HAProxy vs NGINX Plus vs NetScaler comparison

HAProxy and NetScaler are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. HAProxy is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.6, while NetScaler is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. HAProxy holds a 12.4% mindshare in ADC, compared to NetScaler’s 14.4% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of HAProxy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

HAProxy

Read 42 HAProxy reviews

6,550 Views
4,229 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NetScaler

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

7,147 Views
5,282 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

3,277 Views
2,778 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

HAProxy

NetScaler

NGINX Plus

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HAProxy, NetScaler, and NGINX Plus 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: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

April 2025

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Helped 850,671 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 12.4%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.4%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.9%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks

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. The reliability features of HAProxy were particularly useful in a scenario where I needed to test load balancing between two Tomcats. Since these domains were inaccessible, I set up a third Docker with HAProxy, which had access to the Tomcat domains. I then configured HAProxy to handle the load balancing. This setup allowed the client to interact with HAProxy. The solution's integration with other elements is easy.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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Ritesh-Bakhru

Major Account Manager at Check Point Software

Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation

NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

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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 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 scalable."

"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."

"Scalable and inexpensive."

"We use it as a load balancer for our application servers."

"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."

"The features I find valuable in this solution are session control which automatically disconnects users that forget to log off, and the ability to write rules to either allow or block certain file requests."

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

More HAProxy pros

"Manageability and visibility are good."

"The most valuable features of Citrix ADC are load balancing and application firewall."

"Very stable."

"The most valuable features are for the ADMs and the overall monitoring environment."

"The solution improves security performance."

"Citrix NetScaler offers robust security features, including SmartAccess and customizable policies, making it a reliable choice for safeguarding user data."

"I would say the rewriting and redirection functions are must-have's for us."

"The analytics are a great feature."

More NetScaler pros

"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."

"Zero Downtime has always been a strength in recommending infrastructure web services. NGINX allows me to execute such infrastructure with less complications and the ability to switch from server to server easily."

"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."

"Valuable features include authentication, caching, reverse proxy routing, and load balancing."

"NGINX Plus' most valuable feature is the ingress controller."

"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is simple to configure."

"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"

"The product does not have any new technologies."

"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."

"It needs proper HTTP/2 support."

"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."

"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."

"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."

"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."

More HAProxy cons

"It does not have a sandbox cloud service and antivirus. It should have on-prem or cloud sandboxing and antivirus."

"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."

"The customization has always been a key area where some improvements are required. In the beginning, everything was for customizing the outer shell of it. You had to use the command-based utility and you had to do a lot of manual work. They have improved it a little bit and now there are some GUI-based functionalities that can be used. However, more can be done that doesn't require a lot of intervention. Right now there are some features, there are some customizations that can be done, but it's still very tedious, very cumbersome, a lot of work. So that could be simplified."

"Integration with other third party providers and third party applications could be better because it can be a bit complex at present."

"If one device or switch fails, the failover to another device is not seamless which is painful."

"We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers."

"Deployment is complicated."

"I would like to see multifactor authentication added to this solution to improve the security."

More NetScaler cons

"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."

"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."

"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."

"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application. As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified."

"It would be great if there was even more automation to make it even easier to maintain."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."

"The product is open source."

"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."

"It is free of cost."

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

"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."

"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."

"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."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."

"It is very pricey, but we get it. If you need the best, money shouldn't be a problem."

"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."

"This product is more expensive than some of the competitors."

"Citrix Web App and API Protection are in the middle when we talk about pricing and licensing"

"Licensing is adequate. I wanted to have a more prominent license, but until I do they don't give enough support. The additional cost would be too much."

"After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

"You pay for each feature that you want."

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."

"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about HAProxy?

The solution is effective in managing our traffic.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?

HAProxy is an open-source solution.

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

See all answers

Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?

IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architectur...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 14% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

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

Compared 9% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

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

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

Radware Alteon vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 17% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NGINX Plus

Compared 5% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy

April 2025

Download HAProxy product report

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

April 2025

Download NetScaler product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

April 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

NGINX

Overview

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.

HAProxy

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

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

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

April 2025

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