy is good as it stands now, but I believe there could be improvements. gRPC has recently been implemented, which is great, along with TLS 1.2 and 1.3 support, and HTTP 2.0 is also available. However, I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy. If there were any other protocol with better performance than HTTP 2.0, or perhaps mTLS and other similar features, including that in HAProxy would be really great. For improvements, I think that during setup and configuration, the steps provided are neat and clear. Anyone can easily install and configure it. There are many kernel tuning parameters also available, which is great. For specific improvement, in terms of logging, I think printing the full object of the request may help, or if there's a way to reference two requests, it would be beneficial to find a complete session history from a logged-in customer, as it would help analyze customer and user analytics.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I like about Lightning ADC, is that instead of having a big appliance sitting in front of the Kubernetes cluster, Lightning can pretty much go inside of Kubernetes."
"Our clients appreciate that this is a security enabled solution."
"It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load."
"Our clients have reported an increase in revenue by around 5% on a year to year basis, since this solution was implemented."
"Once the container is set up, the time it takes to deploy is typically under a minute, which gives me a full-blown solution with all the plugins and images that I am planning on using."
"We definitely saw fewer employees needed and money saved; we achieved 100% money savings and fewer employees with very little maintenance required."
"It is fast, flexible, and rock solid."
"HAProxy has positively impacted my organization because all of my applications are now centralized in one point, so I can manage it from my load balancer machine."
"It is stable. Period. Will not fail unless you do something wrong."
"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."
"The ability to handle a sequence of front- and back-ends gives the user the opportunity to send traffic through different services."
"We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
 

Cons

"A10 documentation is not as open and accessible as AWS and Azure documentation is."
"The documentation is pretty much closed and I think A10 crashes sometimes because initially, I was not able to set up Lightning ADC."
"We would like to see some improvement in the rapidity with which we can customize security facts within the solution."
"The support from A10 should be improved."
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."
"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."
"They should introduce one feature that I know many people, including me, are waiting for: HAProxy should have provide hot-swipe for back-end servers. Also, they need a more detailed GUI for monitoring and configuration."
"Improving the documentation with multiple examples and scenarios would be beneficial. Most users encounter similar situations, so having a variety of scenarios readily available on the tool's website would be helpful. For instance, if I were part of the HAProxy team, I'd create a webpage with different scenarios and provide files for each scenario. This way, users wouldn't have to start from scratch every time."
"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The product is open source."
"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."
"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"The tool is open-source."
"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?
Since we used the open-source version, we were not concerned about pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with HAProxy?
For the limited use that I have of HAProxy, I don't have any points to improve. I think I need more time with this tool, or perhaps I simply don't have areas that need to get better. I don't have a...
 

Also Known As

Lightning ADS
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.