Load balancers · October 2026 Edition
HAProxy vs Azure Load Balancer
Three of fourteen models named HAProxy first on the direct prompt; one named Azure Load Balancer. HAProxy was named by fourteen of the fourteen models and Azure Load Balancer by thirteen and HAProxy carries 58 labels and Azure Load Balancer 29, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in two categories this edition.
Azure Load Balancer
accepted challengerNamed in one category this edition.
First-choice share29%2%Of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, 0 to 100.
Negative rate5%14%Negative labels as a share of the product's labels, 0 to 100.
Rank in category#1#7A position in a field of 13; printed, not drawn.
Labels5829A count; the two differ.
The two percentage rows are drawn on one 0 to 100 track, HAProxy reading right to left. Rank and label count are printed, not drawn.Progress Kemp LoadMaster was named alongside these two in eight of the fourteen direct answers. HAProxy vs Progress Kemp LoadMaster · HAProxy vs NGINX · HAProxy vs AWS Elastic Load Balancing
Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category; every quote names the model and the prompt it came from. Both figures come from the load balancers page.
By framing
How many of the fourteen models made each the first choice, per way of asking, and how many argued against it.
HAProxyFirst choices, of fourteen modelsAzure Load BalancerDirect311 against HAProxy
Paraphrase10
Comparative20
Budget-constrained1002 against Azure Load Balancer
Scale-constrained10
Negative202 against HAProxy · 2 against Azure Load Balancer
Bars are first choices, 0 to 14 each sideModels that argued againstA model can name both, so the two sides of a row do not sum to fourteen.
Across every category in the October 2026 Edition, HAProxy and Azure Load Balancer were named in the same answer sixty-five times, of the 174 answers naming HAProxy and the 83 naming Azure Load Balancer. In those answers Azure Load Balancer took the first choice four times and HAProxy nineteen.
Every model, every framing
The eighty-four answers behind the chart above, one cell each: where HAProxy and Azure Load Balancer stood in it.
| Model | DirectAL | ParaphraseAL | ComparativeAL | Budget-constrainedAL | Scale-constrainedAL | NegativeAL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | AL | | | |||
| GPT-5.4 mini | AL | | ||||
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | | | | | AL | |
| Perplexity Sonar | | | ||||
| Grok 4.1 Fast | AL | | | | AL | |
| Mistral Small | | AL | | AL | ||
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | | | | AL | AL | AL |
| Llama 4 Maverick | ||||||
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | | | | AL | ||
| Kimi K2 | | | | | ||
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | | | | | ||
| MiniMax M2.5 | AL | AL | | AL | ||
| GPT-6 Luna | AL | | AL | |||
| Muse Glimmer 30B | AL | AL | |
HAProxyAL Azure Load Balancer first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, HAProxy on the left and Azure Load Balancer on the right.The direct prompt
The plain question, one answer per model, grouped by where HAProxy and Azure Load Balancer stood in it.
HAProxy first, Azure Load Balancer an alternative
3 of 14 modelsAzure Load Balancer was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Perplexity SonarHAProxy alternatives: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Application Gateway
Grok 4.1 FastHAProxy, NGINX alternatives: AWS ALB, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, GCP Cloud Load Balancing, Progress Kemp LoadMaster
Kimi K2HAProxy, Progress Kemp LoadMaster alternatives: F5 NGINX
Azure Load Balancer first, HAProxy an alternative
1 of 14 modelsHAProxy was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Claude Haiku 4.5AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, NGINX alternatives: Citrix ADC, F5, HAProxy
Neither was the first choice, one was named
9 of 14 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.GPT-5.4 miniApplication Load Balancer alternatives: Azure Load Balancer, Google Cloud's Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer
Gemini 3.5 FlashCloudflare Load Balancing alternatives: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Application Gateway, HAProxy, NGINX, Progress Kemp LoadMaster
Mistral SmallCloudflare Load Balancing alternatives: HAProxy, Progress Kemp LoadMaster, VMware Avi Load Balancer
DeepSeek V4 FlashProgress Kemp LoadMaster alternatives: AWS Application Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINX
Qwen 3.7 FlashAWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Application Gateway, NGINX alternatives: Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy
GLM 4.7 FlashXNGINX, Progress Kemp LoadMaster alternatives: F5 BIG-IP, HAProxy
MiniMax M2.5Progress Kemp LoadMaster alternatives: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, GCP Cloud Load Balancing, NGINX
GPT-6 LunaAWS Application Load Balancer alternatives: Azure Application Gateway, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, Google Cloud Application Load Balancer, Google Cloud Network Load Balancer
Muse Glimmer 30BProgress Kemp LoadMaster alternatives: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINX
Neither was named
1 of 14 modelsThe answer made no first choice from these two in this category.Llama 4 Maverickno first choice
Bold names in an answer are the products the judge labeled a first choice; a model naming several gives each of them that label. The full answer text for every row is in the record.
By buyer segment
The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment and they are never added together. The figures above are the mid-market standing, which is the one the category orders by.
Small business
HAProxy leads by fourteen points.
HAProxy20%#1 of 13Azure Load Balancer6%#6 of 13
The full small business standing →Mid-marketThe figures above
HAProxy leads by twenty-seven points.
HAProxy29%#1 of 13Azure Load Balancer2%#7 of 13
The full mid-market standing →Enterprise
HAProxy leads by twelve points.
HAProxy12%#2 of 10Azure Load Balancer0%#10 of 10
The full enterprise standing →What the models said about HAProxy
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of seven in this category shown.
“Open‑source solutions that are no longer actively maintained (e.g., very old versions of HAProxy, Nginx...) | Unpatched CVEs” GLM 4.7 FlashX · negative prompt · soft negative
“consider a third-party option like F5 or HAProxy, but that adds more ops overhead” GPT-5.4 mini · direct prompt · soft negative
“running them on under-powered virtual machines (like a $5/mo VPS) creates a bottleneck” Qwen 3.7 Flash · negative prompt · soft negative
“If you have standard web apps or APIs: Go with HAProxy. It has the broadest adoption, most documentation, and best performance for the price (free).” Kimi K2 · budget prompt · first choice
“The performance leader — handles millions of requests per second with sub-millisecond latency... HAProxy is the performance benchmark.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · comparative prompt · first choice
“Fastest and most stable - used by GitHub, Reddit, Stack Overflow ... High-performance, mission-critical | HAProxy” Kimi K2 · comparative prompt · first choice
What the models said about Azure Load Balancer
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Six of eight in this category shown.
“Cloud-native load balancers (AWS ELB, Azure LB, GCP LB) ... may lack deep packet inspection, advanced routing rules, or cross-cloud consistency” MiniMax M2.5 · negative prompt · soft negative
“Traefik is rated higher for value, with reviewers expressing greater satisfaction with its pricing compared to Azure Load Balancer.” Muse Glimmer 30B · budget prompt · soft negative
“excellent within their ecosystems but can lead to vendor lock-in” Mistral Small · negative prompt · soft negative
“Cloud-native load balancers (AWS ALB, Azure LB) are often the best fit” Claude Haiku 4.5 · direct prompt · first choice
“Azure Load Balancer for network-layer distribution, especially in Azure-native environments.” GPT-5.4 mini · direct prompt · alternative
“AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, or Google Cloud Load Balancing” MiniMax M2.5 · budget prompt · alternative
Also compared
HAProxy vs Progress Kemp LoadMasterHAProxy vs NGINXHAProxy vs AWS Elastic Load BalancingHAProxy vs Cloudflare Load BalancingHAProxy vs TraefikHAProxy vs Azure Application GatewayProgress Kemp LoadMaster vs Azure Load BalancerNGINX vs Azure Load BalancerAWS Elastic Load Balancing vs Azure Load BalancerCloudflare Load Balancing vs Azure Load BalancerTraefik vs Azure Load BalancerAzure Load Balancer vs Azure Application GatewayAll twenty-eight head-to-head pages and the full load balancers standing
Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category, each against each. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.