HAProxy Enterprise vs kube-vip
HAProxy Enterprise
haproxy.com
kube-vip
kube-vip.ioSide by side
| Figure | HAProxy Enterprise | kube-vip |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Load Balancing Software | 7.4 (#10) | 6.9 (#15) |
| Access control | HAProxy Fusion supports role-based access control and single sign-on options including OIDC, SAML, AD FS, and Kerberos. | The installation documentation says an RBAC manifest is required for a DaemonSet deployment. |
| Deployment | It can be deployed on-premises, in air-gapped, hybrid-cloud, and multi-cloud environments, and is packaged as software, a virtual appliance, or rack-mounted hardware. | It runs inside the Kubernetes cluster it serves, without relying on external hardware or software. |
| Integrations | The product page lists service discovery for Kubernetes, Consul, and Consul Enterprise; AWS and Azure deployment; and native Prometheus integrations. | The documentation describes a kube-vip cloud provider for assigning IP addresses to Kubernetes LoadBalancer Services and lists vendor API integrations. |
| Purpose | HAProxy Enterprise distributes incoming traffic across servers and continuously checks server health, rerouting requests when a server starts to fail. | kube-vip provides a virtual IP and load balancer for Kubernetes control planes and Services of type LoadBalancer. |
| Support | HAProxy advertises expert support available 24/7/365. | The project README directs users to raise issues on its GitHub repository and consult the documentation. |
Plans
In their own words
HAProxy Enterprise
HAProxy Enterprise has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
kube-vip
kube-vip is free, open-source software that gives Kubernetes clusters a virtual IP and load balancing for control-plane traffic and LoadBalancer Services. It targets Linux, self-hosted deployments such as bare metal, on-premises systems, virtualization, and edge devices including ARM hardware and Raspberry Pi. Virtual IPs may be IPv4, IPv6, or DNS names. Networking modes are ARP, BGP, routing tables, and WireGuard; the documented modes are disjunctive, so only one can be enabled at a time. kube-vip can run as a static Pod or DaemonSet inside the cluster it serves. Control-plane options include leader election, kubeadm static Pods, and K3s or other distribution DaemonSets. Service support includes BGP across nodes, address pools, CIDR or ranges, DHCP, and UPnP. It uses Apache-2.0 licensing and provides Layer 4 routing, not Layer 7 routing.