No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

F5 Shape Security 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 Shape Security
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (21st)
HAProxy
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (7th), Service Mesh (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

F5 Shape Security and HAProxy aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. F5 Shape Security is designed for Fraud Detection and Prevention and holds a mindshare of 1.5%, down 1.5% compared to last year.
HAProxy, on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 9.4% mindshare, down 12.5% since last year.
Fraud Detection and Prevention Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Shape Security1.5%
ThreatMetrix6.4%
BioCatch4.0%
Other88.1%
Fraud Detection and Prevention
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy9.4%
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)14.3%
NetScaler12.7%
Other63.599999999999994%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Engineer at Paysafe / IBM
Easy to configure and blocks bot attacks for web users
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake browser. F5 Shape Security has a normal dashboard. We are doing F5 Shape Security migrations for 30 customers. F5 Shape Security uses Javascript. For a lot of competitors, the Javascript can be reverse-engineered by attackers to bypass the protection. F5 Shape Security has machine learning authentication of the Java script. If you had hacked it, the encryption would have been changed. It's really hard for attackers to reverse engineer the F5 Shape Security JavaScript. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that it works for my use case of application load balancing."
"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."
"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions, which speeds up development."
"Overall, it's a good solution."
"We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
"It is scalable."
"It is stable. Period. Will not fail unless you do something wrong."
 

Cons

"The tool's price is high."
"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"I would like to see a two (or more) native cluster support without third parties or DNS manipulations."
"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out."
"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."
"In my previous job we had some stability issues related to configuration and compatibility with other products."
"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."
"Also, having multiple HAProxy nodes in High Availability mode requires the use of clustering software such as Pacemaker and Corosync which are very complex."
"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."
"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is moderately priced."
"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."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."
"The product is open source."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Fraud Detection and Prevention solutions are best for your needs.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
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 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

Shape Security
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wells Fargo, Loblaw, JetBlue, Zoosk
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Shape Security vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.