Azul Zulu vs NGINX Plus comparison

Azul Systems and F5 are both solutions in the Application Infrastructure category. Azul Systems is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0, while F5 is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.8. Azul Systems holds a 3.6% mindshare in AIS, compared to F5’s 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Azul Systems users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Azul Zulu

Read 2 Azul Zulu reviews

770 Views
678 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 32 NGINX Plus reviews

3,930 Views
1,533 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Azul Zulu

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azul Zulu and NGINX Plus based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Infrastructure solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Azul Zulu vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Azul Zulu vs. NGINX Plus

February 2026

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Helped 881,733 peers since 2012

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

Azul Zulu

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Customer Experience Personalization (13th), AI Content Creation (9th)

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Azul Zulu is 3.6%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 9.0%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Infrastructure Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
NGINX Plus	9.0%
Azul Zulu	3.6%
Other	87.4%

Application Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji

System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Standardized our Java estate and have reduced licensing costs while maintaining strong support

Azul Zulu's ability to allow us to standardize our Java estate on a single and well-supported platform stands out as one of its best features. This standardization simplifies our compliance audits and ensures all our applications receive timely security updates.Azul Zulu positively impacts our organization by providing a platform that allows us to standardize Java on a well-supported platform. Without the high cost associated with other proprietary vendors, Azul Zulu provides an excellent platform for running our applications.

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Nadeem-Inamdar

Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Advanced policies and web firewall have strengthened application protection and reduced attack traffic

There were some vulnerabilities in F5. They tried to fix it, but the fixes were not available at the time because they were zero days, so they attempted to fix it, but their support was not proper. Their support should be improved because sometimes features which we need for customization take time, and they are sometimes feasible and sometimes not feasible by the team, so their support and the engineering team should improve their product. I would like to see more features regarding customization which should be built into the application, and the tool optimization should be good, and the dashboard should be more crisp and clear.

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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

"We achieved specific outcomes from using Azul Zulu by reducing our Java licensing and support costs by approximately 70% when compared to our previous Oracle contract."

"The web application firewall feature has helped enhance security for our applications because most of the attacks which are performed on our website are being blocked by it, so the web application firewall is good."

"NGINX works much better than HAProxy in our current hardware and architecture for HTTP/HTTPS load balancing. "

"The web proxy and the database proxy are excellent."

"It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX."

"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."

"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."

"Nginx is simple to configure, very stable in a highly utilized environment and very modular, allowing DevOps to create it's own modules for interactive use with Nginx."

"NGINX provides a cost advantage, value addition, and effective support."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"Improvements for Azul Zulu could include more automated tools for unused code visibility integrated directly into the standard portal to help further optimize our cloud footprints."

"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."

"The solution must improve its performance."

"Lack of a feature to print data on the terminal for verification of network traffic during debugging and testing."

"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

"They should do in the open source version of what they did to Advanced HTTP, TCP, and UDP load balancing."

"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."

"Improvement needed in NGINX Plus could focus on optimizing memory usage for users."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

"You pay for each feature that you want."

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."

"NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. "

"The cost is reasonable."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

31%

Retailer

18%

Computer Software Company

12%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azul Zulu?

Improvements for Azul Zulu could include more automated tools for unused code visibility integrated directly into the standard portal to help further optimize our cloud footprints. The other core J...

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What is your primary use case for Azul Zulu?

Azul Zulu serves as our primary Java runtime, providing a stable, 100% open-source, and certified solution for our production microservices. We utilize it to ensure cross-platform compatibility acr...

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What advice do you have for others considering Azul Zulu?

My advice for others looking into using Azul Zulu is to perform a pilot migration with one non-critical application first. You will likely find that it is truly a drop-in replacement, which will gi...

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Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?

IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...

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What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

Pricing is reasonable and that is fine.

See all answers

Comparisons

Azul Zing vs Azul Zulu

Compared 30% of the time

Apache Web Server vs Azul Zulu

Compared 13% of the time

WebLogic Suite vs Azul Zulu

Compared 11% of the time

Oracle Hotspot vs Azul Zulu

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft .NET Framework vs Azul Zulu

Compared 8% of the time

More Azul Zulu Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 16% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 13% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 9% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Infrastructure

February 2026

Download Azul Zulu product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

January 2026

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

No data available

NGINX

Overview

Zulu is a 100% open source certified build of OpenJDK, running on Linux, Windows, and OS X. Zulu complies with the Java SE standard for Java SE 8, 7, and 6. Free to download and use, Zulu is available on Azure, AWS, Canonical’s Charm Store and the Docker hub. Zulu Enterprise subscriptions deliver 24 x 7 x 365 access to Azul’s Support team.

Azul Systems

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Kyocera, OKI, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Voya Financial

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

Azul Zulu vs. NGINX Plus

February 2026

Free Report: Azul Zulu vs. NGINX Plus

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