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

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

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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

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 15.3%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 8.4%, down from 9.3% 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.

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Ritesh-Bakhru

Major Account Manager at Check Point Software

Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation

NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

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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

"The iRule feature is very useful for inspecting HTTP. Sometimes, we use it for modifying the headers of the HTTP."

"F5 Big-IP Local Traffic Manager has better modular features especially LTM, which according to the clients, is very beneficial. Most of the users opt for a combination of big IP LTM and WAF which helps them to leverage application load balancing and enhance application security many-fold."

"It is a very good, flexible solution. It helps us to catch up on flaws in our partner solutions on top of its load balancing feature."

"It is the perfect solution when you have high workloads in your IT environment."

"The capability is at a seven or eight out of ten."

"Initial setup was straightforward. We were up and running in three hours."

"It has so many features. First of all, it has a full proxy architecture, it has multiple modules. The best feature is the WAF, the web application firewall module. It also has cashing type capabilities. It has all kinds of load-balancing algorithms based on your IT requirements."

"The product is quite flexible."

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

"-"

"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."

"Its most valuable features are load balancing and application delivery. This is the most efficient application for these features because of stability and its efficiency."

"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."

"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."

"When you use NGINX, you have more options and power."

"I find the solution’s community support and documentation most valuable. Compared to HAProxy, have found a lot of documentation and community support on Quora. If you would be asking me as a developer whether to choose this product, I would recommend this since it has good community support, documentation, and signature updates. The configuration of HAProxy is also very tedious. However, NGINX’s configuration is very simple."

"Zero Downtime has always been a strength in recommending infrastructure web services. NGINX allows me to execute such infrastructure with less complications and the ability to switch from server to server easily."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"The price for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is very high. This aspect could be improved."

"The product is expensive."

"Initial setup is tricky, if you do not understand the design of this product."

"We would like to have integration into encryption and PKI integration with SafeNet. That is probably the key component in using External PKIs, letting people bring their PKIs with them."

"One improvement could be updating the user interface (UI)."

"The solution's hardware quality needs improvement."

"The solution's initial setup process was quite complex. I"

"In terms of pricing, it could be more competitive."

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

"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules."

"It would be good if NGINX provided a graphical user interface."

"The solution must improve its performance."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."

"Lack of a feature to print data on the terminal for verification of network traffic during debugging and testing."

"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."

"I would like it to have a more user-friendly graphical interface."

"The center management system could be improved."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is inclusive of many features."

"BIG-IP LTM isn't a cheap solution - I'd rate its pricing as three out of five."

"In my view, the cost is somewhat on the higher side. There are discounts available, but I wouldn't say it's overpriced. It's not cheap either, and the value for money is a bit higher from that perspective."

"BIG-IP LTM is considered a premium product, so it's quite expensive and isn't affordable for all customers."

"F5 is expensive."

"The price is little bit on higher side compared to the cost of NGINX."

"There are additional costs depending on what modules or what functionality is required."

"It's fair, it's not too expensive. Maybe just a little high."

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

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."

"The cost is reasonable."

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."

"NGINX Plus is an open-source solution with limited additional features. When you try to get additional features in the solution, then you need to pay an extra amount to NGINX Plus."

More NGINX Plus 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

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

17%

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.

Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?

IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.

Fortinet FortiADC vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Comparisons

Compared 18% of the time

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

Compared 11% 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

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 19% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 18% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 13% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 9% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

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

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

NGINX Plus

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

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

NGINX

Learn More

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.

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

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

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

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