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

HAProxy vs Kong Mesh comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

HAProxy
Ranking in Service Mesh
4th
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
6th
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 December 2024, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 14.4%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kong Mesh is 19.6%, up from 13.2% 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

"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."
"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."
"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."
"The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used."
"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."
"It is a scalable product."
 

Cons

"The product does not have any new technologies."
"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."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"​It needs proper HTTP/2 support.​"
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"The visibility could be improved."
"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

"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"The tool is open-source."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"The product is open source."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."
"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."
"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"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.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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
 

Learn More

Video not available
Video not available
 

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, VMware and others in Service Mesh. Updated: December 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.