HAProxy Community Edition vs SNI Proxy
HAProxy Community Edition
haproxy.orgSNI Proxy
github.comSide by side
| Figure | HAProxy Community Edition | SNI Proxy |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · Reverse Proxy Software | 8.8 (#5) | 7.4 (#19) |
| Protocols | The project supports TCP and HTTP-based applications, and its listed recent versions include QUIC and HTTP/3 features. | It supports TLS and HTTP, but the maintainer says it does not support HTTP/2 hostname multiplexing or HTTP/3 over QUIC. |
| Purpose | HAProxy is a free, fast reverse proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP applications. | SNI Proxy routes incoming HTTP and TLS connections using the hostname in the initial request of a TCP session. |
| Support | The project points users to commercial support contracts and professional services from HAProxy Technologies. | The maintainer says they will monitor issues and email requests, but users should not expect a response unless the issue is a significant security or reliability problem. |
Plans
HAProxy Community Edition
- HAProxy Community EditionFree
- HAProxy Community EditionFree
- HAProxy EnterprisePriced 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.