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F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition 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

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (7th), Service Mesh (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is 0.5%. The mindshare of HAProxy is 9.9%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HAProxy9.9%
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition0.5%
Other89.6%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2716224 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a non-tech company with 501-1,000 employees
Focuses on securing application access with dependable integration
I do not use the load balancing and traffic management features of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. I use other container orchestration platforms, but they are not relevant to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. I have utilized F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's ability to integrate with cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, GCP, and Salesforce. I have no idea how this integration has helped my organization manage hybrid or multi-cloud environments. The seamless integration of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition with existing F5 technologies is not important to me as I do not use other technologies from F5. Financially, we require F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition because we need the product. We don't have anything else that performs the same functions, so we use it without trying alternatives. I just use and manage F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, though I didn't handle its deployment. I would recommend F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition as a solution to others. I would rate F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition an eight out of ten overall.
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

"It's easy to use, and they have good support."
"The tool's investment is less than a physical device."
"I have a specific issue with the network interface connector, the NIC. We're limited to a maximum of two NICs in a virtualized environment. It's a limitation of the tool."
"The features that I like include LTM and Global Traffic Manager (GTM)."
"The advanced web application firewall protection and SSL offloading capabilities of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition have been utilized in my organization; these features are contributing to our application security and compliance posture."
"The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it."
"It has DoS layer 7 protection, which not many vendors have."
"We use it as a load balancer for our application servers."
"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."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"With centralized SSL termination and automated renewals now in place, that time requirement has dropped to nearly zero hours, translating to dozens of hours saved per year."
"We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
"It reduced the load on our main load balancers."
"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."
"HAProxy potentially has a good return on investment"
 

Cons

"The tool has limitations with respect to code and RAM."
"I have a specific issue with the network interface connector, the NIC. We're limited to a maximum of two NICs in a virtualized environment. It's a limitation of the tool."
"It's expensive and could be cheaper."
"BIG-IP could improve in supporting microservices, for example, in Docker and Kubernetes environments."
"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a heavy system that needs a lot of CPU, memory, and hard disk."
"On-the-go upgrades are an option that the tool currently lacks, making it an area where improvements are required."
"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 product does not have any new technologies."
"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."
"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy."
"I would like to evaluate load-balancing algorithms other than round robin and SSL offloading. Also, it would be helpful if I could logically divide the HAProxy load-balancing into multiple entities so that I would install one HA Proxy LB application which could be used for different Web servers for different applications. I am not sure if these features are available."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company's customers need to make payments for the licensing charges attached to the product. It is an expensive product."
"The pricing is standard."
"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is an expensive solution, but it's worth the price."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"The product is open source."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"The tool is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
I believe F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition can be improved because the 25 megabits throughput cap is small.
What advice do you have for others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
My advice for others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is to be aware of the throughput cap and how complex it can be. I would rate this product a 9 overall.
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.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,853 professionals have used our research since 2012.