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HAProxy vs HashiCorp Consul comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

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

HAProxy
Ranking in Service Mesh
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (11th), Bot Management (5th)
HashiCorp Consul
Ranking in Service Mesh
6th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 14.3%, up from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HashiCorp Consul is 5.9%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Service Mesh Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HAProxy14.3%
HashiCorp Consul5.9%
Other79.8%
Service Mesh
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks
What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks. The reliability features of HAProxy were particularly useful in a scenario where I needed to test load balancing between two Tomcats. Since these domains were inaccessible, I set up a third Docker with HAProxy, which had access to the Tomcat domains. I then configured HAProxy to handle the load balancing. This setup allowed the client to interact with HAProxy. The solution's integration with other elements is easy.
Phanindra Sangers - PeerSpot reviewer
Has an efficient key vault feature, but its integration capabilities need enhancement
I recommend HashiCorp Consul for beginners. It is a stable tool. The key-vault storage feature has significantly enhanced our configuration management process. We have maintained the secret software applications in the vault and retrieved the information from Kv. I rate the product a seven out of ten. It is good open-source software to be managed within the production.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."
"The support for all major Linux distros makes running and testing a breeze."
"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."
"The VRRP redundancy is also a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly. I can bring down a server live with minimal downtime because of this."
"The ability to handle a sequence of front- and back-ends gives the user the opportunity to send traffic through different services."
"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."
"I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."
"The documentation is good."
"The product's most valuable features are support for Service Mesh TLS and canary deployment."
"HashiCorp Consul's most valuable feature is the automation of many processes, which limits the errors from user interaction."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
"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)."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"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."
"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."
"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."
"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."
"They could improve issues related to triggering generic deployments for the platform."
"Health check outputs are delayed sometimes."
"The command line of HashiCorp Consul could be more intuitive to make it easier to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."
"It is free of cost."
"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"In case of budget constraints, we opt for the product's business support licenses and use an open-source version"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise15
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about HashiCorp Consul?
The product's most valuable features are support for Service Mesh TLS and canary deployment.
What needs improvement with HashiCorp Consul?
They could improve issues related to triggering generic deployments for the platform. We have raised multiple support cases. They could enhance the integration approach with Service Mesh tools. Add...
What advice do you have for others considering HashiCorp Consul?
I recommend HashiCorp Consul for beginners. It is a stable tool. The key-vault storage feature has significantly enhanced our configuration management process. We have maintained the secret softwar...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. HashiCorp Consul and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,445 professionals have used our research since 2012.