Cloudflare One vs HAProxy comparison

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Cloudflare One

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloudflare One and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare One vs. HAProxy Report (Updated: January 2026).

Cloudflare One vs. HAProxy

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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

Cloudflare One

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

7th

Ranking in Bot Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Security (21st), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (16th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (11th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (13th), Access Management (10th), ZTNA as a Service (8th), ZTNA (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)

HAProxy

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

6th

Ranking in Bot Management

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th), Service Mesh (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 4.1%, up from 3.9% 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
Product	Market Share (%)
HAProxy	1.5%
Cloudflare One	4.1%
Other	94.4%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Cobe Van Coller

Network Architect at IP Dimension

Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites

I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.

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Shrinivas Devarkonda

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The simplicity of the solution is its valuable features as almost no effort was needed to learn the configurations. It is also one of the cheapest firewalls available in this category."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform removes the risk of exposing the applications to the public."

"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."

"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."

"The blocking feature is very good."

"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."

"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."

"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."

More Cloudflare One pros

"I estimate that this product has saved our company hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in possible downtime from previous load balancers. We make a lot of our money from online sales, so it is critical to have 99.9% uptime."

"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."

"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."

"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 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."

"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."

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

"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."

More HAProxy pros

Cons

"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."

"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."

"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."

"Feedback could be enhanced."

"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."

"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."

"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."

"Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions."

More Cloudflare One cons

"The product does not have any new technologies."

"I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy."

"It needs proper HTTP/2 support."

"An alerting system would be better as I need to check log files if any backend is down."

"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."

"Improving the documentation with multiple examples and scenarios would be beneficial. Most users encounter similar situations, so having a variety of scenarios readily available on the tool's website would be helpful. For instance, if I were part of the HAProxy team, I'd create a webpage with different scenarios and provide files for each scenario. This way, users wouldn't have to start from scratch every time."

"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."

"Sometimes it's challenging to get through the log, and you need a log to understand what is going on. It isn't easy to map the logging with the documentation, and every time I read the log, I have to pull out the documentation to understand what I'm reading."

More HAProxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."

"The solution is not that expensive."

"The prices are slightly expensive."

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."

"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."

"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the 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."

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

"The product is open source."

"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."

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

"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."

"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.

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881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	16

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?

Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, we have clients who typically encounter challenges. The usual setup involves con...

What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Access?

Cloudflare Access provides secure access to internal applications for employees, external members of the organization, or third-party providers. It acts similarly to a VPN but uses a different kind...

What advice do you have for others considering Cloudflare Access?

Cloudflare Access is one of the best integrations available. While about two hundred vendors offer similar services, Cloudflare's approach as a SASE solution stands out. Clients prefer a single pla...

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.

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Cloudflare One

Comparisons

Compared 5% of the time

Twingate vs Cloudflare One

Compared 4% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cloudflare One

Compared 4% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 4% of the time

FortiSASE vs Cloudflare One

Compared 3% of the time

More Cloudflare One Competitors

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

NGINX Plus vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare One

Download Cloudflare One product report

Download HAProxy product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Overview

Cloudflare One is a comprehensive platform for security, performance, and connectivity. It provides features like rate limiting, DDoS protection, and application access, tailored to enhance user experience while securing internet access and accelerating communications.

Designed to integrate security measures with ease of use and scalability, Cloudflare One offers a secure web gateway and zero trust network access. These features ensure seamless setup and operation, making connectivity reliable and protected. Users appreciate its integrated console, intuitive interface, and the ability to manage risk effectively. It offers straightforward deployment, improves latency, and boasts cost-effectiveness. While its onboarding process and documentation need enhancement, its value in content delivery and application shielding is notable. Despite challenges in integrating Cloudflare Access with existing VPNs and the need for better automation and support, it remains vital for DNS and infrastructure protection.

What features make Cloudflare One stand out?

Rate Limiting: Controls the traffic rate to prevent abuse.
DDoS Protection: Shields applications from distributed denial-of-service attacks.
Secure Web Gateway: Provides secure internet access with seamless operation.
Zero Trust Network Access: Ensures secure, application-based connectivity without relying on traditional VPNs.
Access for Connectivity: Facilitates access to internal applications securely.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Security: Robust measures for DNS and browsing protection.
Performance: Enhanced site accessibility and communication speed.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers competitive pricing for its features.
Ease of Deployment: Straightforward and efficient setup process.

In industries like finance, retail, and technology, Cloudflare One is crucial for enabling secure remote access and protecting web applications against dynamic threats. It supports compliance access policies and enhances content delivery, playing a key role in safeguarding digital infrastructure.

Cloudflare

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

23andMe

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

Cloudflare One vs. HAProxy