F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer comparison

F5 and Ivanti are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while Ivanti is ranked #16. F5 holds a 14.9% mindshare in ADC, compared to Ivanti’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Ivanti users who would recommend it.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Read 123 F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) reviews

7,152 Views
5,221 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Ivanti Virtual Web Applicat...

572 Views
389 Comparison Views

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Read 9 VMWare Avi Load Balancer reviews

1,875 Views
1,856 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Ivanti Virtual Web Applicat...

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall, and VMWare Avi Load Balancer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC).

To learn more, read our detailed Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

January 2026

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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:

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 14.9%, down from 15.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall is 1.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 5.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)	14.9%
VMWare Avi Load Balancer	5.4%
Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall	1.5%
Other	78.2%

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage

One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

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reviewer890211

Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Good feature set and is simple to deploy

In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered. We've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else. We sort of stopped deploying them because of that. There are additional costs to the standard licensing. There are bandwidth prices. The feature set is quite good. We've been told to stop using them because of the price. If they can do something to address that I believe it would be better. On the latest version they've got a community edition, which is quite a good bandwidth, but in essence, it's to address the entry-level price. When you get to 10 gig bandwidth, it's way too expensive.

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Vishal Bhatia

Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Analytics dashboard has provided deep visibility and delivers reliable load balancing and WAF protection

Regarding the benefit of VMWare Avi Load Balancer's WAF protection, I think the heuristics are pretty common. I do not come across many trainings for the WAF part, but once in a while. I cannot comment much on whether organizations are using it or not. In terms of VMWare Avi Load Balancer's multi-cloud capability, I have not come across many organizations using it across the different platforms. It is primarily used in the VMware context only. I have not seen anyone using it purely from a Linux or AWS or Azure perspective. Most of the organizations I come across are primarily using it from the VMware side. As for the API-driven infrastructure as code feature of VMWare Avi Load Balancer, because I am not from the developer side, I think that is more for the developers or maybe for integrating some new solutions and digging something deeper into it. That is quite handy. Regarding ease of use with VMWare Avi Load Balancer, that is pretty okay. For implementation, people find it quite okay to implement. There is nothing much from the implementation side. I think VMWare should promote their product more, particularly from the VMWare Avi Load Balancer side. It may be promoted a little bit more. Apart from Avi, most of those are already well-known. I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.

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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

"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is a stable and reliable solution."

"It also has an AVR feature: application, visibility, and recording. It's good for customers looking for what is actually happening in their network and where the latency is."

"We like the capability to combine the content switching with the intrusion prevention and adding the security roles, so we can expose certain sub-pieces outside without exposing everything."

"The stability is excellent."

"If I were to choose one key feature in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool."

"It makes the publishing of applications to the Internet safer."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"It offers features Kemp doesn't provide. For example, there are predefined templates for handling Office 365. You can download them for automatic configuration."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pros

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is simple to deploy. The deployment took us ten minutes."

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

"The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management."

"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."

"The features I find most valuable in VMWare Avi Load Balancer are the load balancing part and the WAF part."

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

More VMWare Avi Load Balancer pros

Cons

"The price for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is very high. This aspect could be improved."

"Currently, the product offers everything we need. I can't recall any features that may be lacking."

"The license terms for "non-commercial" will be a challenge for us."

"A more hybrid approach would be beneficial for users."

"I wouldn't recommend the tool to small companies, considering its high price and the infrastructure needs of small businesses."

"BIG-IP LTM's sandboxing integration could be improved."

"The pricing of the product is a bit too high."

"Improvements should enable customers to build a tailor-made solution in the future through a service portal."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) cons

"In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered. We've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else."

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

More VMWare Avi Load Balancer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is sort of a commodity product. A load balancer is a load balancer. What will be, at the end of the day, the cheapest option or have the best performance, that is what it will come down to."

"F5 isn’t cheap but is worth the price."

"I am a fan of using AWS natively. It is much cheaper."

"The pricing is inclusive of many features."

"LTM is a good product, but it's expensive. They should make it more competitive because cloud providers offer free load balancing. Cloud providers can't cover all the security aspects of F5, but you get a decent amount of security. Cloud environments are becoming the norm across the IT industry. Many of the larger companies that previously used on-prem infrastructure are switching to the cloud, so companies like Fortinet and Palo Alto are reducing their prices. Otherwise, they can't compete in the cloud."

"It is the best solution, but that comes with an increased price."

"The cost is high for this product, so it's not suitable for small customers, e.g. those with small environments."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good. We chose to go through the AWS Marketplace because everything that we needed was a soft appliance. We needed something to work in Amazon, and this product was available there."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"The tool is expensive."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Financial Services Firm

20%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	32
Large Enterprise	85

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

The pricing of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is on the higher side compared to competitors, but it is worth it.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

Our main use cases involve multiple applications, so we are using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) services, and...

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

See all answers

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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 fe...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiADC vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 22% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

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

Compared 6% of the time

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

Compared 6% of the time

NGINX Plus vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 5% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall

Compared 20% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall

Compared 14% of the time

HAProxy vs Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

NetScaler vs Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

NGINX Plus vs Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

More Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall Competitors

HAProxy vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 17% of the time

NetScaler vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 14% of the time

NGINX Plus vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 10% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 8% of the time

More VMWare Avi Load Balancer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

February 2026

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

January 2026

Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall report

Download Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

January 2026

Download VMWare Avi Load Balancer product report

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP

Pulse vWAF, Pulse Virtual Traffic Manager

Avi Software Load Balancer

Overview

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall delivers scalable application security for off-the-shelf and custom applications, including third-party frameworks. Apply business rules to online traffic, inspect and block attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), and filter outgoing traffic and data to mask credit card data. Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall helps achieve compliance with PCI-DSS requirements.

Ivanti

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.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

Gilt Groupe

Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

January 2026

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