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HAProxy vs Kemp LoadMaster comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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 Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Service Mesh (3rd)
Kemp LoadMaster
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
8th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 12.5%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.6%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

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.
PeterForster - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly stable and scalable load-balancing software that offers great technical support
My company is really happy with Kemp LoadMaster as a product. My company is also happy with the support we receive from Kemp LoadMaster. I want Kemp LoadMaster to provide users with better reporting capabilities in relation to TCP packets. In general, the connections that are present in the system require improvement. Feature-wise, Kemp LoadMaster has everything that our company's customers require. Kemp LoadMaster also has features that have supported our company's past projects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is scalable."
"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."
"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."
"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."
"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."
"The features I find valuable in this solution are session control which automatically disconnects users that forget to log off, and the ability to write rules to either allow or block certain file requests."
"It reduced the load on our main load balancers."
"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."
"We are most impressed with the ease of use and great support."
"The most valuable feature that I found is the load balancing feature, it is the core function of the product."
"The DNS Load Balancer makes it so that I don't have to worry about site failures."
"The Global WAF has saved us more than one time from unwanted traffic."
"Managing and maintaining multiple servers is done in a single place."
"The user interface is very easy to work with."
"Persistence is very valuable. This holds the connection information of the source and that connection is important to RDP and our APO calls. The connection has to be persisted to the original source to operate properly. We also use the subsections for sub-services to create services inside our services for our API resources, this is most awesome. We would not be able to do this without Kemp and offer this type of sub-service to route based on an API instance. It routes the traffic properly based on the sub-service type."
"It has been functional. We don't have any outages."
 

Cons

"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."
"They should introduce one feature that I know many people, including me, are waiting for: HAProxy should have provide hot-swipe for back-end servers. Also, they need a more detailed GUI for monitoring and configuration."
"Improving the documentation with multiple examples and scenarios would be beneficial. Most users encounter similar situations, so having a variety of scenarios readily available on the tool's website would be helpful. For instance, if I were part of the HAProxy team, I'd create a webpage with different scenarios and provide files for each scenario. This way, users wouldn't have to start from scratch every time."
"The product does not have any new technologies."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"Documentation could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"Some documentation is out of date versus the new version, and things have been moved​."
"The GUI is rather technical and complex, so it could be improved by making it simpler and more user-friendly."
"Over the last several major versions, the GUI has remained virtually unchanged and still seems lacking."
"The only thing I have struggled with is setting up automatic backups."
"It would be very helpful to get all the http/https session logs by default in the log monitor without activating debugging mode like an apache web sever natively does"
"UI is very basic and unattractive."
"Some of the support documentation seems to make assumptions that the person installing or configuring is experienced with the product or concepts."
"To make it a perfect ten out of ten it would need better connection logging. If there is an active connection, that there is better logging. It should also have better management monitoring tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."
"The product is open source."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"We are using HAProxy as an 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 price is great and the value is definitely there."
"They have multiple tiers of licensing and you can upgrade it easily."
"Nowadays, going with the virtual appliance is the easiest way and the cost is reasonable."
"The product definitely provides what the organization needs and its cost is reasonable considering the value it brings."
"Download Kemp's VLM trial and take it for a test drive; you will be impressed."
"Pricing for the perpetual licensing was fair to us for the features and ease of use we received."
"The pricing is alright and we pay a monthly licensing fee"
"At $2,500 USD, this is absolutely a fantastic buy for the money!"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Government
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 Kemp LoadMaster?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The initial setup of Kemp LoadMaster is very simple.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kemp LoadMaster?
LoadMaster is cheaper than some other solutions. It has a perpetual license, so it's a one-time cost.
What needs improvement with Kemp LoadMaster?
There are some challenges with updates on certain models that don't have a few features. The support team often takes a lot of time to provide resolutions for issues. Also, I could see more capabil...
 

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
LoadMaster Load Balancer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Kent County Council, KEMP, SMA Solar Technology AG, RT€ Player , Victrix (Quebec, Canada), Texas A&M, Macmillan Cancer Support, Cisco, Austin Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. Kemp LoadMaster and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.