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A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs HAProxy 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Lightning ADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
18th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 1.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 9.4%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy9.4%
A10 Networks Lightning ADC1.4%
Other89.2%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

RONALDO DE MELO - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Account Executive at l8
Efficient application security while optimizing connections
The initial setup is simple; it is not complex. The configuration itself is simple and can be done in a couple of hours. However, the migration of the system to A10 Networks takes longer due to critical applications. Clients prefer to move them one by one, which is why it takes a significant amount of time. The configuration itself is simple, especially for this application.
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

"Our clients appreciate that this is a security enabled solution."
"It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load."
"What I like about Lightning ADC, is that instead of having a big appliance sitting in front of the Kubernetes cluster, Lightning can pretty much go inside of Kubernetes."
"The implementation of the HAProxy load balancing solution will allow Carers ACT to begin to deliver these new services."
"It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"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."
"HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."
"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"A10 documentation is not as open and accessible as AWS and Azure documentation is."
"We would like to see some improvement in the rapidity with which we can customize security facts within the solution."
"The support from A10 should be improved."
"A better GUI would be nice."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"HAProxy is definitely a power-user tool. It is enormously scalable and flexible, but this can come at the cost of usability."
"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."
"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."
"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 configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"The tool is open-source."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"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."
"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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

Lightning ADS
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.