A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs HAProxy comparison

A10 Networks and HAProxy are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. A10 Networks is ranked #18, while HAProxy is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. A10 Networks holds a 1.2% mindshare in ADC, compared to HAProxy’s 9.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of A10 Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of HAProxy users who would recommend it.

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Read 3 A10 Networks Lightning ADC reviews

342 Views
335 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HAProxy

Read 47 HAProxy reviews

5,819 Views
4,190 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

HAProxy

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

A10 Networks Lightning ADC and HAProxy compete in the advanced load-balancing category. HAProxy appears to have an advantage due to its extensive feature set and robust support.

Features: A10 Networks Lightning ADC offers robust SSL offloading, advanced traffic analytics, and DDoS protection, fitting for high-demand settings. HAProxy provides flexible load balancing, high availability, and high-performance capabilities, including support for TCP and HTTP traffic, aided by its open-source nature and customization options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: A10 Networks Lightning ADC is recognized for seamless integration and a straightforward deployment process, backed by comprehensive customer service. HAProxy, while powerful, can present difficulties in deployment, necessitating skilled resources for optimal setups. A10 Networks provides more hands-on customer service to alleviate deployment stress compared to HAProxy.

Pricing and ROI: A10 Networks Lightning ADC typically involves higher initial setup costs, yet it offers significant ROI through advanced performance and security. HAProxy, being open-source, offers a cost-effective setup suitable for budget-sensitive organizations, though it might require additional investment in expert personnel for management. HAProxy combines low setup costs with high configurability, delivering favorable ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy

February 2026

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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

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

18th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

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

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 February 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 1.2%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 9.7%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HAProxy	9.7%
A10 Networks Lightning ADC	1.2%
Other	89.1%

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

RONALDO DE MELO

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.

Read full review

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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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."

"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."

"It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load."

"The most valuable thing for me is TCP/IP Layer 4 stuff you can do with HAProxy. You can go down to the protocol level and make decisions on something."

"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."

"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."

"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."

"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."

"The technical support has been, in one word, perfect. Every time I call, I’m on the phone with a representative within five minutes who is highly skilled and willing to help, whether in the case of critical issues or simple advice."

"The most important features would be the load-balancing of HTTP and TCP requests, according to multiple LB-algorithms (busyness, weighted-busyness, round robin, traffic, etc). Another important feature that we cannot live without is the username/passwd authentication for legacy systems that had none."

"HAProxy has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to manage configurations; I put configuration files on the Ceph storage shared across the whole cluster, allowing me to write my configuration, change it easily in one place, and reload it."

More HAProxy pros

Cons

"We would like to see some improvement in the rapidity with which we can customize security facts within the solution."

"A10 documentation is not as open and accessible as AWS and Azure documentation is."

"The support from A10 should be improved."

"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."

"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 solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better and mandating to clients what the expected outcome must be in order to avoid receiving contestant timeout logs."

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

"A significant area for improvement in HAProxy is its tenancy model; managing multiple environments can be challenging, especially with mergers, acquisitions, or domain changes."

"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."

"Sometimes it's challenging to get through the log, and you need a log to understand what is going on. It isn't easy to map the logging with the documentation, and every time I read the log, I have to pull out the documentation to understand what I'm reading."

"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."

More HAProxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It is free of cost."

"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the 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."

"HAProxy is free open-source software."

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

"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

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 ...

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

Comparisons

Kemp LoadMaster vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 21% of the time

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 19% of the time

NetScaler vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 15% of the time

LoadBalancer Enterprise vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 14% of the time

More A10 Networks Lightning ADC Competitors

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 9% of the time

NGINX Plus vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

HAProxy

January 2026

Download HAProxy product report

Also Known As

Lightning ADS

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Overview

A cloud-native, software-defined solution that provides integrated advanced load-balancing, performance optimization, application security and per-application analytics to increase operational agility and application performance.

A10 Networks

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

Sample Customers

Handle Financial

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

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy

February 2026

Free Report: A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. HAProxy

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