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

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and HAProxy both compete in the load balancing category. F5 LTM appears to have the upper hand in advanced features and application integration, while HAProxy is preferred for its simplicity and cost-effectiveness.

Features: F5 BIG-IP LTM offers advanced scripting through iRules for customizable traffic management, includes modules like Web Application Firewall and SSL Offloading, and provides integration capabilities with applications such as Oracle PeopleSoft. HAProxy, on the other hand, is known for its high reliability and stability, offering multiple load balancing algorithms and a straightforward open-source solution with options for enterprise support.

Room for Improvement: F5 BIG-IP LTM is often criticized for its high cost and complex licensing, along with a challenging initial setup. Users call for better reporting tools and enhancements in its GUI. HAProxy's management interface is generally straightforward but could improve in dynamic configuration and logging, with better documentation and monitoring to enhance user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 BIG-IP LTM is renowned for its rich feature set and extensive use in various deployments, although the initial setup can be difficult. Technical support is mixed with varying reviews on responsiveness. HAProxy offers straightforward deployment for on-premises and cloud environments, and its customer service is well-rated for simplicity and fewer support dependencies due to its open-source nature.

Pricing and ROI: F5 BIG-IP LTM is a premium product with a cost that reflects its capabilities, although some users find it prohibitive compared to competitors. It offers compelling performance and feature set for its price. HAProxy, being primarily open-source, provides an attractive cost benefit with its free version, making it a cost-effective solution for those seeking reliability without high expenses. The enterprise version of HAProxy offers additional functionality at a much lower cost than F5, providing a good ROI for budget-conscious organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. HAProxy Report (Updated: January 2025).

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

January 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

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

120

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HAProxy

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Service Mesh (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 15.4%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 12.4%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Mahmoud-Yassin

Head of IT Infrastructure and Security Operations at United Arab Bank

You can fully automate disaster recovery

LTM's cloud capabilities could be improved. Cloud providers all offer load balancing, but you can't get the same level of security. F5's cloud service is still not on par with its on-prem service. F5 acquired multiple companies a few years ago, but they still haven't integrated those solutions. For example, F5 acquired Shape Security, which had an excellent solution for detecting bots and automated login attacks, but F5 offers the solution in an inflexible way. It is only available as a cloud-based solution. It isn't zone-based. Some companies are restricted from sending financial data outside the country because of GDPR in Europe or other national regulations. Here in the UAE, we can't send host data out.

Read full review

Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks

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 reliability features of HAProxy were particularly useful in a scenario where I needed to test load balancing between two Tomcats. Since these domains were inaccessible, I set up a third Docker with HAProxy, which had access to the Tomcat domains. I then configured HAProxy to handle the load balancing. This setup allowed the client to interact with HAProxy. The solution's integration with other elements is easy.

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

"I have found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) to be stable."

"If I were to choose one key feature in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool."

"It provides first-tier firewalling, for you application. And it provides server load-balancing, it provides optimization, and it provides a proxy feature, where your users cannot directly access your server. It acts as a fully proxy architecture. It has client-side and server-side connections, both, and they're separate."

"Stable and scalable network traffic management solution for applications. It has good performance."

"BIG-IP LTM's most valuable feature is that it allows you to seamlessly add more servers without impacting your application's configuration."

"The load balancing function, the monitors that you can create, and iRules programmability are most valuable."

"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) improves the resilience and quality of the application itself, the speed and the user experience for the application. The data that the users need from the application is actually acquired faster. So, it provides faster data acquisition."

"We have multiple solutions we can deploy through the F5."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pros

"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."

"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."

"Load balancing is valuable, and we are also using the WAF feature."

"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."

"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."

"Stability is number one."

"We use the solution for load balancing."

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

More HAProxy pros

Cons

"Its price can be better. It is a bit expensive."

"A more hybrid approach would be beneficial for users."

"Needs to provide a visual interface to follow a customer's activity (from client to BIG-IP to SNAT IP to the chosen server, then back). Today, we are still performing packet captures."

"The pricing model has caused some frustration. My clients implemented the solution and later wanted to upgrade the features but the pricing structure was complicated. There are other solutions with better pricing models."

"The initial setup can take a long time."

"I would like them to expand load balancing, being able to go across multiple regions to on-premise and into the cloud. This could use improvement, as it is sometimes a little cumbersome."

"The management interface is unclear, complex, and not concise. I would like a better user interface."

"I'm not very sure about the security with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). We have our own private data center, but we are going to migrate our private data center into the Azure cloud environment. Security will then be a major concern when we migrate our own whole infrastructure to the public cloud."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) cons

"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."

"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."

"They should introduce one feature that I know many people, including me, are waiting for: HAProxy should have provide hot-swipe for back-end servers. Also, they need a more detailed GUI for monitoring and configuration."

"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."

"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."

"Sometimes it's challenging to get through the log, and you need a log to understand what is going on. It isn't easy to map the logging with the documentation, and every time I read the log, I have to pull out the documentation to understand what I'm reading."

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

More HAProxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution comes with a standard license, and there are also extra licenses that can be obtained. The licenses are purchasable for durations of one, two, three, and five years. The hardware is something to consider when purchasing"

"There are no additional fees to the standard licensing fee; everything is paid once."

"Try to negotiate all the software features that you require upfront."

"F5 isn’t cheap but is worth the price."

"It is the best solution, but that comes with an increased price."

"The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve."

"When we purchased additional licenses for our other locations, we received a discount of between 20% and 25%."

"The licensing model of F5 BIG-IP LTM is highly complex. The operation cost of the solution is high. The overall cost is high."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pricing and cost advice

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

"HAProxy is an open-source solution."

"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."

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

"The tool is open-source."

"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."

"The product is open source."

"HAProxy is free open-source software."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

There are no specific areas for improvement as it is already well-resolved and doesn't require further enhancements.

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

The primary use case includes load balancing to serve application servers and basic web application firewall solutions. Our customers use it for that purpose.

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

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 do you like most about HAProxy?

The solution is effective in managing our traffic.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?

HAProxy is an open-source solution.

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Comparisons

Compared 19% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

Radware Alteon vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 6% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 15% of the time

NGINX Plus vs HAProxy

Compared 13% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

February 2025

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

Download HAProxy product report

February 2025

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Overview

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

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.

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

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