A10 Thunder ADC vs HAProxy Community Edition
A10 Thunder ADC
a10networks.comHAProxy Community Edition
haproxy.orgSide by side
| Figure | A10 Thunder ADC | HAProxy Community Edition |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Load Balancing Software | 8.7 (#2) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Founded | 2004 | HAProxy Technologies is listed as founded in 2013. |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California, United States | Newton, Massachusetts, United States |
| Integrations | The product page names Terraform and Ansible for CI/CD integration, TKC and HashiCorp NIA with Consul for Kubernetes service discovery, and Prometheus/Grafana for monitoring. | The 3.4 release notes list an OpenTelemetry filter and ACME certificate features including DNS-01 challenges. |
| Load balancing | It provides Layer 4–7 load balancing with customizable service health checks and aFleX scripting. | It balances TCP connections or HTTP requests across backend servers. |
| Performance | Features include SSL/TLS offload, TCP optimization, RAM caching, and compression to improve application responsiveness and content delivery. | The site reports a test result of up to 2 million SSL requests per second and 100 Gbps forwarded traffic on AWS Graviton2. |
| Purpose | Thunder ADC is an application delivery controller and Layer 4–7 load balancer designed to protect critical applications, maintain server availability, and accelerate content delivery. | HAProxy is a free, fast reverse proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP applications. |
| Security | The product includes web and DNS firewall capabilities, single sign-on, DDoS protection, and support for advanced encryption including PFS and ECC. | Listed defensive measures include chroot, privilege drops, fork prevention, strict protocol validation, and checks for impossible states. |
| Support | A10 says its technical assistance center uses follow-the-sun support, and customers with a valid Thunder or AX Series support contract can download current software releases and receive product updates. | The project points users to commercial support contracts and professional services from HAProxy Technologies. |
Plans
HAProxy Community Edition
- HAProxy Community EditionFree
- HAProxy Community EditionFree
- HAProxy EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
A10 Thunder ADC
A10 Thunder ADC is an application delivery controller and advanced load balancer for distributing workloads, maintaining server availability, protecting applications, and accelerating content delivery. It balances traffic at Layers 4–7, offers customizable service health checks, and supports aFleX scripting. Global Server Load Balancing can direct traffic across data centers and clouds for continuity and localized responses. Deployment options include hardware, virtual appliances, cloud, bare metal, and containers. Performance capabilities include caching, TCP optimization, and TLS/SSL offloading; security features include single sign-on, CAPTCHA, web and DNS firewalls, and DDoS protection. The REST-based aXAPI interface is described as providing 100% API coverage. Named integrations include Terraform and Ansible for CI/CD, Kubernetes service discovery through TKC or HashiCorp NIA with Consul, and Prometheus/Grafana monitoring. Pricing is on request. A 30-day trial license is listed for vThunder and public cloud offerings; container trial details require contacting A10 Sales. The container edition lists OpenShift 4.16 and minimum requirements of 4 vCPU and 16 GB memory.
HAProxy Community Edition
HAProxy Community Edition is free, self-hosted software for proxying TCP and HTTP applications, with high availability and load balancing. It is aimed especially at very high-traffic websites. HAProxy runs on Linux, where it is included with most mainstream distributions and is often deployed by default on cloud platforms. Its event-driven design uses light multithreading on SMP machines. The project lists Layer 4 and Layer 7 routing and TLS termination, along with TCP and HTTP support; recent versions also include QUIC and HTTP/3 features. Listed safeguards include chroot, privilege drops, fork prevention, strict protocol validation, and checks for impossible states. The site reports up to 2 million SSL requests per second and 100 Gbps of forwarded traffic on AWS Graviton2. HAProxy 3.4 is in development, and 3.4.6 is the latest listed release in that branch. Its features include dynamic backends, HTTP/2 flood protections, ACME improvements, experimental QMUX, and an OpenTelemetry filter. LTS branches receive five years of maintenance; other stable branches receive 12 to 18 months.