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HAProxy vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
7.1
HAProxy's open-source load balancer cuts costs, boosts efficiency, improves uptime, reduces staffing, and enhances scalability for users.
Sentiment score
3.9
Users benefit from VMware Avi Load Balancer's flexibility and low hardware costs, though some face obstacles to quick financial gains.
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.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
HAProxy's customer service and technical support are highly rated for quick, expert assistance, though documentation could improve.
Sentiment score
5.9
VMware Avi Load Balancer's customer support varies, with mixed reviews on responsiveness, expertise, and ticket handling efficiency.
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.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
The solution architect from VMware side told me that there would be no issue adding them. Here we are with an RFP, and we cannot add them easily.
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
HAProxy efficiently handles scalability, easily adapting configurations for growing traffic, ideal for small to medium businesses and larger environments.
Sentiment score
6.9
VMWare Avi Load Balancer offers scalable architecture but opinions vary, highlighting strengths and limitations compared to hardware platforms.
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.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Scalability-wise, VMWare Avi Load Balancer is good.
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
HAProxy is reliable, handles heavy traffic efficiently, with minimal downtime, quick support, and frequent updates enhancing stability and performance.
Sentiment score
7.8
VMWare Avi Load Balancer is stable and reliable, though some question its capacity under heavy traffic for extensive infrastructures.
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.
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.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
From a stability point of view, VMWare Avi Load Balancer is stable.
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
 

Room For Improvement

HAProxy needs a revamped GUI, improved APIs, better AWS integration, real-time config, enhanced docs, and stronger monitoring and security.
VMWare Avi Load Balancer needs pricing, integration, security, and feature enhancements to compete with leaders like F5.
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.
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.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
Multi-cloud capability comes from a configuration called NSX Extended.
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The documentation needs to improve, as it was really handy a couple of years back.
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users value HAProxy's competitive pricing and cost-effective licensing, especially compared to F5 and Citrix, despite initial setup costs.
VMware Avi Load Balancer offers flexible, cost-effective licensing and competitive pricing compared to alternatives like F5, with minimal setup costs.
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.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The pricing remains competitive compared to other vendors.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Users praise HAProxy for reliable load balancing, customization, low latency, open-source benefits, and advanced features like secure traffic management.
VMWare Avi Load Balancer is valued for its integration, stability, intuitive interface, logging, analytics, and flexible deployment options.
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.
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.
CEo at CloudPositive
The features I find most valuable in VMware Avi Load Balancer are the load balancing part and the WAF part.
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
F5, A10, and VMWare Avi Load Balancer all have comparable functionality.
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

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)
VMWare Avi Load Balancer
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 9.4%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 5.4%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy9.4%
VMWare Avi Load Balancer5.4%
Other85.2%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer2273484 - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Struggled with rising costs and limited value while managing internal traffic
The issue with load balancers is that they are all the same. I would rate it seven. I do not recall VMWare Avi Load Balancer having WAF protection. We use WAF and for this specific case, we use F5. It is not about VMWare Avi Load Balancer itself. For multi-cloud capability, you need to do NSX Extended and HCX in VMware. This is what will give you the flavor of multi-cloud. Others will be resources because once you reach NSX Extended, all resources will be under one cloud management. So it does not matter. It is not a feature in VMWare Avi Load Balancer that would be responsible for multi-cloud capability. Multi-cloud capability comes from a configuration called NSX Extended. It is very expensive. The pricing is expensive in that it is only an add-on. From my opinion, they should lower the price.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

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 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 do you like most about Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management.
What needs improvement with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
When it comes to improvements for VMWare Avi Load Balancer, I think the documentation part needs a bit of work. The original documentation which was on the Avi Vantage website in the good old days ...
 

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
Avi Software Load Balancer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos
Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.