Load balancers · October 2026 Edition
HAProxy vs NGINX
Three of fourteen models named HAProxy first on the direct prompt; four named NGINX. Both were named by all fourteen models and HAProxy carries 58 labels and NGINX 53, so the shares are not directly comparable.
Named in two categories this edition.
Named in two categories this edition.
First-choice share29%15%Of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, 0 to 100.
Negative rate5%4%Negative labels as a share of the product's labels, 0 to 100.
Rank in category#1#3A position in a field of 13; printed, not drawn.
Labels5853A 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 AWS Elastic Load Balancing · HAProxy vs Cloudflare 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 modelsNGINX
Direct341 against HAProxy
Paraphrase10
Comparative21
Budget-constrained103
Scale-constrained11
Negative212 against HAProxy · 2 against NGINX
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 NGINX were named in the same answer 142 times, of the 174 answers naming HAProxy and the 191 naming NGINX. In those answers NGINX took the first choice eleven times and HAProxy twenty.
Every model, every framing
The eighty-four answers behind the chart above, one cell each: where HAProxy and NGINX stood in it.
| Model | Direct | Paraphrase | Comparative | Budget-constrained | Scale-constrained | Negative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | | | | | ||
| MiniMax M2.5 | | | | | ||
| GPT-6 Luna | | | ||||
| Muse Glimmer 30B | | | | |
HAProxy NGINX first choice named as an alternative argued againstblank: not namedEach cell is one answer, HAProxy on the left and NGINX on the right.The direct prompt
The plain question, one answer per model, grouped by where HAProxy and NGINX stood in it.
Both were the first choice
1 of 14 modelsThe answer named them together, and the judge labeled each a first choice.Grok 4.1 FastHAProxy, NGINX alternatives: AWS ALB, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, GCP Cloud Load Balancing, Progress Kemp LoadMaster
HAProxy first, NGINX not the choice
2 of 14 modelsNGINX was named in the answer but not as the choice, or not at all.Perplexity SonarHAProxy alternatives: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Application Gateway
Kimi K2HAProxy, Progress Kemp LoadMaster alternatives: F5 NGINX
NGINX first, HAProxy an alternative
3 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
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
Neither was the first choice, one was named
5 of 14 modelsThe answer put something else first and named one of the two as an alternative.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
MiniMax M2.5Progress Kemp LoadMaster alternatives: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, GCP Cloud Load Balancing, NGINX
Muse Glimmer 30BProgress Kemp LoadMaster alternatives: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINX
Neither was named
3 of 14 modelsThe answer made no first choice from these two in this category.GPT-5.4 miniApplication Load Balancer alternatives: Azure Load Balancer, Google Cloud's Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer
Llama 4 Maverickno first choice
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
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
Mid-marketThe figures above
Enterprise
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 NGINX
Every negative label with a quote, up to three, then the highest-weighted positives, up to three. Five of six in this category shown.
“running them on under-powered virtual machines ... creates a bottleneck” Qwen 3.7 Flash · negative prompt · soft negative
“Don't use Nginx for complex load balancing - It's a web server first” Kimi K2 · negative prompt · soft negative
“A well-run software load balancer (HAProxy or NGINX) or a cloud-managed service will give you the performance, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness you need” DeepSeek V4 Flash · scale prompt · first choice
“a cloud-based load balancer (if you're in the cloud) or Nginx (if on-premises) represents the best balance of cost, performance, and ease of management” Claude Haiku 4.5 · direct prompt · first choice
“The Industry Standard (Flexible & Powerful): NGINX ... If you are moving toward a microservices/Kubernetes architecture, transition to NGINX Ingress.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · direct prompt · first choice
Also compared
HAProxy vs Progress Kemp LoadMasterHAProxy vs AWS Elastic Load BalancingHAProxy vs Cloudflare Load BalancingHAProxy vs TraefikHAProxy vs Azure Load BalancerHAProxy vs Azure Application GatewayProgress Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINXNGINX vs AWS Elastic Load BalancingNGINX vs Cloudflare Load BalancingNGINX vs TraefikNGINX vs Azure Load BalancerNGINX 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.