HAProxy vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

HAProxy and Broadcom are both solutions in the Service Mesh category. HAProxy is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2, while Broadcom is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.7. HAProxy holds a 13.9% mindshare in SM, compared to Broadcom’s 4.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of HAProxy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

HAProxy

Read 47 HAProxy reviews

5,758 Views
1,094 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 23 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

6,615 Views
265 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HAProxy

VMware Tanzu Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

HAProxy and VMware Tanzu Platform offer robust solutions for load balancing and application modernization. VMware Tanzu Platform has the upper hand with its comprehensive features and strong customer support, while HAProxy is preferred for its pricing and support.

Features: HAProxy users find reliability, high performance, and wide protocol support valuable. VMware Tanzu Platform users value comprehensive container orchestration, advanced security, and integrated DevOps tools.

Room for Improvement: HAProxy users suggest enhancing GUI functionalities, better documentation for complex setups, and streamlined configuration. VMware Tanzu Platform users seek improvements in simplifying configuration processes, better integration capabilities, and more user-friendly interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HAProxy is straightforward to deploy but has mixed customer support experiences. VMware Tanzu Platform has a similarly appreciated deployment process and exceptional customer support.

Pricing and ROI: HAProxy is commended for low setup cost and steady ROI. VMware Tanzu Platform users report higher setup costs but acknowledge satisfactory ROI due to its comprehensive feature set.

To learn more, read our detailed HAProxy vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

December 2025

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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

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (7th)

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in Service Mesh

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (14th), PaaS Clouds (11th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 13.9%, up from 13.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 4.2%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Service Mesh Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HAProxy	13.9%
VMware Tanzu Platform	4.2%
Other	81.9%

Service Mesh

Featured Reviews

Shrinivas Devarkonda

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.

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ErmiasGirma

Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools

Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

"Scalable and inexpensive."

"It solves a problem for me where I can build files, not based on the health of the check, but rather the speed of the check."

"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."

"It is stable. Period. Will not fail unless you do something wrong."

"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."

More HAProxy pros

"We never experienced any problems with scalability."

"A feature we find valuable is that other products can also be integrated with Mission Control. This means that we can see the status of specific clusters, as well as view the monitoring application logs all from one point."

"The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."

"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"

"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."

"The valuable feature I have found to be the management of Kubernetes clusters in a private cloud or public clouds, such as Azure or Google Cloud Platform."

"We feel very good about these features."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."

"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More HAProxy cons

"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."

"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."

"Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity."

"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."

"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."

"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."

"Another area of improvement is pricing."

"LYNX is a managed cluster solution that takes care of specific details within a cluster, such as sequences or services. I haven't seen this feature in Tanzu Mission Control."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."

"The tool is open-source."

"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."

"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 licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."

"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."

"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."

"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."

"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."

"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."

"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."

"The licensing cost is expensive."

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."

"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	10

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about HAProxy?

The solution is effective in managing our traffic.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

NGINX Plus vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 13% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Docker vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy

January 2026

Download HAProxy product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

January 2026

Download VMware Tanzu Platform product report

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu

Overview

HAProxy is considered by many in the industry to be one of the fastest and most popular and trusted software load balancer products in the marketplace today. Organizations are able to immediately deploy HAProxy solutions to enable websites and applications to optimize performance, security, and observability. HAProxy solutions are available to scale to any environment.

HAProxy is an open-source product and has a robust, active, reliable community. The solutions are continually tested and improved on by the community. HAProxy offers a dynamic design to support the most modern architectures, microservices, and deployment environments (appliances, containers, virtual, and cloud).

HAProxy utilizes a cloud-native protocol, which makes it a complete solution for cloud services such as Red Hat OpenShift, OVH, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and more. It also can be used as the reference load balancer in OpenStack.

HAProxy Products

HAProxy One: This is a next-gen end-to-end application delivery platform created to secure and streamline modern application architectures. It offers a complete suite of solutions, such as application delivery software, turnkey, and appliance services observed and administered through a central control plane. The product supplies application acceleration, CDN, DDoS, bot management, WAF capabilities, and load balancing.

HAProxy Fusion Control Plane: This product enables organizations to streamline workflows, arrange traffic routing and security protocols, enhance the speed of delivery, and scale out of the organization’s applications. HAProxy Fusion Control Plane offers an intuitive user interface to observe and control the complete product lineup and API for administering numerous fleets of HAProxy Enterprise servers, either in the cloud or on premises.

HAProxy Edge: This product offering is an application delivery network (ADN) that provides a broad array of turnkey application services with amazing scale and complete visibility. Services include application and content acceleration, advanced security, and load balancing.

HAProxy ALOHA Hardware or Virtual Load Balancer: This product is a virtual load balancer or plug-and-play hardware constructed upon HAProxy Enterprise that is designed to support proxying at Layer 4 and Layer 7. It has a user-friendly GUI, simple deployment, and no limit on backend servers, making it a complete product for organizations desiring a reliable system to provide high-end load distribution for critical services.

HAProxy Enterprise Kubernetes Ingress Controller: This product is designed to facilitate smooth traffic flow into a Kubernetes cluster. It is able to automatically discover anomalies and changes in an organization's Kubernetes infrastructure and provide precise distribution of traffic to healthy pods, with no downtime caused by poor pod health or scaling changes. The product comes with an embedded WAF to optimize the security of an organization’s applications running in Kubernetes.

HAProxy Enterprise: This product is the enterprise-class edition of HAProxy offering a dynamic and sturdy code base with next-generation features, an enterprise suite of add-ons, professional services, and trusted support.
- Cluster-wide tracking and rate limiting
- Advanced DDoS and bot management
- Web application firewall
- Reliable expert support
- High performance modules
- Device detection and geolocation
- Real-time dashboard

Reviews from Real Users

“Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind.” - Nathanel S., Platform Architect at SES

“I use HAProxy for individuals who can not buy low balancers. I built NFV in a box and send individuals a pathway into an HAProxy VM. The setup was not difficult; it usually takes a day to complete for a VPC. When it comes to pricing, HAProxy is free.” - Nasir O., Network & Cloud Architect at Koala Compute Inc.

HAProxy

VMware Tanzu Platform is designed for cloud-native development and management of Kubernetes, CI/CD processes, microservices, and containerized workloads. It supports deployments both on cloud and on-premises, providing centralized management via Mission Control.

VMware Tanzu Platform offers seamless integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN, supporting centralized cluster management and lifecycle management. The platform provides a GUI for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and network policies, enhancing multi-tenancy and Day 2 operations. Users can easily manage Kubernetes clusters, monitor applications, and integrate with tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and Azure. It ensures compliance and security for service providers, financial institutions, and businesses.

What are the key features of VMware Tanzu Platform?

Integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN: Enhances compatibility and flexibility.
Seamless Cluster Management: Centralized control over Kubernetes clusters.
CI/CD Pipelines and Network Policies: Simplifies monitoring and management.
Multi-tenancy Support: Facilitates resource sharing among multiple users.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: Streamlines deployment and scalability.
Observability Platform: Provides enhanced visibility and control.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in VMware Tanzu Platform reviews?

Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and reduces manual effort.
Enhanced Compliance and Security: Meets regulatory requirements.
Flexibility in Deployment: Supports both cloud and on-premises options.
Seamless Integration: Works with multiple vendors and tools.
Developer-Friendly Environment: Improves productivity and innovation.

Industries such as financial institutions, service providers, and businesses requiring rigorous compliance and security deploy VMware Tanzu Platform. These entities benefit from centralized management, streamlined DevOps processes, and integrated tools, enhancing their capabilities in cloud-native developments and containerized workloads.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

December 2025

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