F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs HAProxy comparison

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) 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 F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. HAProxy Report (Updated: August 2026).

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) 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:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.4

F5 BIG-IP AFM offers cost-effective returns with F5 bundles, though standalone returns are moderate, providing practical daily value.

Sentiment score

7.2

HAProxy boosts efficiency by reducing costs and staff needs, offering speed, reliability, and enhanced scalability for traffic management.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

Operational efficiency has improved; we no longer have staff consistently monitoring backend servers during deployment or scaling events, as HAProxy's health checks and hitless reloads allow us to push changes with minimal manual intervention.

Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

This resulted in a drastic decrease in costs and, at the same time, the accuracy of the hits coming on HAProxy was almost around 100% or 99.99%.

Head of DevOps at TripFactory

I estimate seeing a return on investment with HAProxy, as it significantly reduced staff requirements and enhanced scaling capabilities, particularly when transitioning from NGINX, which faced issues.

For more quotes and insights, download the HAProxy report

Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.8

F5 BIG-IP AFM support is responsive and praised, though expertise varies; customer service is excellent, communication needs improvement.

Sentiment score

6.3

HAProxy's support is praised for responsiveness and skill, though some suggest improved documentation and communication for better efficiency.

The responses are generally fast and effective.

System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten.

Network Security Engineer at IIPL

I rate the technical support by F5 a ten from one to ten.

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.

Since we are utilizing the open-source edition, community forums, mailing lists, and GitHub have been invaluable, with typically someone having encountered the same problems we faced.

Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

My interactions with HAProxy's customer support were limited, but the feedback from my team indicated satisfactory service.

For more quotes and insights, download the HAProxy report

Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.0

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is scalable and flexible, supporting diverse environments and thousands of users daily.

Sentiment score

7.7

HAProxy is highly scalable, adaptable for small to medium businesses, efficiently handling substantial connections and diverse user volumes.

The solution is highly scalable, allowing me to add or remove nodes and manage traffic without interruption, which is essential for meeting application demands.

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We manage an automatic load balancing feature where we add HAProxy servers dynamically behind the application load balancer to handle more traffic.

Head of DevOps at TripFactory

HAProxy's scalability is excellent; as our traffic expands, it handles load increases effortlessly.

Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For scalability, HAProxy meets my needs, supporting our initial horizontal scaling and then adapting to vertical scaling in a VMware environment.

For more quotes and insights, download the HAProxy report

Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.4

F5 BIG-IP AFM is highly rated for stability, reliability, and efficient logging, with no major bugs or issues reported.

Sentiment score

8.1

HAProxy offers high stability and reliable performance, enhancing system uptime with minimal downtime and frequent functionality updates.

No quotes available

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This reliability serves as a key reason for our choice, providing us with confidence even when faced with heavy traffic.

Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The hot reload feature of HAProxy also really helped us so that we never had to shut it down to reload it.

Sanooj Mananot

CEo at CloudPositive

We have reduced a lot of servers, replacing them with one or two HAProxy servers which deliver better performance, accuracy, and an almost 100% success rate with requests.

For more quotes and insights, download the HAProxy report

Head of DevOps at TripFactory

Room For Improvement

F5 BIG-IP AFM needs better GUI, cloud integration, pricing, support, reporting, and zero-day prevention to enhance user experience.

Users recommend improved HAProxy documentation, management tools, dynamic configuration, cloud integration, APIs, and enhanced load-balancing and clustering capabilities.

Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable.

Network Security Engineer at IIPL

The appliance and features could be enhanced further, especially in terms of security.

System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

I would assess the importance of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s integration with cloud services as significant.

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.

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.

Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

An easier desktop interface to connect to a remote server and make changes on my PC would be beneficial.

reviewer2774310

DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

The reloading functionality is effective as it allows soft reloads without interrupting traffic patterns.

For more quotes and insights, download the HAProxy report

Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Setup Cost

F5 BIG-IP AFM is costly yet valued for its stability, functionality, and perceived value for money despite high pricing.

Enterprise buyers find HAProxy cost-effective, with free open-source options and a pricier Enterprise Edition offering enhanced features.

The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive.

System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

If considering a one-stop solution that provides load balancing, DNS security, AAA authentication, and firewalling on the same hardware, the cost is reasonable.

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

Network Security Engineer at IIPL

Since we use the open-source edition, there are no licensing fees, with the main cost being the infrastructure running on EC2 instances in AWS, which helps maintain low expenses.

Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Setting up HAProxy didn't cost anything for me.

reviewer2774310

DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

The pricing remains competitive compared to other vendors.

For more quotes and insights, download the HAProxy report

Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Valuable Features

F5 BIG-IP AFM provides robust security and performance with features like DDoS protection and AI-driven traffic analysis.

HAProxy offers high performance load balancing with customization, scalability, and support for diverse environments, enhancing user experience and flexibility.

The solution provides behavioral analysis via AI to detect malicious traffic.

Network Security Engineer at IIPL

The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications.

System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

I think the DDoS features are valuable in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM), and I recommend it usually for certain types of companies.

For more quotes and insights, download the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.

By moving all SSL termination to the load balancer, I now manage certificates in a single place, and I can also utilize Let's Encrypt with HAProxy's built-in ACME support, making renewal automatic.

Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

HAProxy positively impacted our organization by exceeding scalability expectations, initially projected at 200k requests but ultimately handling over 15 million transactions per second without any issues.

For more quotes and insights, download the HAProxy report

Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

As a production engineer at that time, I definitely wanted to ensure that the system could handle massive connections, especially since we operated an e-commerce platform where we could not lose any customer calls.

Sanooj Mananot

CEo at CloudPositive

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...

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

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HAProxy

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

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (15th), Bot Management (6th), Service Mesh (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.9%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 1.5%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
HAProxy	1.5%
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)	1.9%
Other	96.6%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Comprehensive network protection has mitigated DDoS risks and supports secure on-prem operations

Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.

Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identified. It is a little bit expensive, and I think about additional features they could have in the future to make it even better. For example, I have thoughts about the price. Currently, it does not integrate, and I would assess the importance of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s integration with cloud services as significant. Currently, I use only one site, and I cannot tell you about F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) centralized security policies. I have not used F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s Threat Intelligence capabilities. I have not used their dynamic traffic shaping feature. So far, the only thing that could be improved is the pricing of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM).

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Handles high traffic efficiently and simplifies complex routing with rule-based logic

Head of DevOps at TripFactory

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.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Construction Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Engineering Company

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	16

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?

The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive. There are plenty of technical documents and a supportive community available, which helps mana...

What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?

What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?

I am starting to learn and working with F5 team to conduct a proof of concept, and I do have experience with F5 Rules for AWS WAF. I have experience with BIG-IP, not BIG-IQ, and I may have experien...

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...

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Product Reports

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

Download F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) product report

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) report

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Also Known As

F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Overview

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager provides robust network protection with advanced DDoS features and efficient load balancing. Its design prioritizes scalability and ease of management, catering to securing data centers and applications.

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is a strategic choice for combating cyber threats, including DDoS attacks. With powerful network defenses, integrated WAF, and adaptable capabilities, it efficiently handles web services on-premise and in the cloud. Users value its application-level threat defense with IP blocking and AI-enhanced reporting. Advanced integration with SIEM solutions allows comprehensive monitoring and enhanced threat detection through dynamic resource allocation. However, areas for improvement include better dashboard statistics and pricing adjustments. Enhancing integration with BIG-IQ and intuitive configuration would streamline its operation. Automatic geolocation updates and improved support could address current challenges alongside its high cost and complex initial setup.

What are the standout features?

Integrated WAF: Enhances security by protecting applications from online threats.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale DDoS attacks efficiently.
AI-Enhanced Reporting: Provides detailed insights through AI-driven analytics.
IP Blocking: Offers IP-based threat defense and geolocation capabilities.
Resource Allocation: Dynamically allocates resources for optimized performance.

What are the benefits and ROI to consider?

Ease of Management: Simplifies management processes with user-friendly features.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Through SIEM integration for better visibility.
Superior Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats proactively.
Scalability: Adapts to evolving network needs and traffic demands.

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is widely used in sectors requiring stringent security measures, such as finance and healthcare. These industries deploy it as a data center and web application firewall to protect against cyber threats, manage client connections, and ensure the security of on-premise and cloud applications.

HAProxy delivers reliability, high performance, and efficient load balancing solutions. Its open-source model ensures cost-effectiveness and scalability, ideal for managing extensive infrastructure demands with minimal latency while offering seamless integration with modern platforms.

HAProxy is renowned for its robust performance in load balancing across TCP and HTTP protocols, featuring multiple algorithms such as round-robin. Users appreciate its customizable configuration and seamless SSL termination, which make it an excellent choice for managing complex infrastructures. The platform's open-source nature supports scalability, reducing costs while providing flexible proxy operations. HAProxy efficiently handles high concurrency, enabling smooth traffic management and ensuring stability within diverse systems.

What key features does HAProxy offer?

Load Balancing: Balances TCP and HTTP traffic using algorithms like round-robin
SSL Termination: Provides secure, seamless SSL termination for user connections
Customizable Configuration: Offers detailed configuration options for tailored setups
Traffic Management: Comprehensive management of large traffic loads
Open-Source: Cost-effective, scalable solution for tech infrastructures

What benefits and ROI aspects should you consider?

Reliability: High performance with minimal latency, enhancing user satisfaction
Scalability: Open-source model ensures growth without considerable cost
Integration: Compatible with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud services
Stability: Robust architecture supports complex infrastructures smoothly

HAProxy is extensively used in load balancing implementations across various sectors. Companies deploy it for managing high traffic, Layer 4 and Layer 7 applications, and SQL databases. It supports microservices architecture, performs SSL offloading, and manages email services like SMTP. As a reverse proxy, HAProxy delivers high availability for systems like Redis, RabbitMQ, and Apache while integrating with Docker and Kubernetes. Its features enhance web application firewall capabilities and traffic routing, making it suitable for industries demanding reliable and efficient network management.

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office

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

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. HAProxy