AWS Elastic Load Balancing vs PureLB

AWS Elastic Load Balancing distributes incoming application traffic across targets and virtual appliances in one or more Availability Zones. It offers Application, Network, Gateway, and Classic Load Balancers, scales request handling with traffic, and runs configurable health checks on targets. Application Load Balancers support HTTP header-based routing, redirects, fixed responses, HTTP/2, and gRPC. Network Load Balancers support static Elastic IP addresses and AWS PrivateLink for TCP and TLS listeners. The service also supports SSL/TLS termination, certificate management, and client certificate authentication. CloudWatch metrics and logging are available for all four types. A single load balancer can distribute traffic across AWS and on-premises resources. Kubernetes support includes direct-to-pod routing for Application Load Balancers and private EKS clusters for Application and Network Load Balancers. AWS recommends different types for HTTP, transport protocols, third-party virtual appliances, and EC2-Classic applications. Usage charges vary by region; data transfer and public IPv4 address charges may be additional. New AWS customers receive a free tier for six months after account creation, with usage limits and up to $200 in credits.

PureLB is a Kubernetes Service LoadBalancer for bare-metal Linux clusters. It allocates external IP addresses from configured pools and announces them through Linux networking, with optional BGP for remote addresses. ServiceGroups use exactly one pool type: local, remote, or Netbox. Local addresses are attached to host interfaces, and a Kubernetes Lease election chooses which node announces each address; another node can take over if that node fails. Remote addresses are placed on a dummy interface on every node and advertised through BGP, allowing an upstream router to distribute traffic with ECMP. Pools can contain IPv4, IPv6, or both for dual-stack deployments. Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions configure pools and node agents. Installation uses kubectl manifests or Helm, with Helm recommended for production. PureLB requires a Kubernetes cluster with an operational CNI and Linux nodes. It is free, open source, Apache 2.0 licensed, and self-hosted. Prometheus metrics are exposed on port 7472 at /metrics. NetBox integration is documented but currently unsupported and may not work with recent versions.