No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs HAProxy comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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)
17th
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)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (7th), Service Mesh (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 2.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 8.3%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy8.3%
A10 Networks Lightning ADC2.2%
Other89.5%
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 have reported an increase in revenue by around 5% on a year to year basis, since this solution was implemented."
"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."
"Our clients appreciate that this is a security enabled solution."
"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."
"There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good."
"The implementation of the HAProxy load balancing solution will allow Carers ACT to begin to deliver these new services."
"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 coming from customers or other sources, and there are no loopholes, disconnects, or gaps in the entire data flow."
"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."
"The main difference between HAProxy and other solutions on the market is that it is open source."
"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."
"The stability is good and passed all tests."
 

Cons

"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."
"The documentation is pretty much closed and I think A10 crashes sometimes because initially, I was not able to set up Lightning ADC."
"A10 documentation is not as open and accessible as AWS and Azure documentation is."
"In my previous job we had some stability issues related to configuration and compatibility with other products."
"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."
"I would like to evaluate load-balancing algorithms other than round robin and SSL offloading."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"​It needs proper HTTP/2 support.​"
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"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."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
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 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 needs improvement with HAProxy?
For the limited use that I have of HAProxy, I don't have any points to improve. I think I need more time with this tool, or perhaps I simply don't have areas that need to get better. I don't have a...
 

Also Known As

Lightning ADS
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Handle Financial
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.