Load balancers for small business buyers
Asked as “load balancer”, and as “application delivery controller”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 70 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each. Added to the September 2026 Edition; its answers are read by the distilled judge (ai-indexes-judge-qwen3-14b-run3), not the claude-opus-5 judge of the earlier categories: how the two compare.
Standing · first-choice share
20%
Contested · NGINX 14%
20HAProxy14NGINX11Cloudflare Load Balancing54others
20% of first choices, contested.
By buyer segment
The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
The standing
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for a small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
Google Cloud Load Balancing is made by Google, whose model Gemini 3.5 Flash is in the set. On the four share prompts that model made it the first choice zero times of 4; the other eleven models two times of 44. Lab treatment is defined on the method page; the row is marked, not excluded.
Recommended versus criticized
Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.
Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03A04
05A06
G07
08A09
10
11C12
F13
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01HAProxy20%
HAProxy20%02NGINX14%
NGINX14%03Cloudflare Load Balancing11%
Cloudflare Load Balancing11%04AWS Elastic Load Balancing10%
05Kemp LoadMaster10%
Kemp LoadMaster10%06Azure Load Balancer6%
07Google Cloud Load Balancing3%
08DigitalOcean Load Balancers3%
DigitalOcean Load Balancers3%09AWS Application Load Balancer3%
10Traefik1%
Traefik1%11Azure Application Gateway0%
Azure Application Gateway0%12Citrix ADC0%
13F5 BIG-IP0%
What they warned about
Zero of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX and MiniMax M2.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
F5 BIG-IP
100%
17 of 17 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 9 hard negative
“The Verdict: Unless you are running a highly specialized, legacy on-premises data center with dedicated network engineers, avoid physical appliances entirely.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt
Citrix ADC
88%
15 of 17 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 9 hard negative
“Enterprise-grade hardware appliances (F5, Citrix, A10, Radware, etc.) ... a $100k+ hardware box is almost certainly overkill.” GLM 4.7 FlashX, negative prompt
HAProxy15%
10 of 65 labels negative · 6 of 12 models
“**Caveat:** No vendor support, no GUI (HAProxy community), and you must handle SSL offload, health checks, and WAF yourself. This is only recommended if you have in-house expertise.” DeepSeek V4 Flash, paraphrase prompt
NGINX13%
8 of 63 labels negative · 6 of 12 models
“Self-managed enterprise software editions of NGINX Plus, HAProxy Enterprise, etc., when a free/open core or a managed cloud load balancer would cover the need.” Muse Glimmer 30B, negative prompt
What they cite
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: fourteen of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.
Sites the answers cite
71 of 84 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 14 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 977 links across 206 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.
vendor site · G242 answers · 54 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Loadbalancer.org33 answers · 51 citations · 10 models
30 answers · 30 citations · 10 models
vendor site · G227 answers · 30 citations · 11 models
24 answers · 50 citations · 10 models
22 answers · 32 citations · 10 models
22 answers · 22 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Amazon21 answers · 28 citations · 8 models
vendor site · SourceForge18 answers · 22 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Microsoft15 answers · 21 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Guideflow14 answers · 15 citations · 6 models
13 answers · 22 citations · 9 models
Pages the answers cite
The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.
30 answers · 10 models
26 answers · 11 models
20 answers · 11 models
17 answers · 10 models
17 answers · 7 models
14 answers · 9 models
12 answers · 7 models
12 answers · 8 models
11 answers · 6 models
10 answers · 7 models
Search against answers
Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best load balancer”, “load balancer”, “load balancers”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
| Company and products | Share | Own site cited | Name searches, Google | AI search demand, est. | Organic visits | Paid search a month, est. | Google ads, last 30 days | Best Google position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HAProxy haproxy.com | 20% | 140 | 4,400 | 424 | 18,410 | 4 | ||
| NGINX nginx.org NGINX 14%, NGINX Open Source 1% | 16% | 146 | 33,100 | 4,362 | 38,473 | |||
| AWS parent site AWS Elastic Load Balancing 10%, AWS Application Load Balancer 3%, AWS ALB 0% | 13% | 77 | 368,000 | 114,001 | ||||
| Cloudflare parent site Cloudflare Load Balancing 11%, Cloudflare Load Balancer 0% | 11% | 64 | 550,000 | 10,897 | ||||
| Kemp LoadMaster kemptechnologies.com | 10% | 33 | 210 | 9 | 35,090 | $127 | 23 | 3 |
| Progress Kemp LoadMaster | 9% | 50 | 2 | |||||
| Azure Load Balancer | 6% | 301,000 | 47,904 | |||||
| Google Cloud parent site Google Cloud Load Balancing 3% | 3% | 51 | 165,000 | 7,596 | ||||
| DigitalOcean parent site DigitalOcean Load Balancers 3% | 3% | 16 | 74,000 | 942 | ||||
| Application Load Balancer | 3% | 720 | 100 |
Google's top ten for the three searches hold 22 sites; 5 of them are among the sites the models cited here (aws.amazon.com, g2.com, kemptechnologies.com, learn.microsoft.com, loadbalancer.org). The first result for “best load balancer” is g2.com.
How they answered
Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.ShowHide
How they answered
Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHideModelDirect“What is the best load balancer for a small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which application delivery controller would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top load balancers for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best load balancer for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating a load balancer. What should we look at?”Negative“Which load balancers should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5NGINXKemp LoadMasterChangedagainst: F5 BIG-IPNodeBalancerHAProxy, NGINXno first choiceagainst: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Citrix ADC, F5 Networks BIG-IP LTM, Kemp LoadMaster
Three alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Google Cloud Load BalancingThree alternatives
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Application Gateway, The Barracuda Load Balancer ADCSix alternatives
AWS Lightsail, Caddy, HAProxy, Kemp LoadMaster, NGINX, TraefikThree alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Google Cloud Load BalancingGPT-5.4 miniApplication Load Balanceragainst: Basic Load Balancer, HAProxy, NGINXCloudflare Load BalancingChangedagainst: Citrix ADC, F5 BIG-IPCaddyHAProxy, NGINXagainst: Citrix ADC, F5no first choiceagainst: AWS, Azure Basic Load Balancer, Gateway Load Balancer
One alternative
Azure Load BalancerTwo alternatives
HAProxy, NGINXThree alternatives
HAProxy, NGINX, TraefikGemini 3.5 FlashAWS Application Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load BalancingProgress Kemp LoadMasterChangedagainst: F5 BIG-IP, NetScalerCloudflare Load Balancingagainst: AWS Application Load BalancerDigitalOcean Load BalancersAWS Elastic Load Balancing, Cloudflare Load Balancingagainst: F5, HAProxy, NGINX, Traefikagainst: A10 Thunder ADC, Apache `httpd`, Citrix ADC, Cloudflare Load Balancing, Envoy, F5 BIG-IP, HAProxy, IO River, Radware Alteon, Raw NGINX, Snapt
Five alternatives
DigitalOcean Load Balancers, Google Cloud (GCP) or Microsoft Azure Load Balancers, HAProxy, NGINX, TraefikThree alternatives
Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINXFour alternatives
Caddy, DigitalOcean Load Balancers, NGINX, TraefikSix alternatives
Caddy, Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, Hetzner Cloud Load Balancer, NGINX, TraefikOne alternative
Kemp LoadMasterPerplexity SonarAWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load BalancerKemp LoadMasterChangedagainst: F5 BIG-IPDigitalOcean Load BalancersHAProxy Community Editionno first choiceagainst: Windows NLB
Two alternatives
HAProxy, Kemp LoadMasterOne alternative
Cloudflare Load BalancingSeven alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, Google Cloud Load Balancing, HAProxy, Kemp LoadMaster, NGINXThree alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Google Cloud Load Balancing, NGINX Open SourceGrok 4.1 FastHAProxyagainst: F5 BIG-IP, Kemp LoadMasterProgress Kemp LoadMasterChangedagainst: F5 BIG-IPNGINXHAProxyagainst: AWS ALB, Free LoadMaster, GCP Cloud Load BalancingHAProxy, NGINXagainst: F5 NGINXagainst: AWS Classic ELB, Barracuda, Citrix ADC, F5 BIG-IP, F5 BIG-IP VE, Google Cloud Load Balancing, NGINX
Three alternatives
AWS ALB, Cloudflare Load Balancer, NGINXFive alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, Loadbalancer.org Enterprise ADC, NGINXThree alternatives
Caddy, HAProxy, TraefikTwo alternatives
DigitalOcean Load Balancers, NGINXFour alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Google Cloud Load Balancing, Kemp LoadMasterMistral SmallAzure Load BalancerProgress Kemp LoadMasterChangedHAProxy, SKUDONET Community EditionAzure Load Balancer, Google Cloud Load BalancingAWS Elastic Load Balancingagainst: Akamai Connected Cloud, Envoyagainst: Citrix ADC, F5 BIG-IP
Two alternatives
HAProxy, NGINXOne alternative
Azure Application GatewayTwo alternatives
Cloudflare Load Balancing, NGINXThree alternatives
Akamai Connected Cloud, HAProxy, NGINXSeven alternatives
Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancer, Fastly, Google Cloud Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINX, TraefikDeepSeek V4 FlashHAProxyagainst: NGINXProgress Kemp LoadMasterChangedagainst: A10, Citrix ADC, F5, HAProxy, NGINXNGINXagainst: Envoy, HAProxyHAProxy, NGINXagainst: Citrix ADC, F5 BIG-IP, Kemp LoadMasterAWS Elastic Load Balancing, GCP Cloud Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINXagainst: F5 BIG-IP, Kemp LoadMaster, NetScaleragainst: A10, AWS Classic Load Balancer, Azure Basic Load Balancer, Citrix ADC, Envoy, F5 BIG-IP, HAProxy, Istio service mesh, Linkerd, NGINX
Five alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, GCP Cloud Load Balancing, NGINXThree alternatives
AWS ALB, Azure Application Gateway, Barracuda Load Balancer ADCFive alternatives
AWS Application Load Balancer, Caddy, Cloudflare Load Balancing, Google Cloud Load Balancing, TraefikThree alternatives
Caddy, DigitalOcean Load Balancers, TraefikTwo alternatives
Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load BalancerLlama 4 Maverickno first choiceProgress Kemp LoadMasterChangedno first choiceAkamai Connected Cloud, Google Cloud Load Balancingno first choicenothing named
Three alternatives
Azure Load Balancer, CloudTest, Vultr Load BalancerQwen 3.7 FlashCloudflare Load BalancingKemp LoadMasterChangedTraefikagainst: EnvoyNGINXagainst: AWS Application Load BalancerAWS Elastic Load Balancingagainst: Aviatrix, F5 BIG-IP, Kemp LoadMasteragainst: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Cisco ACE, F5 BIG-IP, Google Cloud Load Balancing, HAProxy
Six alternatives
AWS Application Load Balancer, Azure Load Balancer / Front Door, F5 NGINX, Google Cloud Load Balancing, HAProxy, Open-Source NGINXFive alternatives
AWS Network Load Balancer, Azure Gateway Manager, F5, HAProxy, NGINXFour alternatives
AWS ALB, Cloudflare Load Balancer, HAProxy, NGINXThree alternatives
Cloudflare Load Balancer, HAProxy, TraefikThree alternatives
Azure Load Balancer, Google Cloud Load Balancing, HAProxyKimi K2Cloudflare Load Balancing, NGINXKemp LoadMasterChangedagainst: Citrix ADC, F5Caddy, TraefikCloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, TraefikDigitalOcean Load Balancersagainst: Citrix ADC, F5against: A10 Thunder ADC, AVI Networks, AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Citrix ADC, F5 BIG-IP, Google Cloud Load Balancing, Radware Alteon
Four alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, HAProxy, TraefikFive alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Application Gateway, HAProxy, NGINX, TraefikFour alternatives
AWS ALB, Cloudflare Load Balancer, HAProxy, NGINXOne alternative
DigitalOcean Load BalancersFive alternatives
AWS Application Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINX, TraefikGLM 4.7 FlashXCloudflare Load BalancingKemp LoadMasterChangedAWS Application Load Balancer, Google Cloud Load BalancingHAProxyno first choiceagainst: Citrix ADC, F5 BIG-IPagainst: A10, Citrix ADC, F5, Radware Alteon
Three alternatives
AWS Elastic Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINXOne alternative
Barracuda Networks Load Balancer ADCThree alternatives
Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, TraefikTwo alternatives
DigitalOcean Load Balancers, NGINXSix alternatives
AWS Application Load Balancer, Azure Application Gateway, Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINX, TraefikMiniMax M2.5no first choiceKemp LoadMasterChangedCloudflare Load BalancingHAProxy, NGINXagainst: NetScaler ADCAWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, HAProxy, Kemp LoadMasteragainst: F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manageragainst: A10 Networks Thunder, Cisco ACE Load Balancer, Citrix ADC, F5 BIG-IP, Radware Alteon
One alternative
Azure Application GatewayFour alternatives
Google Cloud Load Balancing, HAProxy, Linode NodeBalancer, NGINXThree alternatives
AWS Application Load Balancer, Azure Load Balancer, Kemp LoadMasterBold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against
The record
One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
| Prompt | Model | Version string | Time (UTC) | Searched | Sources | Latency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct recommendation | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-10-04 23:28 | no | 0 | 5 s |
| Direct recommendation | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-10-05 00:01 | yes | 4 | 5 s |
| Direct recommendation | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.5-flash | 2026-10-05 00:56 | no | 0 | 11 s |
| Direct recommendation | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-10-05 01:13 | yes | 14 | 3 s |
| Direct recommendation | Grok 4.1 Fast | spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex | 2026-10-04 23:14 | yes | 21 | 10 s |
| Direct recommendation | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-10-05 01:01 | yes | 5 | 4 s |
| Direct recommendation | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-10-04 23:58 | yes | 20 | 21 s |
| Direct recommendation | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-10-05 00:42 | yes | 5 | 3 s |
| Direct recommendation | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-10-05 00:36 | yes | 9 | 13 s |
| Direct recommendation | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-10-04 23:59 | yes | 15 | 18 s |
| Direct recommendation | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-10-05 01:25 | yes | 14 | 28 s |
| Direct recommendation | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-10-04 23:56 | yes | 5 | 57 s |
| Paraphrase | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-10-04 22:49 | yes | 9 | 7 s |
| Paraphrase | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-10-05 01:34 | no | 0 | 3 s |
| Paraphrase | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.5-flash | 2026-10-04 23:17 | yes | 21 | 23 s |
| Paraphrase | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-10-05 01:30 | yes | 15 | 3 s |
| Paraphrase | Grok 4.1 Fast | spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex | 2026-10-05 01:24 | yes | 25 | 7 s |
| Paraphrase | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-10-05 00:33 | yes | 5 | 3 s |
| Paraphrase | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-10-05 01:31 | yes | 25 | 34 s |
| Paraphrase | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-10-05 00:32 | yes | 5 | 2 s |
| Paraphrase | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-10-04 23:33 | yes | 9 | 35 s |
| Paraphrase | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-10-04 22:46 | yes | 20 | 22 s |
| Paraphrase | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-10-05 00:08 | yes | 25 | 58 s |
| Paraphrase | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-10-05 00:48 | yes | 10 | 61 s |
| Comparative | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-10-04 22:48 | yes | 9 | 10 s |
| Comparative | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-10-05 00:37 | yes | 6 | 4 s |
| Comparative | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.5-flash | 2026-10-05 01:19 | yes | 19 | 30 s |
| Comparative | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-10-05 01:36 | yes | 14 | 4 s |
| Comparative | Grok 4.1 Fast | spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex | 2026-10-05 01:14 | yes | 22 | 9 s |
| Comparative | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-10-05 01:18 | yes | 10 | 8 s |
| Comparative | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-10-05 00:44 | yes | 25 | 43 s |
| Comparative | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-10-05 01:18 | yes | 5 | 2 s |
| Comparative | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-10-05 01:27 | no | 0 | 26 s |
| Comparative | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-10-05 01:02 | yes | 15 | 20 s |
| Comparative | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-10-04 22:37 | yes | 24 | 73 s |
| Comparative | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-10-05 01:37 | yes | 12 | 27 s |
| Budget constrained | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-10-05 00:13 | no | 0 | 5 s |
| Budget constrained | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-10-05 01:53 | no | 0 | 2 s |
| Budget constrained | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.5-flash | 2026-10-05 01:43 | yes | 8 | 24 s |
| Budget constrained | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-10-04 23:57 | yes | 15 | 3 s |
| Budget constrained | Grok 4.1 Fast | spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex | 2026-10-05 01:08 | yes | 23 | 16 s |
| Budget constrained | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-10-05 01:20 | yes | 5 | 4 s |
| Budget constrained | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-10-04 23:23 | yes | 18 | 26 s |
| Budget constrained | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-10-05 01:49 | yes | 6 | 2 s |
| Budget constrained | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-10-05 01:04 | no | 0 | 26 s |
| Budget constrained | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-10-05 00:53 | yes | 15 | 17 s |
| Budget constrained | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-10-05 00:06 | yes | 14 | 34 s |
| Budget constrained | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-10-05 01:28 | no | 0 | 51 s |
| Scale constrained | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-10-05 00:14 | no | 0 | 6 s |
| Scale constrained | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-10-05 01:53 | no | 0 | 4 s |
| Scale constrained | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.5-flash | 2026-10-05 01:25 | no | 0 | 13 s |
| Scale constrained | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-10-05 00:34 | yes | 15 | 4 s |
| Scale constrained | Grok 4.1 Fast | spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex | 2026-10-05 00:54 | yes | 19 | 10 s |
| Scale constrained | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-10-05 01:34 | no | 0 | 8 s |
| Scale constrained | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-10-05 00:40 | yes | 16 | 58 s |
| Scale constrained | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-10-05 00:21 | yes | 9 | 3 s |
| Scale constrained | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-10-05 02:00 | no | 0 | 27 s |
| Scale constrained | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-10-05 00:19 | yes | 20 | 21 s |
| Scale constrained | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-10-05 00:57 | yes | 19 | 70 s |
| Scale constrained | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-10-05 00:52 | yes | 5 | 20 s |
| Negative framing | Claude Haiku 4.5 | claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 | 2026-10-05 01:26 | yes | 18 | 9 s |
| Negative framing | GPT-5.4 mini | gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17 | 2026-10-05 00:51 | yes | 4 | 4 s |
| Negative framing | Gemini 3.5 Flash | gemini-3.5-flash | 2026-10-04 23:09 | yes | 12 | 23 s |
| Negative framing | Perplexity Sonar | sonar | 2026-10-04 23:30 | yes | 35 | 5 s |
| Negative framing | Grok 4.1 Fast | spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex | 2026-10-04 22:40 | yes | 20 | 9 s |
| Negative framing | Mistral Small | mistral/mistral-small via mistral | 2026-10-05 00:15 | yes | 5 | 4 s |
| Negative framing | DeepSeek V4 Flash | deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra | 2026-10-04 23:39 | yes | 23 | 42 s |
| Negative framing | Llama 4 Maverick | meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock | 2026-10-04 23:49 | yes | 5 | 4 s |
| Negative framing | Qwen 3.7 Flash | alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba | 2026-10-04 23:10 | yes | 10 | 20 s |
| Negative framing | Kimi K2 | moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita | 2026-10-05 01:12 | yes | 24 | 27 s |
| Negative framing | GLM 4.7 FlashX | zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai | 2026-10-05 00:40 | yes | 23 | 81 s |
| Negative framing | MiniMax M2.5 | minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax | 2026-10-05 01:40 | yes | 14 | 27 s |
Normalization in this category
Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.
ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
A10 Networks read as A10 Thunder ADC
AWS ALB/ELB read as AWS Elastic Load Balancing
AWS ALB/NLB read as AWS Elastic Load Balancing
AWS ELB read as AWS Elastic Load Balancing
AWS ELB/ALB read as AWS Elastic Load Balancing
AWS Elastic Load Balancer (ALB) read as AWS Elastic Load Balancing
Akamai read as Akamai Connected Cloud
Azure LB read as Azure Load Balancer
Citrix read as Citrix ADC
Citrix NetScaler read as Citrix ADC
Cloudflare read as Cloudflare Load Balancing
Cloudflare Business read as Cloudflare Load Balancing
DigitalOcean read as DigitalOcean Load Balancers
DigitalOcean Load Balancer read as DigitalOcean Load Balancers
GCP LB read as GCP Cloud Load Balancing
GCP Load Balancer read as GCP Cloud Load Balancing
Google Cloud LB read as Google Cloud Load Balancing
KEMP read as Kemp LoadMaster
Kemp read as Kemp LoadMaster
Kemp Technologies LoadMaster read as Kemp LoadMaster
Loadbalancer.org read as Loadbalancer.org Enterprise ADC
Radware read as Radware Alteon
Unresolved, counted raw
AWS Classic ELB
AWS Elastic Load Balancing - ALB / NLB
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
Apache `httpd`
Aviatrix
Azure Gateway Manager
Barracuda Networks Load Balancer ADC
Basic Load Balancer
Cisco ACE Load Balancer
Classic Load Balancer
F5 BIG-IP family
F5 BIG‑IP APM
F5 Networks BIG-IP LTM
F5 XC
Google Cloud (GCP) or Microsoft Azure Load Balancers
Google Cloud Application Load Balancing
Google Cloud HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Google Cloud external HTTP(S) Load Balancer
IO River
Istio service mesh
Linux Virtual Server (LVS)
Loadbalancer Enterprise Prime
NGINX OSS
NodeBalancer from Linode/Akamai
Open-Source NGINX
Pound
Raw NGINX (Free version)
SKUDONET Community Edition
Skudonet
The Barracuda Load Balancer ADC
Vultr Load Balancer
Windows NLB
proxy Network Load Balancer
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.