A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer comparison

A10 Networks and Broadcom are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. A10 Networks is ranked #17, while Broadcom is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.0. A10 Networks holds a 1.7% mindshare in ADC, compared to Broadcom’s 5.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of A10 Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Read 3 A10 Networks Lightning ADC reviews

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509 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Read 10 VMWare Avi Load Balancer reviews

2,124 Views
2,103 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

A10 Networks Lightning ADC and VMWare Avi Load Balancer compete in the load balancing market. While A10 offers better pricing and customer support, VMWare Avi stands out due to its robust features, making it a worthwhile investment.

Features: A10 Networks Lightning ADC is known for its extensive customization, integration capabilities, and advanced traffic management tools. It provides security features that fit various business needs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer provides intelligent analytics, automation, and features that enable scalability and efficiency. It offers better automation and analytics compared to A10's offerings.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: A10 Networks Lightning ADC ensures an easy deployment experience with responsive customer support for quick issue resolution. VMWare Avi Load Balancer offers a smooth deployment with detailed tracking and monitoring capabilities. It has proactive customer service enhancing user experience.

Pricing and ROI: A10 Networks Lightning ADC provides competitive setup costs appealing to budget-focused organizations and promises a solid return on investment. VMWare Avi Load Balancer has a higher price point but offers significant ROI with its advanced feature set, ensuring long-term cost-efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

April 2026

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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

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

17th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 1.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 5.1%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMWare Avi Load Balancer	5.1%
A10 Networks Lightning ADC	1.7%
Other	93.2%

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

RONALDO DE MELO

Sales Account Executive at l8

Efficient application security while optimizing connections

The initial setup is simple; it is not complex. The configuration itself is simple and can be done in a couple of hours. However, the migration of the system to A10 Networks takes longer due to critical applications. Clients prefer to move them one by one, which is why it takes a significant amount of time. The configuration itself is simple, especially for this application.

Read full review

reviewer2273484

Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Struggled with rising costs and limited value while managing internal traffic

The issue with load balancers is that they are all the same. I would rate it seven. I do not recall VMWare Avi Load Balancer having WAF protection. We use WAF and for this specific case, we use F5. It is not about VMWare Avi Load Balancer itself. For multi-cloud capability, you need to do NSX Extended and HCX in VMware. This is what will give you the flavor of multi-cloud. Others will be resources because once you reach NSX Extended, all resources will be under one cloud management. So it does not matter. It is not a feature in VMWare Avi Load Balancer that would be responsible for multi-cloud capability. Multi-cloud capability comes from a configuration called NSX Extended. It is very expensive. The pricing is expensive in that it is only an add-on. From my opinion, they should lower the price.

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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

"Our clients have reported an increase in revenue by around 5% on a year to year basis, since this solution was implemented."

"What I like about Lightning ADC, is that instead of having a big appliance sitting in front of the Kubernetes cluster, Lightning can pretty much go inside of Kubernetes."

"It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load."

"Our clients appreciate that this is a security enabled solution."

"The interface and software features are the most valuable aspects of this solution."

"Moving from a legacy solution to a newer one has provided us with tangible returns."

"The WAF - the web application firewall itself - is great."

"It is more common in the market, so it is easier to use because it is more common."

"The solution is stable."

"Avi Networks Software Load Balancer can improve the way some organizations function because the platform is agile."

"The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management."

"The features I find most valuable in VMWare Avi Load Balancer are the load balancing part and the WAF part."

More VMWare Avi Load Balancer pros

Cons

"We would like to see some improvement in the rapidity with which we can customize security facts within the solution."

"The documentation is pretty much closed and I think A10 crashes sometimes because initially, I was not able to set up Lightning ADC."

"We would like to see some improvement in the rapidity with which we can customize security facts within the solution."

"The support from A10 should be improved."

"A10 documentation is not as open and accessible as AWS and Azure documentation is."

"It doesn't match the development structure or user community of our existing product. It pales in comparison to that."

"One struggle with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its integration with other VMware products."

"It doesn't match the development structure or user community of our existing product. It pales in comparison to that."

"It is very expensive. The pricing is expensive in that it is only an add-on."

"IDS and IPS sites need to be more progressive."

"In terms of improvement, the pricing and documentation need improvement. We have had problems getting the documents."

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

"When it comes to improvements for VMWare Avi Load Balancer, I think the documentation part needs a bit of work."

More VMWare Avi Load Balancer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The licensing costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer are really variable. The product can be sold from a bandwidth utilization perspective. It can be sold from a per CPU perspective, depending on if you're looking at on-premises or hyperscale environments. Licensing costs vary quite a bit if you're familiar with the AWS Calculator, where you can see that it can widely vary per licensing model. On a scale of one to five, with one being not very good value for the money and five being great, I would rate the pricing for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer a five because its pricing is extremely competitive. Not all features are included with the license, for example, there's single licensing."

"I rate the solution price a four to five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, since it is an affordable tool."

"With Avi Networks, you can buy a 10-Gig license and, if your primary data center goes down, in the flick of a switch you can move that license to your backup data center and it will generate the traffic... there are a lot of cost-effective measures."

"The tool is expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

19%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

We tested some scripts, but they did not fulfill everything. My recommendation is to reduce the price and make it two separate products, not only as an add-on for VMware. It should not be necessary...

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What is your primary use case for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?

We are using native cloud capability. The issue is not from us. VMware changed their module. They are selling perpetual licenses with multi-year support. The reason for this change is to make their...

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Comparisons

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 19% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 19% of the time

NetScaler vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 14% of the time

HAProxy vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 13% of the time

NGINX Plus vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer

Compared 11% of the time

More VMWare Avi Load Balancer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

March 2026

Download A10 Networks Lightning ADC product report

Buyer's Guide

VMWare Avi Load Balancer

March 2026

Download VMWare Avi Load Balancer product report

Also Known As

Lightning ADS

Avi Software Load Balancer

Overview

A cloud-native, software-defined solution that provides integrated advanced load-balancing, performance optimization, application security and per-application analytics to increase operational agility and application performance.

A10 Networks

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is an application delivery controller (ADC) platform. The solution provides scalable application delivery across any infrastructure and allows your organization to deliver multi-cloud application services, such as load balancing, autoscaling, application security, container networking, and web application firewall. It is designed with 100% software load balancing to ensure a fast and secure application experience. Additionally, Avi Networks Software Load Balancer offers elasticity and delivers intelligence across any environment.

The Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is unique because

It can scale from 0 to 1 million SSL transactions per second in minutes.
It can achieve 90% faster provisioning and 50% lower TCO than a traditional appliance-based approach.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Product Highlights

Troubleshoots application issues in less than a minute.
Alerts you of potential risks with SSL certificates and TLS versions used.
End-to-end timing for each transaction to help solve end-user experience issues.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Features

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Automated application delivery
Seamless integration with the CI/CD
Built-in analytics
End-to-end visibility
Actionable insights
Security
“Network DVR”-like capability to record and replay specific transactions
Google-like search filters transactions based on device, location, errors, etc.

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Avi Networks Software Load Balancer. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Multi-cloud application services: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer provides consistent, enterprise-grade application services, including load balancing, WAF, and container networking across heterogeneous environments. The multi-cloud application services can be deployed on bare metal, VMs, or containers in any data center or public cloud environments.

Faster application provisioning: With this solution, you gain automation with 100% REST APIs and self-service like public cloud.

Better business decisions: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer uses analytics to deliver application insights and help you drive more intelligent decisions.

Containerized applications: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is a proven solution to deploy container-based workloads in production environments using Kubernetes/OpenShift/Tanzu clusters. It includes multi-cluster, multi-site support for containerized applications.

Lower TCO: The solution is 100% software, and does not require any proprietary hardware. In addition, because it offers on-demand autoscaling, there is no over-provisioning. Lastly, point-and-click application troubleshooting means there is no need for a black box.

Software-defined architecture: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is designed with a software-defined architecture with a centralized control plane (Avi Controller) and distributed data plane (Avi Service Engine). Because of this, elastic autoscaling is made easy.

Better end-user visibility: The solution gives you granular visibility into end-user experiences and server response in real time. It also empowers application owners with end-user stats to optimize and improve apps.

Application health score: Avi Networks Software Load Balancer summarizes analytics information into a helpful health score that provides a quick snapshot of the overall applications. The health score it provides is determined by server response time, resource usage, anomalous traffic, and security posture.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Handle Financial

Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos

Buyer's Guide

A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

April 2026

Free Report: A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer

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