A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer comparison

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

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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)

17th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 5.1%, up from 3.4% 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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Richard Polyak

Sr. Architect at NBC Universal

Easy to set up and has good integration into the host environment but needs better third party integration

I'm not sure which version number we are on. It's one of the latest, I assume. We don't run the latest. We usually are either one or two versions behind. It is something we are exploring. We do have use cases and it will compete against our existing product line. That would have to go in the second half of this year. Right now, it's more of a comparison of how we use it right now. We don't use it really in production. We are going to definitely explore it and do our comparison and more in-depth analysis of the product and compare it against our existing product line. I'd advise potential users to do a very in-depth analysis of the products in comparison. And don't just look at the cover of it - really look into the detailed backend support infrastructure and if it can be implemented the way you need it to be. I'd rate the solution five out of ten. It's not a fully mature product.

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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

"Our clients appreciate that this is a security enabled solution."

"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."

"It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load."

"The most valuable feature of the solution for my organization is its UI since it allows us to see the clusters while providing a very specific and good overall understanding."

"Its visibility and login mechanism are the best parts. In addition to the great visibility it has a great dashboard and an easy to configure graphic user interface, a beautiful GUI."

"The interface and software features are the most valuable aspects of this solution."

"The WAF - the web application firewall itself - is great."

"What's most valuable in Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its deployment capability, the ability to deploy in a dispersed service, with the service engines that can disperse and have a single control plane that can control the load balancing services across any available platform, wherever needed. The analytics of Avi Networks Software Load Balancer and flexibility of deployment are its most valuable features and the reasons why many people buy it."

"The solution is stable."

"The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management."

"The friendly user interface is valuable."

Cons

"The support from A10 should be improved."

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

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

"I did not go with it because their APM module is a different product altogether. It's a common thing that companies do. They sell something and then they add on top of it as a different product. It is a type of marketing strategy. But when it comes to the overall management, it takes a lot of time to really look into it."

"In terms of improvement, the pricing and documentation need improvement. We have had problems getting the documents."

"Avi Networks Software Load Balancer needs to improve its documentation."

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

"One struggle with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its integration with other VMware products. Integration could be improved in the solution so that you have a more unified control plane with it and other data center security and networking products that VMware sells. There has been a bit of a lag on the roadmap of new features that have come out there recently, but better interoperability with the hyperscale environments such as the AWS, Azure, GCPs of the world, and simpler deployment and interoperability with those existing tools, are areas that are receiving attention and could use additional attention today. These are the areas for improvement in Avi Networks Software Load Balancer."

"IDS and IPS sites need to be more progressive."

"It doesn't match the development structure or user community of our existing product. It pales in comparison to that."

"The network analytics and monitoring features are not effective."

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"I rate the solution price a four to five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, since it is an affordable tool."

"With Avi Networks, you can buy a 10-Gig license and, if your primary data center goes down, in the flick of a switch you can move that license to your backup data center and it will generate the traffic... there are a lot of cost-effective measures."

"The licensing costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer are really variable. The product can be sold from a bandwidth utilization perspective. It can be sold from a per CPU perspective, depending on if you're looking at on-premises or hyperscale environments. Licensing costs vary quite a bit if you're familiar with the AWS Calculator, where you can see that it can widely vary per licensing model. On a scale of one to five, with one being not very good value for the money and five being great, I would rate the pricing for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer a five because its pricing is extremely competitive. Not all features are included with the license, for example, there's single licensing."

"The tool is expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about A10 Networks Lightning ADC?

It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load.

What needs improvement with A10 Networks Lightning ADC?

There is room for improvement in the customer service and support team. The support from A10 should be improved.

What is your primary use case for A10 Networks Lightning ADC?

We sell a couple of boxes to Comodo Federal and Bank of Brazil, which are the biggest banks here in Brazil. They also have a F5 tool.

What do you like most about Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

The tool is expensive. It is not cheap. The product must be cheaper.

What needs improvement with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

The network analytics and monitoring features are not effective. The product does not provide deep troubleshooting features. The solution must provide public IP features. F5 provides such features.

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Product Reports

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Download A10 Networks Lightning ADC product report

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Download VMWare Avi Load Balancer product report

Also Known As

Lightning ADS

Avi Software Load Balancer

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

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is an application delivery controller (ADC) platform. The solution provides scalable application delivery across any infrastructure and allows your organization to deliver multi-cloud application services, such as load balancing, autoscaling, application security, container networking, and web application firewall. It is designed with 100% software load balancing to ensure a fast and secure application experience. Additionally, Avi Networks Software Load Balancer offers elasticity and delivers intelligence across any environment.

The Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is unique because

It can scale from 0 to 1 million SSL transactions per second in minutes.
It can achieve 90% faster provisioning and 50% lower TCO than a traditional appliance-based approach.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Product Highlights

Troubleshoots application issues in less than a minute.
Alerts you of potential risks with SSL certificates and TLS versions used.
End-to-end timing for each transaction to help solve end-user experience issues.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Features

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Automated application delivery
Seamless integration with the CI/CD
Built-in analytics
End-to-end visibility
Actionable insights
Security
“Network DVR”-like capability to record and replay specific transactions
Google-like search filters transactions based on device, location, errors, etc.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Avi Networks Software Load Balancer. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Multi-cloud application services: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer provides consistent, enterprise-grade application services, including load balancing, WAF, and container networking across heterogeneous environments. The multi-cloud application services can be deployed on bare metal, VMs, or containers in any data center or public cloud environments.

Faster application provisioning: With this solution, you gain automation with 100% REST APIs and self-service like public cloud.

Better business decisions: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer uses analytics to deliver application insights and help you drive more intelligent decisions.

Containerized applications: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is a proven solution to deploy container-based workloads in production environments using Kubernetes/OpenShift/Tanzu clusters. It includes multi-cluster, multi-site support for containerized applications.

Lower TCO: The solution is 100% software, and does not require any proprietary hardware. In addition, because it offers on-demand autoscaling, there is no over-provisioning. Lastly, point-and-click application troubleshooting means there is no need for a black box.

Software-defined architecture: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is designed with a software-defined architecture with a centralized control plane (Avi Controller) and distributed data plane (Avi Service Engine). Because of this, elastic autoscaling is made easy.

Better end-user visibility: The solution gives you granular visibility into end-user experiences and server response in real time. It also empowers application owners with end-user stats to optimize and improve apps.

Application health score: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer summarizes analytics information into a helpful health score that provides a quick snapshot of the overall applications. The health score it provides is determined by server response time, resource usage, anomalous traffic, and security posture.

VMware

Sample Customers

Handle Financial

Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer