HAProxy Community Edition vs Progress Kemp LoadMaster
HAProxy Community Edition
haproxy.orgProgress Kemp LoadMaster
progress.comSide by side
| Figure | HAProxy Community Edition | Progress Kemp LoadMaster |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 2 |
| Spec score · Load Balancing Software | 8.7 (#3) | 7.5 (#8) |
| Founded | HAProxy Technologies is listed as founded in 2013. | 1981 |
| Headquarters | Newton, Massachusetts, United States | Burlington, Massachusetts, United States |
| Integrations | The 3.4 release notes list an OpenTelemetry filter and ACME certificate features including DNS-01 challenges. | The documentation provides deployment guides for Microsoft, VMware, Omnissa, Dell EMC, Citrix, and Oracle workloads. |
| Purpose | HAProxy is a free, fast reverse proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP applications. | LoadMaster is an application delivery controller and server load balancer that manages user traffic and applications. |
| Security | Listed defensive measures include chroot, privilege drops, fork prevention, strict protocol validation, and checks for impossible states. | The integrated WAF provides protections including OWASP Top Ten coverage, SQL injection protection, cross-site scripting mitigation, and denial of service mitigation. |
Plans
HAProxy Community Edition
- HAProxy Community EditionFree
- HAProxy Community EditionFree
- HAProxy EnterprisePriced on request
Progress Kemp LoadMaster
- Temporary LoadMaster trial licenseFree
- Permanent LoadMaster licensePriced on request
In their own words
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.
Progress Kemp LoadMaster
Progress Kemp LoadMaster is an application delivery controller and server load balancer for managing application and user traffic. Its routing and delivery features include Layer 4 and Layer 7 balancing, persistence, health checks, SSL acceleration and offloading, and rule-based content switching. An integrated WAF covers protections such as OWASP Top Ten risks, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and denial of service; other access controls include reverse proxy, single sign-on, pre-authentication, dual-factor authentication, IPS, and SSL bridging. GEO policies can direct clients to datacenters by location or proximity and support failover and failback. Progress offers hardware, virtual, and cloud forms, with on-premises and cloud deployment options. Cloud licenses can be pay-per-use, charged only for usage consumed, or perpetual BYOL. The temporary trial costs nothing for 30 days on the VLM-MAX model with Enterprise Plus Support, including ESP, WAF, and GEO. When that license expires, LoadMaster ceases to function; some features may also be lost if a permanent license has a different support tier.