Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs HAProxy comparison

Barracuda Web Application F...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Barracuda Web Application Firewall and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF).

To learn more, read our detailed Web Application Firewall (WAF) Report (Updated: June 2025).

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

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Helped 859,957 peers since 2012

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

Barracuda Web Application F...

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th)

HAProxy

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (4th), Service Mesh (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

Barracuda Web Application Firewall and HAProxy aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Barracuda Web Application Firewall is designed for Web Application Firewall (WAF) and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, down 2.1% compared to last year.
HAProxy, on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 12.3% mindshare, down 12.7% since last year.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Anne-Aimee Wollerich

Cyber Security Consultant at Axle iT

Managing bot traffic effectively enhances usability for non-technical users

Barracuda Web Application Firewall ( /products/barracuda-web-application-firewall-reviews ) lacks some of the more specified and structured features offered by solutions like Tenable. Although Tenable is more expensive and less easily deployable, its features are more deepened and chiseled, particularly for IT personnel. For example, Tenable provides more comprehensive dark web scanning capabilities, which Barracuda could improve upon.

Read full review

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

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward, especially if you enlist assistance."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic content filtering."

"The most valuable features are the client VPN and content filtering."

"The volumetric DDoS defense is very good because I had a problem with a lot of volumetric DDoS attacks on my servers. After using Barracuda, those attacks have stopped and all the traffic is going smoothly to my servers and the system is working really well."

"The solution ensures layer seven is secure from attacks."

"The solution has been quite stable. It's reliable."

"The most valuable features of Barracuda Web Application Firewall include advanced bot protection, DDoS protection, and addressing the top ten vulnerabilities."

"The customer service and support are exceptional, and I would give them a ten out of ten."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pros

"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."

"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."

"The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used."

"It is a crucial tool in ensuring smooth service provision without any interruptions."

"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."

"What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks."

"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."

"The technical support has been, in one word, perfect. Every time I call, I’m on the phone with a representative within five minutes who is highly skilled and willing to help, whether in the case of critical issues or simple advice."

More HAProxy pros

Cons

"The solution could use more reports."

"I think the main area for improvement in this product is learning it, as can be seen when comparing it to the F5 web application firewall. F5 has a very powerful learning phase when you start using your web application firewall against your site. Barracuda has something like this, but not with the same functionality from my point of view."

"Its interface can be better. It is not very friendly."

"As a service, Barracuda needs to host in Saudi Arabia, as they currently don't have this functionality."

"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."

"As most people are aware, the implementation is not easy."

"Sometimes when we put it in action, we have some blogs that appear as false positives. I think that it's improving. Barracuda should minimize false positives."

"I have issues with the load balancing of the solution which is slow. The connection pooling in Barracuda also doesn't work. There is an issue when someone needs access to a site quickly. The issue is with HTTPS services. I am not sure if they have changed all these in the solution’s latest version."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall cons

"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 reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."

"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."

"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."

"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."

"There are three main areas to improve: 1) Make remote management more modern by adding API. 2) Propose a general HA solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this). 3) Thread option should be a bit more stable."

"They should introduce one feature that I know many people, including me, are waiting for: HAProxy should have provide hot-swipe for back-end servers. Also, they need a more detailed GUI for monitoring and configuration."

"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties. There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good; however, if there is a troubleshooting issue or an incident occurs, we will have issues because this is open-source."

More HAProxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."

"Barracuda costs us $8,000 per year. Barracuda costs $20,000 for a full subscription, when you try to protect multi-site infrastructure, in different geographical zones and for different data centers. If you have only one site, Barracuda will be cheaper."

"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."

"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."

"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."

"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."

"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."

"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"HAProxy is free open-source software."

"The tool is open-source."

"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."

"The price is well worth it. HAProxy Enterprise Edition paid for itself within months, simply due to the resiliency it brings. It was a bit more expensive than we were originally interested in paying, but we are thankful we chose to go with HAProxy."

"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."

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

"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible."

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

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment.

What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

Our primary use case was to track the traffic on websites or webshops to identify potential malicious actors, such as bots. This involved analyzing the type of data being collected through websites...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

The pricing for Barracuda is quite high compared to other OEMs. Each transaction requires my purchase team to negotiate with Barracuda. Software licenses, premium support, and advanced bot protecti...

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?

HAProxy is an open-source solution.

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Comparisons

Compared 23% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 20% of the time

NetScaler vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 14% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 13% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Product Reports

Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Download Barracuda Web Application Firewall product report

Barracuda Web Application Firewall report

Download HAProxy product report

Also Known As

No data available

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Overview

Barracuda Web Application Firewall is a game-changing cloud-connected security solution that enables organizations to safeguard both their applications and their data from an ever-growing array of advanced cyber threats. It offers protection from cyber attacks that target not only data and applications stored on the cloud but also those that are housed on web servers. 43% of the time a breach takes place via a compromised application. Barracuda Web Application Firewall prevents these types of breaches from occurring.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall denies hackers the ability to penetrate your system by using a number of techniques to keep your organization safely insulated. The first method of protection consists of two parts. The first part involves a thorough scanning of all inbound web traffic. This solution monitors everything that comes into the system. It employs IP reputation intelligence, which filters all incoming data. If the source of the data has a bad reputation, it is blocked by the firewall. Administrators now have a way of locking out many common threats that could otherwise compromise sensitive networks. These scans can also allow administrators to protect their systems from within as DLP (Data Loss Prevention) protocols. If any sensitive data attempts to leave, administrators will automatically be alerted and the data will be blocked from exiting.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall can also be set up to apply the AAA (Authentication, Authorization & Accounting) framework to an organization’s network. If an intruder manages to get past the authentication stage, the authorization protocols kick in. After the authorization stage comes accounting, which works by tracking and logging users’ activities so that administrators will be in a position to prevent long-term damage from being done. This three-step process can be implemented without requiring administrators to make changes to their applications.

Key Features

Some of Barracuda Web Application Firewall’s key features include:

The ability to employ adaptive profiling. Administrators will have an easier time enforcing security policies once this feature is enabled. It takes data from safe sources and builds profiles that can be used to create whitelisting protocols that prevent unsafe actions from occurring on the system.
The ability to assess threats in real time. Barracuda Web Application Firewall uses machine learning to detect new threats and attacks as they emerge.
The ability to manage the Barracuda Web Application Firewall system from a single interface. Administrators can manage their Barracuda Web Application Firewall configurations from one centralized location.

Reviews from Real Users

Barracuda Web Application Firewall stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is the robustness of the solution. Users are given access to a vast variety of security features in a single product.

PeerSpot user Muhammed S., a Presales Solutions Architect at Hilal Computers, notes this when he writes, "The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."

Other reviewers note that Barracuda Web Application Firewall is user-friendly, easy to set up, stable, and reliable.

Barracuda 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.

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar

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

Web Application Firewall (WAF)