A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs HAProxy comparison

A10 Networks and HAProxy are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. A10 Networks is ranked #18, while HAProxy is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.6. A10 Networks holds a 0.5% mindshare in ADC, compared to HAProxy’s 11.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of A10 Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of HAProxy users who would recommend it.

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Read 3 A10 Networks Lightning ADC reviews

207 Views
201 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HAProxy

Read 42 HAProxy reviews

7,217 Views
5,485 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

HAProxy

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

A10 Networks Lightning ADC and HAProxy compete in the advanced load-balancing category. HAProxy appears to have an advantage due to its extensive feature set and robust support.

Features: A10 Networks Lightning ADC offers robust SSL offloading, advanced traffic analytics, and DDoS protection, fitting for high-demand settings. HAProxy provides flexible load balancing, high availability, and high-performance capabilities, including support for TCP and HTTP traffic, aided by its open-source nature and customization options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: A10 Networks Lightning ADC is recognized for seamless integration and a straightforward deployment process, backed by comprehensive customer service. HAProxy, while powerful, can present difficulties in deployment, necessitating skilled resources for optimal setups. A10 Networks provides more hands-on customer service to alleviate deployment stress compared to HAProxy.

Pricing and ROI: A10 Networks Lightning ADC typically involves higher initial setup costs, yet it offers significant ROI through advanced performance and security. HAProxy, being open-source, offers a cost-effective setup suitable for budget-sensitive organizations, though it might require additional investment in expert personnel for management. HAProxy combines low setup costs with high configurability, delivering favorable ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy

July 2025

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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)

18th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HAProxy

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Service Mesh (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 11.9%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

RONALDO DE MELO

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.

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Kaushlendra Singh

Manager - IT Infrastructure and Network at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Used for load balancing, but its dashboard and reporting could be improved

We use the solution for load balancing The solution's implementation and troubleshooting are not easy. The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved. I have been using HAProxy for 12 years. We didn’t face any issues with the solution’s stability. I rate the solution’s stability an…

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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."

"The features I find valuable in this solution are session control which automatically disconnects users that forget to log off, and the ability to write rules to either allow or block certain file requests."

"The VRRP redundancy is also a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly. I can bring down a server live with minimal downtime because of this."

"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that it works for my use case of application load balancing. I'm using it for PeerSense, and it's easy enough for PeerSense."

"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."

"The ability to handle a sequence of front- and back-ends gives the user the opportunity to send traffic through different services."

"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."

"Stability is number one."

"It solves a problem for me where I can build files, not based on the health of the check, but rather the speed of the check."

More HAProxy pros

Cons

"The support from A10 should be improved."

"We would like to see some improvement in the rapidity with which we can customize security facts within the solution."

"A10 documentation is not as open and accessible as AWS and Azure documentation is."

"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."

"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is."

"The solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better and mandating to clients what the expected outcome must be in order to avoid receiving contestant timeout logs."

"Sometimes it's challenging to get through the log, and you need a log to understand what is going on. It isn't easy to map the logging with the documentation, and every time I read the log, I have to pull out the documentation to understand what I'm reading."

"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)."

"We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."

"It needs proper HTTP/2 support."

"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."

More HAProxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."

"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."

"It is free of cost."

"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."

"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."

"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."

"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."

"HAProxy is an open-source solution."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about HAProxy?

The solution is effective in managing our traffic.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?

HAProxy is an open-source solution.

See all answers

Comparisons

NetScaler vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 37% of the time

LoadBalancer Enterprise vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 34% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 29% of the time

More A10 Networks Lightning ADC Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 13% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

August 2025

Download A10 Networks Lightning ADC product report

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy

August 2025

Download HAProxy product report

Also Known As

Lightning ADS

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Overview

A cloud-native, software-defined solution that provides integrated advanced load-balancing, performance optimization, application security and per-application analytics to increase operational agility and application performance.

A10 Networks

HAProxy is considered by many in the industry to be one of the fastest and most popular and trusted software load balancer products in the marketplace today. Organizations are able to immediately deploy HAProxy solutions to enable websites and applications to optimize performance, security, and observability. HAProxy solutions are available to scale to any environment.

HAProxy is an open-source product and has a robust, active, reliable community. The solutions are continually tested and improved on by the community. HAProxy offers a dynamic design to support the most modern architectures, microservices, and deployment environments (appliances, containers, virtual, and cloud).

HAProxy utilizes a cloud-native protocol, which makes it a complete solution for cloud services such as Red Hat OpenShift, OVH, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and more. It also can be used as the reference load balancer in OpenStack.

HAProxy Products

HAProxy One: This is a next-gen end-to-end application delivery platform created to secure and streamline modern application architectures. It offers a complete suite of solutions, such as application delivery software, turnkey, and appliance services observed and administered through a central control plane. The product supplies application acceleration, CDN, DDoS, bot management, WAF capabilities, and load balancing.

HAProxy Fusion Control Plane: This product enables organizations to streamline workflows, arrange traffic routing and security protocols, enhance the speed of delivery, and scale out of the organization’s applications. HAProxy Fusion Control Plane offers an intuitive user interface to observe and control the complete product lineup and API for administering numerous fleets of HAProxy Enterprise servers, either in the cloud or on premises.

HAProxy Edge: This product offering is an application delivery network (ADN) that provides a broad array of turnkey application services with amazing scale and complete visibility. Services include application and content acceleration, advanced security, and load balancing.

HAProxy ALOHA Hardware or Virtual Load Balancer: This product is a virtual load balancer or plug-and-play hardware constructed upon HAProxy Enterprise that is designed to support proxying at Layer 4 and Layer 7. It has a user-friendly GUI, simple deployment, and no limit on backend servers, making it a complete product for organizations desiring a reliable system to provide high-end load distribution for critical services.

HAProxy Enterprise Kubernetes Ingress Controller: This product is designed to facilitate smooth traffic flow into a Kubernetes cluster. It is able to automatically discover anomalies and changes in an organization's Kubernetes infrastructure and provide precise distribution of traffic to healthy pods, with no downtime caused by poor pod health or scaling changes. The product comes with an embedded WAF to optimize the security of an organization’s applications running in Kubernetes.

HAProxy Enterprise: This product is the enterprise-class edition of HAProxy offering a dynamic and sturdy code base with next-generation features, an enterprise suite of add-ons, professional services, and trusted support.
- Cluster-wide tracking and rate limiting
- Advanced DDoS and bot management
- Web application firewall
- Reliable expert support
- High performance modules
- Device detection and geolocation
- Real-time dashboard

Reviews from Real Users

“Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind.” - Nathanel S., Platform Architect at SES

“I use HAProxy for individuals who can not buy low balancers. I built NFV in a box and send individuals a pathway into an HAProxy VM. The setup was not difficult; it usually takes a day to complete for a VPC. When it comes to pricing, HAProxy is free.” - Nasir O., Network & Cloud Architect at Koala Compute Inc.

HAProxy

Sample Customers

Handle Financial

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy

July 2025

Free Report: A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy

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