AWS Load Balancer VS HAProxy

COMPARISON AMONG AWS LOAD BALANCER, HAPROXY AND RELIANOID LOAD BALANCER

What is AWS Load Balancer

The AWS Load Balancer, widely known as Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), is a fully managed offering from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that distributes incoming application and network traffic across multiple destinations, such as EC2 instances, containers, or IP addresses. ELB supports both Layer 4 (Transport) and Layer 7 (Application) load balancing, depending on the type of service used: Application Load Balancer (ALB) handles HTTP/HTTPS traffic with sophisticated routing features; Network Load Balancer (NLB) is optimized for high-speed TCP and UDP traffic; and Gateway Load Balancer (GLB) allows the use of third-party virtual appliances for deep traffic inspection and security purposes. These load balancing types provide scalability, reliability, and consistent performance for applications running on the AWS platform.

A key advantage of AWS Load Balancer is its native integration with other AWS services, allowing infrastructure to automatically adapt to changing traffic volumes. It includes essential security options like SSL/TLS termination, support for AWS Certificate Manager, and compatibility with AWS WAF to guard against web-based threats. Continuous health monitoring ensures that traffic is only directed to functioning targets, maintaining high availability. Thanks to its usage-based pricing, ELB remains a flexible and economical choice for organizations deploying cloud-native or hybrid solutions.

What is HAProxy

HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is a popular open-source tool for reverse proxying and load balancing, designed to enhance the efficiency, scalability, and resilience of web applications. It supports both Layer 4 (transport layer) and Layer 7 (application layer) operations, distributing traffic intelligently among backend servers using various algorithms like round-robin, least connections, and dynamic health checks. Recognized for its exceptional performance, HAProxy can manage millions of simultaneous connections while consuming minimal system resources, making it well-suited for demanding, high-volume environments. Its ability to process HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, and UDP traffic provides broad compatibility for diverse application needs.

A key strength of HAProxy lies in its extensive customization options and comprehensive features, such as SSL/TLS offloading, traffic shaping, sticky sessions, and routing based on content. These capabilities help IT teams fine-tune traffic handling and deliver smooth, reliable application access. HAProxy also works seamlessly within cloud-native and containerized ecosystems—including Kubernetes—where it’s often deployed as an ingress controller. Available in both community and enterprise versions, HAProxy is supported by a large, active user base, making it a dependable and economical choice for organizations of any size aiming to optimize their traffic management and application delivery.

WHAT IS RELIANOID

RELIANOID as alternative to AWS Load Balancer and HAProxy across key ADC capabilities

When comparing RELIANOID with AWS Load Balancer and HAProxy, several advantages become clear. RELIANOID delivers a powerful blend of enterprise-grade performance and flexibility across hybrid, on-premises, and multi-cloud environments. Unlike AWS Load Balancer, which is tightly coupled with the AWS ecosystem and may lead to vendor lock-in and higher long-term costs, RELIANOID offers full infrastructure control and transparent licensing. Compared to HAProxy, which is known for its reliability and open-source nature but requires complex manual configuration and lacks integrated advanced features, RELIANOID includes out-of-the-box capabilities such as built-in Web Application Firewall (WAF), high-performance TLS offloading, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support, and hot configuration reloads—all managed through a modern and intuitive UI. This makes RELIANOID a superior choice for organizations seeking scalability, ease of use, and comprehensive security in one solution.