Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HAProxy vs Kong Mesh 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

HAProxy
Ranking in Service Mesh
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd)
Kong Mesh
Ranking in Service Mesh
5th
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 13.4%, up from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Mesh is 20.1%, up from 10.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Service Mesh
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Arjun Pandey - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a unique advantage by offering a global view for all workloads and clusters within the mesh but lack of a robust community for open-source support
There are a number of areas where Kong Kuma can improve. One is in terms of product delivery, such as Helm charts. There are a lot of gaps in the Helm charts currently. Another is in terms of the default monitoring and logging setup. It is not as production-ready as it could be. By default, Kuma comes with Loki, Yagger, and Prometheus to monitor the control plane and data plane, but the unified dashboarding and logging solution should be closer to production-grade. It is good for trying out the product, but I would not recommend taking it to production without setting up your own monitoring and logging solution. Additionally, Kuma recently released Fivecarless Mesh, which was built on top of Envoy. The challenge with this is that it adds overhead. If you want to run 100 containers in production, you will actually need to run 200 containers because you need to run one sidecar container per pod. Overall, I think Kong Kuma is a moderate product, but I would not personally recommend it for production use.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Load balancing is valuable, and we are also using the WAF feature."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."
"​​Reliability. HAProxy is the most reliable product I have ever used."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
"Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."
"The most important features would be the load-balancing of HTTP and TCP requests, according to multiple LB-algorithms (busyness, weighted-busyness, round robin, traffic, etc). Another important feature that we cannot live without is the username/passwd authentication for legacy systems that had none."
"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."
"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."
"It is a scalable product."
 

Cons

"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."
"The product does not have any new technologies."
"We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."
"The solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better and mandating to clients what the expected outcome must be in order to avoid receiving contestant timeout logs."
"The visibility could be improved."
"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"The initial setup is complicated. Although Kuma has its own CLI, CTL, and they say to use their CLI, if I have to build a generic solution, my personal preference would be to use Helm or another similar solution other than Kuma. If you have your own library CLI, it becomes hard for others to adopt it. For example, if I have to write some automation, infrastructure automation, I can't just use Kuma. I have to change my code to use Kuma's CTL, which is unfair because it doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit with my current automation structure. I have to do something extra, something additional, which I really don't like."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"The tool is open-source."
"The product is open source."
"I have tried for my personal research and all those things. I have tried only the open-source version. So, for me, it was always free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Service Mesh solutions are best for your needs.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 ...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kong Mesh?
I have tried for my personal research and all those things. I have tried only the open-source version. So, for me, it was always free.
What needs improvement with Kong Mesh?
There are a number of areas where Kong Kuma can improve. One is in terms of product delivery, such as Helm charts. There are a lot of gaps in the Helm charts currently. Another is in terms of the d...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
Kuma
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
First AbuDhabi Bank, CISCO, Papa johns pizza, Samsung, Expedia
Find out what your peers are saying about Isito, Envoy, HAProxy and others in Service Mesh. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.