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HAProxy vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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 Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Service Mesh (3rd)
Microsoft Azure Application...
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
4th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 12.3%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 8.2%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

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.
Sooryanarayan Hegde - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy management and configuration, affordable, and has good features
We use all the features. It is very useful. Using WAF, we can control the WAF rules based on our application requirements. We can control what rules should be used and what should be disabled. The role of the tool is limited to HTTP traffic. It does exactly what it must do. It's a regional service. We know how to use it for DR scenarios. WAF has been the most valuable in protecting applications. We use at least three instances in the back end to give the best performance for our applications. The management and configuration of the solution is quite easy. All certificate renewals are automatically taken care of by Key Vault.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."
"Stability is number one."
"HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime."
"HAProxy potentially has a good return on investment"
"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."
"​It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"The solution has built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure."
"Using policies to link and manage these URL-based routing configurations is also valuable."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"It does an excellent job of load balancing."
"Some of the key features of this solution are the low-level maintenance required, floating proxy service, and load balancing."
"This is a SaaS product, so it is always up to date."
"The solution was very easy to configure. It wasn't hard at all to adjust it to our needs."
"Azure Application Gateway's most valuable feature is ease of use. The configuration is straightforward. It isn't difficult to adjust the size of your instances in the settings. You can do that with a few clicks, and the configuration file is the same way. You can also set rules and policies with minimal time and effort."
 

Cons

"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment."
"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."
"​It needs proper HTTP/2 support.​"
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."
"The tool is a pain to deal with when it comes to the area of configuration."
"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"The pricing of the solution is a bit high. The solution should offer different pricing systems."
"Scalability can be an issue."
"The support provided for the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement, especially when it comes to the response time from the support team."
"The product's performance should be better."
"The pricing of the solution could be improved. Right now, it's a bit expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"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."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"It is free of cost."
"The cost is not an issue."
"Every solution comes with a license and cost. Microsoft provides the license and the total cost is for the maintenance every year."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a pretty affordable product. My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs of the solution. The additional costs apart from the licensing costs of the solution vary."
"The solution's pricing is not complex. It is not expensive from our point of view."
"The tool's pricing model is pay-as-you-go."
"It is an expensive solution. We have an enterprise agreement, it is monthly."
"The solution is cheaper than Imperva. I rate it four to five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it.
 

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.