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Envoy 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Envoy
Ranking in Service Mesh
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Service Mesh
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of Envoy is 14.3%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 11.7%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Service Mesh Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy11.7%
Envoy14.3%
Other74.0%
Service Mesh
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Full-stack Developer at ImageVision.ai
A simple solution that works as a proxy server and load balancer
I used the solution to build a project's proxy server and load balancer I found Envoy simple to use compared to alternatives like Traefik. The tool needs to incorporate better documentation and more example samples.  I haven't contacted the tool's support team.  I chose Envoy for the POC…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I found Envoy simple to use compared to alternatives like Traefik."
"It is a crucial tool in ensuring smooth service provision without any interruptions."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."
"Others should try it out for sure. It’s a great solution backed by a very smart set of technical folks."
"HAProxy is highly customizable and will meet the business demands of most companies."
"There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good."
"​It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"We never have any downtime with it."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to incorporate better documentation and more example samples."
"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."
"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties."
"HAProxy is definitely a power-user tool. It is enormously scalable and flexible, but this can come at the cost of usability."
"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."
"In my previous job we had some stability issues related to configuration and compatibility with other products."
"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."
"I would improve the web-based UI, but it’s a matter of personal preference."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is open-source."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"It is free of cost."
"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."
"The tool is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Envoy?
The tool needs to incorporate better documentation and more example samples.
What is your primary use case for Envoy?
I used the solution to build a project's proxy server and load balancer.
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 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.
What needs improvement with HAProxy?
HAProxy already provides many of the features that other solutions in the market are providing, such as Nginx, so I do not see much room for improvement.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Booking.com, Cookpad, Digital Ocean, Ebay, F5, Google, GO-JEK, Grubhub, IBM, Medium, Microsoft, Netflix, Pinterest, Salesforce.com, Snapchat, Stripe, Square, Tencent, Twilio, Uber, Verizon, VMware, Vsco, Yahoo Japan, Yelp
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Isito, HAProxy, HashiCorp and others in Service Mesh. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.