A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer comparison

A10 Networks and VMware are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. A10 Networks is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while VMware is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.0. A10 Networks holds a 5.0% mindshare in ADC, compared to VMware’s 5.8% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of A10 Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 71% of VMware users who would recommend it.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Read 22 A10 Networks Thunder ADC reviews

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1,807 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Read 8 VMWare Avi Load Balancer reviews

1,826 Views
1,808 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

A10 Networks Thunder ADC and VMWare Avi Load Balancer excel in advanced traffic management within the application delivery sector. A10 Networks is noted for its competitive pricing and comprehensive features, while Avi distinguishes itself with superior scaling and deployment flexibility, especially in hybrid cloud environments.

Features: A10 Networks Thunder ADC is recognized for its advanced traffic management, DDoS mitigation, and seamless IPv6 support. It offers SSL offloading and detailed traffic analysis, allowing users to effectively manage network traffic. On the other hand, VMWare Avi Load Balancer shines with its multi-platform deployment capability, robust analytics, and user-friendly control plane that simplifies dispersed deployments.

Room for Improvement: A10 Networks faces challenges such as legal risks, limited web acceleration, and integration with third-party applications. There are also concerns about its support system and user interface. VMWare Avi could enhance its integration with VMware's own products, expand its single-product range, and improve deployment documentation, particularly its security features to remain competitive.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: A10 Networks Thunder ADC offers straightforward on-premise deployment with reliable customer support, albeit with improvements needed. Avi’s hybrid deployment stands out for its simplicity, supported by customer service that can benefit from augmented integration guidance and user support.

Pricing and ROI: A10 Networks provides an affordable solution with substantial ROI due to its all-inclusive licensing and operational efficiency, making it cost-effective compared to competitors like F5. VMWare Avi offers flexible licensing options suitable for dynamic environments, but costs may increase with separate product purchases, impacting perceived value compared to A10's comprehensive packages.

To learn more, read our detailed A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

September 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 Thunder ADC

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is 5.0%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 5.8%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
A10 Networks Thunder ADC	5.0%
VMWare Avi Load Balancer	5.8%
Other	89.2%

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

RonaldoDE Melo

Sales Account Executive at L8 Group

Protects connection and servers from direct access with control access feature

The initial setup is very simple. The issue is that it achieves high output across all its features, specifically the output ports. This affects the customer's solution because sometimes, the customer is even aware of the user's activity on certain servers. If you have all the necessary information, we can quickly deploy the solution within two to three days. The size of the Thunder ADC depends on its configuration. For example, the cache converter typically includes more than two rack units, often requiring at least three rack units for adequate space. I rate it a ten out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

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Suliman Saleh

Digital Transformation Management Director at IU

Simplifies network infrastructure management, but the network analytics and monitoring features are not effective

The solution helped us balance the load of our critical systems The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management. We can use one virtual ID for two services. The tool helped my previous organization a lot. The network analytics and monitoring features are not effective. The…

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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

"The SLB and GSLB load balancing are the most valuable features. They meet our need to do server-side load balancing and global site load balancing so we can distribute traffic, not only intra-data center, but inter-data center."

"It helps with the efficiency of application deployments and data security."

"The most valuable features in A10 Networks Thunder ADC are the ease of configuration, user-friendliness, and simplicity to sell to customers."

"The Deterministic CGNAT feature is valuable for us."

"The Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) is simple to use."

"We have two appliances and I'm able to move my application from one appliance to another. I don't have to move my whole A10 to be active on the other side or to be passive on the other side. If an application is having a problem, I can just move it using a command."

"Compared to F5, which I used about six years ago, the A10 is much easier when routing. You don't have to use the wildcard bits to route it between the different segments. It's much less troublesome to configure."

"We do have the option of creating virtual chassis, so that gives it a bit more security. If we find an application which is not going to play well in the main pool, we can easily create a virtual chassis and have that application in that virtual chassis. With the virtual chassis we can also create system partitions and have a test system for test applications, and have the others elsewhere."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pros

"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 has simplified our network infrastructure management."

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

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

"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."

"The friendly user interface is valuable."

"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 solution is stable."

Cons

"There are competitors that have more features."

"There is room for improvement in the GUI. I just migrated from the 2.7 software train to the 4.1, and there are still people on 2.7. The latter is a very old GUI if you compare it to F5. It's not as easy to use and a lot of things are missing. They've made a lot of improvements in the 4.1 step, but compared to the ease of use of F5, it's still quite difficult. For people who haven't got a lot of experience, the GUI can be quite challenging."

"The setup depends on certain situations. In certain scenarios, it may be more complex than others. For example, while the initial configuration may be easy, the environment itself may be complex and that may limit the ease of deployment. It is easy for those who understand their environment."

"I would like them to provide learning tips and a community forum where users can share ideas. They need more detailed support articles on the A10 website."

"In my opinion, they need to improve their cloud support. There is support for cloud, but not all functions are there, such as high-availability."

"A10 Networks Thunder ADC could improve on the Application Delivery Controller. it's not a fully-fledged web application firewall solution. For example, application data and support need to improve."

"The costs can be quite high."

"The tool's load-balancing feature should improve."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC cons

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There were budgetary constraints that keep us from investing in the single pane of glass traffic management feature. We saw a demo of this feature about a year to a year and a half ago."

"The pricing is a third of the price of the F5 competition."

"The price of the maintenance support is too expensive."

"The pricing is fine, considering the features they are providing. If you are an individual user, they'll price the product differently compared to how they price the product that is sold to an organization."

"We previously had F5 and switched because of costs."

"You get a lot more for your dollar with A10."

"Pricing is one of the features of the product that influence customers to use the product."

"We did try out the solution’s Harmony analytics and visibility controller for its one-year trial. Due to the cost, we chose not to keep it onsite."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pricing and cost advice

"The tool is expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

University

Government

Financial Services Firm

22%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would recommend A10 Networks due that it delivers high performance in a small form factor to reduce OPEX with significantly lower power usage, rack space, and cooling requirements compared to oth...

See all answers

Do you recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC?

I do recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC. It's very user-friendly, easy to configure, and flexible. It is a very useful solution - especially now, when a lot of employees are working remotely. I hav...

See all answers

What do you like most about A10 Networks Thunder ADC?

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is an easy-to-use and flexible solution.

See all answers

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

The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 26% of the time

NetScaler vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 21% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 11% of the time

Radware Alteon vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 8% of the time

LoadBalancer Enterprise vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 4% of the time

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC Competitors

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 29% of the time

NetScaler vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 19% of the time

HAProxy vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 18% of the time

NGINX Plus vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 3% of the time

More VMWare Avi Load Balancer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

September 2025

Download A10 Networks Thunder ADC product report

Buyer's Guide

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

August 2025

Download VMWare Avi Load Balancer product report

Also Known As

Thunder ADC, AX Series

Avi Software Load Balancer

Overview

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is a dynamic application delivery controller and advanced load balancer. Thunder ADC is a value-added solution provided by A10 Networks specializing in robust, trusted, scalable application services for cloud, hybrid, edge cloud, and on-premise environments focused on improving business processes and keeping infrastructures safe. The solution consistently provides server availability, improves content delivery, and protects at-risk applications. A10 Networks Thunder ADC easily controls hybrid and multi-cloud deployments using a Polynimbus strategy to minimize difficulties and costs for IT processes, facilitating overall improved business results.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is effective for small to medium businesses (SMBs) to large enterprises. Service providers and cloud operators are all using A10 Network ADC to manage their large and fast-growing group of business-critical applications.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC supplies L4-7 load balancing with numerous layers of security using DNS and web app firewalls, comprehensive support for advanced encryption, single sign-on (SSO) authentication, and high-performance Perfect Forward Secrecy and Error Correction Code (PFS/ECC). Thunder ADC is designed upon A10 Networks Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS®) platform to provide consistent, efficient application performance and trusted security for any environment.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC Benefits

Consistently accessible: A10 Networks Thunder ADC employs numerous load balancing protocols to evenly distribute workloads to all servers and works to ensure constant application functionality. User requests are monitored to ensure loads are directed to the appropriate server so that there is always a proper response delivery to content. This process ensures the applications are consistently available.
Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB): To ensure business processes are fully optimized at all times, A10 Networks Thunder ADC employs a dynamic Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) process to augment server load balancing capabilities throughout global data centers for high availability and improved user experience and application tolerance.
Fast content delivery: A10 Networks Thunder ADC conquers the general WAN latencies, chatty policies, and redundant software programs to ensure quick and responsive service. Employees receive a fast, excellent end-user experience while the organization's business leaders get exceeded SLA mandates and increased productivity with teams working remotely and a step up on the competition.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC Features

Detailed Analytics: When deployed with A10 Networks Harmony Controller, Thunder ADC delivers a large selection of detailed aggregate and per-request reports in real time. The reports include popular URLs, error and health indicators, latencies, and end-to-end response times. The data is further dissected to deliver per-app reporting, availability alerts, and performance.
API Coverage: Thunder ADC utilizes A10 Networks REST-based aXAPIs to structure all features with 100 percent API coverage. The resulting interface is then used to seamlessly integrate custom or third-party management solutions, such as VMware or other SDN platforms, OpenStack, Microsoft SCVMM, or other cloud orchestration systems. There are also software plug-ins available for private clouds utilizing VMware’s vRealize Orchestrator.
Comprehensive Management Controls: Thunder ADC is fully supported by A10 Networks Harmony Controller and can be deployed in software or as a software-as-a-service (SaaS). This controller functions as a native management platform that organizes and distributes application-centric service protocols and configuration data to numerous Thunder appliances and device cluster infrastructures throughout numerous multi-cloud environments. Users can instantly identify, audit and track every appliance using critical operational metrics, such as CPU, disk usage, device partitions, and end users. The A10 Networks Harmony Controller will also complete configuration backups and restore operations, and will schedule regular software upgrades.

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

123inkt.nl, Bentley University, Box, Brainshark, Buienradar, Capgemini, CGN/LSN & NAT64, Chengdu Telecom, Club One, Code Ready, CRC Health Group, Cyso, Deutsche Telekom, Earth Class Mail, Excite, FFF Enterprises, Florence County, Framingham State University, From30

Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

September 2025

Free Report: A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

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