HAProxy vs NetScaler comparison

HAProxy and NetScaler are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. HAProxy is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.6, while NetScaler is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. HAProxy holds a 12.3% mindshare in ADC, compared to NetScaler’s 14.6% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of HAProxy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

HAProxy

Read 42 HAProxy reviews

5,812 Views
3,746 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NetScaler

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

6,425 Views
4,740 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

HAProxy

NetScaler

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

NetScaler and HAProxy are both high-performance load balancers in the application delivery category. NetScaler appears to have the upper hand for enterprises needing advanced features and extensive support.

Features: NetScaler is favored for strong security and integration options, including SSL offload and comprehensive management capabilities, which benefit enterprises in complex environments. It excels with its flexible deployment model and advanced settings, allowing extensive traffic management and application delivery solutions. HAProxy is praised for reliability and low-level control, offering versatile load-balancing algorithms and customization due to its open-source nature.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler users note the need for upgrading the user interface and simplifying configurations, as well as addressing issues with frequent updates and inconsistent support. HAProxy could enhance GUI features and allow dynamic configurations without service interruption, in addition to improving documentation and monitoring tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler is versatile with deployment options ranging from on-premises to hybrid cloud environments and offers robust technical support with varying feedback on effectiveness. HAProxy, being open-source, is easy to deploy in on-premises setups with simpler licensing, but customer service is less extensive compared to paid enterprise options like NetScaler.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler is expensive with significant upfront costs due to licensing, making it a premium solution for larger enterprises seeking advanced functionalities. It offers positive ROI through stability and comprehensive management. HAProxy appeals to cost-conscious businesses with no license fees and low TCO, offering excellent value for money. Although its basic version is free, enterprises might opt for paid versions for enhanced support.

To learn more, read our detailed HAProxy vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy vs. NetScaler

June 2025

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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

HAProxy

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Service Mesh (2nd)

NetScaler

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (5th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 12.3%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.6%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Kaushlendra Singh

Manager - IT Infrastructure and Network at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Used for load balancing, but its dashboard and reporting could be improved

We use the solution for load balancing The solution's implementation and troubleshooting are not easy. The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved. I have been using HAProxy for 12 years. We didn’t face any issues with the solution’s stability. I rate the solution’s stability an…

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The VRRP redundancy is also a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly. I can bring down a server live with minimal downtime because of this."

"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."

"I estimate that this product has saved our company hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in possible downtime from previous load balancers. We make a lot of our money from online sales, so it is critical to have 99.9% uptime."

"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."

"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."

"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."

"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."

"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."

More HAProxy pros

"The most valuable features of Citrix ADC are load balancing and application firewall."

"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."

"One of the most beneficial features for application delivery is its integration with Citrix Storefront, facilitating user logins and ensuring continuity during data center outages."

"The load balancing feature of this solution is very good."

"The solution's technical support is good."

"The solution improves security performance."

"For desktop application management, I recommend the NetScaler edition. This product is like a Swiss army knife. Citrix NetScaler ADC supports the education front-end."

"The web application firewall is one feature I found valuable in the solution."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."

"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment."

"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."

"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."

"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."

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

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."

"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."

More HAProxy cons

"We face challenges with the solution's firmware upgrades frequently."

"The user interface could be more friendly. Some wizards and other documentation for administrators, as well as some use cases, helps us to understand the solution."

"The SLB could be better, and they should improve it."

"The reporting is not so good. They don't have an application to connect the logs."

"In every release - and it doesn't matter if it's a minor release or a major release - they keep moving things around and they keep changing the mechanism. So certain things can work in one version one way, and everything works really well, then when you upgrade it to the next version, it breaks everything because they have a new way of doing it."

"Their upgrades are not very backward compatible, and sometimes they mess up."

"Native integration needs to be improved. You cannot build ISE codes natively. For DevOps, integration would be very helpful because it would be a lot simpler from an operational standpoint."

"Currently, the support team's responsiveness is lacking, and the technical personnel on calls often seem unfamiliar with the issues or inadequately trained."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."

"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."

"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."

"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."

"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible."

"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."

"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."

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

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"Citrix ADC could improve the price and make it less expensive, other competitors have a better prices. This would allow Citrix ADC to keep dominating the market."

"Licensing is adequate. I wanted to have a more prominent license, but until I do they don't give enough support. The additional cost would be too much."

"It's an expensive product but it works well."

"The solution is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"The licensing costs for this solution vary depending on which model is being used."

"The pricing could be lower."

"Its licensing cost is much higher than other products, but it is acceptable because it is a one-time investment, and we are getting our requirements fulfilled when we buy this product. So, there is no issue with the pricing."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 ...

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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?

HAProxy is an open-source solution.

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexity. While it could be easier to manage, it is like transitioning from driving a ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 14% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

NGINX Plus vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy

June 2025

Download HAProxy product report

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

June 2025

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

Overview

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

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

Sample Customers

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

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy vs. NetScaler

June 2025

Free Report: HAProxy vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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