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Cloudflare One vs HAProxy comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare One
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
8th
Ranking in Bot Management
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (20th), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (24th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (14th), Access Management (11th), ZTNA as a Service (7th), ZTNA (5th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (9th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (2nd)
HAProxy
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
6th
Ranking in Bot Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th), Service Mesh (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 3.7%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 1.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy1.6%
Cloudflare One3.7%
Other94.7%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
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

"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."
"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"Cloudflare Access is part of the Zero Trust philosophy."
"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."
"Clover is the best product globally."
"It's a perfect solution from my perspective; it's easy to understand and easy to configure."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"Overall, it's a good solution."
"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."
"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."
"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."
"The solution is user-friendly, works quickly and efficiently."
"What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks."
"With each new release, I find very useful features and love each addition."
 

Cons

"Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."
"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"A significant area for improvement in HAProxy is its tenancy model; managing multiple environments can be challenging, especially with mergers, acquisitions, or domain changes."
"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."
"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration."
"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."
"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."
"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is."
"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
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
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler because it is currently too closed and too proprietary. Regarding additional fe...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN, strong authentication, and DDoS protection. The integration of Secure Web Gate...
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

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare One vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.