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A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.0
A10 Networks Thunder ADC boosts ROI within six months, cutting costs, saving money, and improving operational efficiency for users.
Sentiment score
5.7
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition enhances performance and reduces costs by improving application uptime, security, and operational efficiency.
We do see a return on investment and cost reductions after the implementation of A10 Networks Thunder ADC.
Head Of Technical And Network Security at Connex Information Technologies
Overall, I can say the ROI includes a twenty-five to thirty percent cost reduction, with some areas achieving forty percent cost reduction in our expenses.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
There is a significant performance improvement in the website and website speed.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
With F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have not faced any RMAs, which has made a positive operational impact.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
A10 Networks Thunder ADC offers effective support with excellent response times, but some users desire more comprehensive materials and faster urgent responses.
Sentiment score
6.5
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition support is effective and knowledgeable, though off-hour delays and access issues occasionally occur.
Their tech support is very responsible, and their response time is very low, providing superb support.
PM at Connex Information Technologies
The support we receive from the team is quite excellent.
Head Of Technical And Network Security at Connex Information Technologies
I would rate the customer support on a scale of one to ten as a perfect ten based on all of the experience I have had so far.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
I rate customer support a 10 out of 10, as they are knowledgeable and provide straightforward troubleshooting.
Network Engineer at Thryv
Customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is excellent.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
A10 Networks Thunder ADC efficiently scales across regions, supporting enterprises with easy integration, load balancing, and growth management.
Sentiment score
6.7
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers scalable, flexible resource expansion, supporting high availability and adaptability for increased traffic and demand.
A10 Networks Thunder ADC's scalability is impressive.
IT Architecture Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
A10 Networks Thunder ADC can handle growth easily, and I have scaled up during higher traffic periods.
Senior Consultant and Creative Director at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
It is the most scalable and reliable system.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Within ten minutes of time, we can scale and boot as many virtual machines as needed in the environment.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Being a virtual edition, we were able to scale resources such as CPU, memory, and throughput based on our demand without major architectural changes.
Network Security Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
A10 Networks Thunder ADC is highly stable, reliable, and handles demanding environments with features like DDoS protection and regular updates.
Sentiment score
8.4
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is highly stable, offering strong performance and security, with minimal downtime apart from updates.
In some of our deployments of A10 Networks Thunder ADC, we have employed DDoS and other security features, and for the past few years, we haven't experienced any major incidents.
Head Of Technical And Network Security at Connex Information Technologies
Most of the time, it just runs in the background without issues.
Senior Consultant and Creative Director at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
The load balancing module still performed admirably.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
The performance increased significantly and the response times of the application improved.
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The uptime improvements with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition are almost close to 100%, as it only goes down if a failover happens.
Sr. Consutant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

A10 Networks Thunder ADC requires UI improvements, better API docs, third-party integration, enhanced logging, scalability, and pricing structure refinement.
F5 BIG-IP VE requires interface upgrades, better microservices support, improved logging, clearer licensing, easier upgrades, and enhanced Azure integration.
Having more structured, real-world configuration examples would make a big difference, especially for teams that are new to the platform, helping reduce the initial learning curve for them.
Senior Consultant and Creative Director at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
In the vThunder series of A10 Networks Thunder ADC, they have a perpetual license model and a subscription model, but in the Thunder series, the physical appliance does not have a perpetual license model, mainly operating on the subscription model.
PM at Connex Information Technologies
Enhanced integration with third-party tools would be beneficial.
IT Architecture Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
The primary concern I noted regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is its scalability during high-load situations.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
It is a somewhat expensive solution, and the price needs to be improved based on what our customers have told us.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
With FortiWeb, we have a dashboard where I can check the policy status with just one click, and everything is easily accessible.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
 

Setup Cost

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is cost-effective compared to F5, with flexible pricing and varying support costs based on requirements.
Enterprise users appreciate F5 BIG-IP VE's ROI and scalability, but licensing costs and pricing transparency remain concerns.
I estimate that I can save around 20 to 30 percent of my budget with A10 Networks Thunder ADC.
Head Of Technical And Network Security at Connex Information Technologies
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's pricing structure was significantly more advantageous and aligned with our budgetary considerations.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
My experience with pricing and setup costs for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition was mixed, as they do not have an option for 10 gig licensing, which was costly for us.
Analyst at Accenture
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition solves a very significant problem of high availability and performance.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
 

Valuable Features

A10 Networks Thunder ADC offers load balancing, SSL offloading, security, scalability, and cost efficiency ideal for cloud environments.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition boosts user experience and efficiency with load balancing, security features, high availability, and cost reduction.
Application load balancing in A10 Networks Thunder ADC plays a crucial role in improving application reliability during peak periods.
PM at Connex Information Technologies
What really stands out to me about A10 Networks Thunder ADC is how customizable, performant, and automated the platform is.
IT Architecture Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
I would assess A10 Networks Thunder ADC's load balancing for improving application reliability during peak periods at around 9 out of 10, as GSLB is far better, and we are very satisfied with it.
Head Of Technical And Network Security at Connex Information Technologies
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition helped our customers increase the high availability and performance of their applications, specifically their web applications.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
If ten thousand, fifty thousand, or even a million people want to access the application simultaneously, we have configured auto-scalability.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has impacted my organization positively with cost savings by saving public IP addresses, and its performance and stability, which give almost 100% uptime for the application because we have high availability.
Sr. Consutant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Thunder ADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is 5.6%, up from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is 1.3%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition1.3%
A10 Networks Thunder ADC5.6%
Other93.1%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2817921 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Architecture Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees
Application delivery has improved and security now ensures reliable high‑traffic e‑commerce
A10 Networks Thunder ADC offers several strong features that make it a very competitive solution. First, they provide advanced Layer 4 or Layer 7 load balancing. Another key feature is SSL offloading and encryption handling. A10 Networks Thunder ADC is also highly scalable and flexible. Scalability for A10 Networks Thunder ADC shows up in my day-to-day operations during high-traffic events such as Black Friday. One feature I find really powerful and something underrated about A10 Networks Thunder ADC is A-Flex. Beyond the standard ADC feature, what really stands out to me about A10 Networks Thunder ADC is how customizable, performant, and automated the platform is. A10 Networks Thunder ADC has a significant impact on my organization in several ways. First, it improves application availability and performance. From a security perspective, it helps protect applications against threats such as DDoS attacks. It also has a strong operational impact. In terms of cost, it can lower both CapEx and OpEx.
reviewer2800392 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloud deployment has simplified traffic distribution and now supports flexible multi-zone DR
Regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's improvement areas, the current dashboard is very useful, but I believe the registration process should be simplified in the virtual edition. Especially in the Azure environment, many features are not currently aligned and working with Azure. We need to make efforts to ensure it is well integrated with Azure. Currently, if we want to integrate route tables with the virtual F5 edition, we need to deploy scripting inside the virtual F5 instances, and then that script performs the virtual IP route table changes in the Azure environment. This feature should be auto-configured, and efforts are needed to ensure the virtual edition is very much aligned with the Azure environment. I am expecting this improvement in the next edition. The failover capability is also not as good as it should be. We have tested the failover functionality, and sometimes we have observed that failover fails. F5 does not successfully fail over to other instances perfectly, so that also needs to be improved. Security should also be enhanced, as in the past I have seen some security loopholes. Tightening of security should be included in the new software. These improvements should be present in near future editions.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would recommend A10 Networks due that it delivers high performance in a small form factor to reduce OPEX with significantly lower power usage, rack space, and cooling requirements compared to oth...
Do you recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC?
I do recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC. It's very user-friendly, easy to configure, and flexible. It is a very useful solution - especially now, when a lot of employees are working remotely. I hav...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for A10 Networks Thunder ADC?
I estimate that I can save around 20 to 30 percent of my budget with A10 Networks Thunder ADC, though it's not an exact figure.
What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
Improvements for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could include a more straightforward process for major updates where we could pre-schedule upgrades to avoid downtime.
What advice do you have for others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition did not impact anything positively, as during core network activities, backend servers stopped responding due to being legacy servers, which may create issues. F5 BIG-IP V...
 

Also Known As

Thunder ADC, AX Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

123inkt.nl, Bentley University, Box, Brainshark, Buienradar, Capgemini, CGN/LSN & NAT64, Chengdu Telecom, Club One, Code Ready, CRC Health Group, Cyso, Deutsche Telekom, Earth Class Mail, Excite, FFF Enterprises, Florence County, Framingham State University, From30
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.