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Envoy vs HAProxy comparison

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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
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of Envoy is 13.0%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 11.0%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Service Mesh Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy11.0%
Envoy13.0%
Other76.0%
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."
"With each new release, I find very useful features and love each addition."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
"Others should try it out for sure. It’s a great solution backed by a very smart set of technical folks."
"Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."
"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."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions, which speeds up development."
"​It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"It’s a reliable product with good technical support."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to incorporate better documentation and more example samples."
"The tech support is good however, there are sometimes delays in resolving issues because when there is a shift change there doesn't seem to be any communication between the support staff and we are constantly having to repeat our issues to the next person."
"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."
"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."
"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."
"The configuration syntax is powerful yet can become overwhelming for newcomers; a more beginner-friendly interface or a native GUI without relying on third-party tools would ease the onboarding process."
"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"The documentation is extremely detailed, but I think it could be restructured so it isn't so daunting for beginners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is open-source."
"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 licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"The product is open source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
For the limited use that I have of HAProxy, I don't have any points to improve. I think I need more time with this tool, or perhaps I simply don't have areas that need to get better. I don't have a...
 

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, Traefik Labs, HAProxy and others in Service Mesh. Updated: August 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.