Index › Products › Application Load Balancer · October 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Application Load Balancer

13Judge labels

3First choices

1Negative labels

7 / 14Models named it

1Category

October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

6 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Application Load Balancer was named 6 times in Load balancers, where HAProxy led with 29%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business11 of 104

under the label threshold

Mid-market11 of 94

under the label threshold

Enterprise28 of 99

under the label threshold

In load balancers · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Application Load Balancer for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant	Since September 2026
Load balancers	Network and edge	2%	11 of 94	17%	6	under 10 labels · led by HAProxy at 29%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Application Load Balancer yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment and per category, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Application Load Balancer across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

ShowHide

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	1	0	0	0	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	0	0
Mistral Small	0	0	0	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	0	0	0
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	0	1	1	0	2
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	0	0	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0	0	0
GPT-6 Luna	0	0	0	0	0
Muse Glimmer 30B	0	0	0	1	1

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct5 labels3

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative1 labelNone

Budget-constrained2 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative5 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative13 labels in all, every segment counted; 3 of the 4 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“AWS ALB is often the best default if you're on AWS, because it gives advanced routing and health checks without you managing appliances.” GPT-5.4 mini · Load balancers · direct prompt · first choice

“Cloud-native (GCP) | Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer” Kimi K2 · Load balancers · negative prompt · alternative

“Always use the Application Load Balancer (ALB) for HTTP traffic” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Load balancers · negative prompt · alternative

“For AWS-centric, Layer 7 routing: AWS ALB.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Load balancers · comparative prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Avoid Application Load Balancers for TCP/UDP needs; they only support HTTP/HTTPS (Layer 7).” Muse Glimmer 30B · Load balancers · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Application Load Balancer, over the 13 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Application Load Balancer was named but was not.

ShowHide

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

HAProxy10 of 132Not among the top eight

NGINX7 of 130Not among the top eight

Network Load Balancer7 of 130Not among the top eight

Application Gateway6 of 130Not among the top eight

F5 BIG-IP5 of 131Not among the top eight

Azure Load Balancer5 of 130Not among the top eight

Cloud Load Balancing5 of 130Not among the top eight

Cloudflare Load Balancing4 of 130Not among the top eight

AWS Classic Load Balancer3 of 130Not among the top eight

Azure Basic Load Balancer3 of 130Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Application Load Balancer. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 11 of the 13 answers that named Application Load Balancer and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

learn.microsoft.com7

aws.amazon.com6

docs.aws.amazon.com5

loadbalancer.org5

docs.cloud.google.com4

f5.com4

g2.com4

linkedin.com3

cloud.google.com2

developers.cloudflare.com2

No domain is on file for Application Load Balancer, so its own site is not marked.

Pages cited

loadbalancer.org/blog/whats-the-best-cloud-load-balancer5

aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/pricing3

docs.cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/choosing-load-balancer3

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/load-balancer/load-balancer-overview3

aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/faqs2

cloud.google.com/load-balancing/pricing2

docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/classic/introduction.html2

inventivehq.com/tools/comparison/cloud-load-balancer-selector2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

Where Application Load Balancer stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.

ShowHide

In search

Google, US estimates

Searches for its name, Google: 720 a month (“application load balancer”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 100 a month
Its own site: No site of its own on file, so no site figures

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

rank 11 of 94 in load balancers

Segment leader

29%

HAProxy

First choices: 3 across its categories
Named in: 13 answers
Its own site cited: No site on file to match

Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read October 5, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.

Names read as Application Load Balancer

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Application Load Balancer; a claim can dispute any of them.

Application Load Balancer (ALB) 5

Follow Application Load Balancer

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Application Load Balancer's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Application Load Balancer, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Application Load Balancer by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Application Load Balancer is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Application Load Balancer, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.