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Envoy vs HAProxy 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Envoy
Ranking in Service Mesh
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Service Mesh
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of Envoy is 16.0%, down from 19.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 12.4%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Service Mesh Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy12.4%
Envoy16.0%
Other71.6%
Service Mesh
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Full-stack Developer at ImageVision.ai
A simple solution that works as a proxy server and load balancer
I used the solution to build a project's proxy server and load balancer I found Envoy simple to use compared to alternatives like Traefik. The tool needs to incorporate better documentation and more example samples.  I haven't contacted the tool's support team.  I chose Envoy for the POC…
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

"I found Envoy simple to use compared to alternatives like Traefik."
"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 feature that I have found the most valuable is that it works for my use case of application load balancing. I'm using it for PeerSense, and it's easy enough for PeerSense."
"I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."
"It’s a reliable product with good technical support."
"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."
"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 never have any downtime with it."
"HAProxy is highly customizable and will meet the business demands of most companies."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to incorporate better documentation and more example samples."
"Full layer 7 SSL termination is limited to a single core, which is a problem."
"In my previous job we had some stability issues related to configuration and compatibility with other products."
"An alerting system would be better as I need to check log files if any backend is down."
"HAProxy is definitely a power-user tool. It is enormously scalable and flexible, but this can come at the cost of usability."
"They should introduce one feature that I know many people, including me, are waiting for: HAProxy should provide hot-swipe for back-end servers, no downtime while shifting back-end servers."
"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."
"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."
"While the product is quite perfect, it could use more supervision and be more active. Also, more simplicity, more peripherals, and more scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is open-source."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"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."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Envoy?
The tool needs to incorporate better documentation and more example samples.
What is your primary use case for Envoy?
I used the solution to build a project's proxy server and load balancer.
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?
HAProxy already provides many of the features that other solutions in the market are providing, such as Nginx, so I do not see much room for improvement.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Booking.com, Cookpad, Digital Ocean, Ebay, F5, Google, GO-JEK, Grubhub, IBM, Medium, Microsoft, Netflix, Pinterest, Salesforce.com, Snapchat, Stripe, Square, Tencent, Twilio, Uber, Verizon, VMware, Vsco, Yahoo Japan, Yelp
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Isito, HAProxy, Kong and others in Service Mesh. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.