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A10 Thunder TPS vs HAProxy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
A10 Thunder TPS reduced support tickets, improved satisfaction, and saved costs, acting like insurance against significant revenue losses.
Sentiment score
7.1
HAProxy's open-source load balancer cuts costs, boosts efficiency, improves uptime, reduces staffing, and enhances scalability for users.
Operational efficiency has improved; we no longer have staff consistently monitoring backend servers during deployment or scaling events, as HAProxy's health checks and hitless reloads allow us to push changes with minimal manual intervention.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
This resulted in a drastic decrease in costs and, at the same time, the accuracy of the hits coming on HAProxy was almost around 100% or 99.99%.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
I estimate seeing a return on investment with HAProxy, as it significantly reduced staff requirements and enhanced scaling capabilities, particularly when transitioning from NGINX, which faced issues.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
A10 Thunder TPS support is praised for timely responses, effective resolutions, proactive fixes, and handling complex issues efficiently.
Sentiment score
6.5
HAProxy's customer service and technical support are highly rated for quick, expert assistance, though documentation could improve.
The technical support was quick and accepted my requests.
Information Technology Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Since we are utilizing the open-source edition, community forums, mailing lists, and GitHub have been invaluable, with typically someone having encountered the same problems we faced.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
My interactions with HAProxy's customer support were limited, but the feedback from my team indicated satisfactory service.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
A10 Thunder TPS provides scalable, flexible defenses for global data centers, supporting large traffic volumes for medium-sized enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.9
HAProxy efficiently handles scalability, easily adapting configurations for growing traffic, ideal for small to medium businesses and larger environments.
Without accessible documentation, setting up can be time-consuming.
Information Technology Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
We manage an automatic load balancing feature where we add HAProxy servers dynamically behind the application load balancer to handle more traffic.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
HAProxy's scalability is excellent; as our traffic expands, it handles load increases effortlessly.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
For scalability, HAProxy meets my needs, supporting our initial horizontal scaling and then adapting to vertical scaling in a VMware environment.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
The A10 Thunder TPS offers consistent stability, high availability, and positive user feedback, with reliability enhancements and successful maintenance.
Sentiment score
8.1
HAProxy is reliable, handles heavy traffic efficiently, with minimal downtime, quick support, and frequent updates enhancing stability and performance.
This reliability serves as a key reason for our choice, providing us with confidence even when faced with heavy traffic.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The hot reload feature of HAProxy also really helped us so that we never had to shut it down to reload it.
Co-Founder, CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
We have reduced a lot of servers, replacing them with one or two HAProxy servers which deliver better performance, accuracy, and an almost 100% success rate with requests.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
 

Room For Improvement

A10 Thunder TPS needs better training, smoother upgrades, improved documentation, and enhanced synchronization, with concerns over UI and virtual training.
HAProxy needs a revamped GUI, improved APIs, better AWS integration, real-time config, enhanced docs, and stronger monitoring and security.
We had to find workarounds for issues like A10 blocking necessary traffic, sometimes leading to decreased security.
Information Technology Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The configuration syntax is powerful yet can become overwhelming for newcomers; a more beginner-friendly interface or a native GUI without relying on third-party tools would ease the onboarding process.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
An easier desktop interface to connect to a remote server and make changes on my PC would be beneficial.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The reloading functionality is effective as it allows soft reloads without interrupting traffic patterns.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers find A10 Thunder TPS pricing mixed, highlighting both value and expense, with multiyear deals as beneficial.
Enterprise users value HAProxy's competitive pricing and cost-effective licensing, especially compared to F5 and Citrix, despite initial setup costs.
The global price list is not accessible, making it difficult to work.
Information Technology Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Since we use the open-source edition, there are no licensing fees, with the main cost being the infrastructure running on EC2 instances in AWS, which helps maintain low expenses.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Setting up HAProxy didn't cost anything for me.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The pricing remains competitive compared to other vendors.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

A10 Thunder TPS excels in traffic filtering, DDoS mitigation, load balancing, and offers programmable automated defense with RESTful API.
Users praise HAProxy for reliable load balancing, customization, low latency, open-source benefits, and advanced features like secure traffic management.
The vendor indicated that Thunder would not be supported, but I was able to add Thunder to the central console management.
Information Technology Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
By moving all SSL termination to the load balancer, I now manage certificates in a single place, and I can also utilize Let's Encrypt with HAProxy's built-in ACME support, making renewal automatic.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
HAProxy positively impacted our organization by exceeding scalability expectations, initially projected at 200k requests but ultimately handling over 15 million transactions per second without any issues.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
As a production engineer at that time, I definitely wanted to ensure that the system could handle massive connections, especially since we operated an e-commerce platform where we could not lose any customer calls.
Co-Founder, CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

A10 Thunder TPS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th), Bot Management (7th), Service Mesh (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of A10 Thunder TPS is 1.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 1.5%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HAProxy1.5%
A10 Thunder TPS1.9%
Other96.6%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1126782 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Security Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Management console adds value and technical support delivers timely solutions
I had issues with the user interface because, when putting settings up, the system asked me for strange things like virtual local networks that I didn't create. For example, I set an NTP server, and after some clicks, a message appeared stating 'setup is incorrect'. It asked for a VLAN even though no VLANs were created. We had to find workarounds for issues like A10 blocking necessary traffic, sometimes leading to decreased security, because it was the simplest way to deal with them. This was a real issue. A more flexible policy for demo licenses would also be helpful.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
40%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for A10 Thunder TPS?
I have not seen specific prices, like $10,000 or $20,000. A frustrating aspect is the lack of demo versions. The vendor insists on commercial licenses despite requests for demo licenses. The global...
What needs improvement with A10 Thunder TPS?
I had issues with the user interface because, when putting settings up, the system asked me for strange things like virtual local networks that I didn't create. For example, I set an NTP server, an...
What is your primary use case for A10 Thunder TPS?
Currently, I have a test setup. A10 Thunder TPS ( /products/a10-thunder-tps-reviews ) works in a chain with a Check Point firewall and a Juniper MX router. Recently, we had a presentation from a ve...
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 do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DDoS defense solution trusted for more than 200 service providers, online gaming, and enterprises including; Bungie, Comcast, KDDI Corporation, Leaseweb, Microsoft Azure, NTT Docomo, Softbank, Turkcell Superonline, Verizon and more.
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Thunder TPS vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.