HAProxy
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 7 reverse proxies by recommenders
Fast, stable load balancer and proxy that people use for TLS termination, HTTP load balancing and fronting self-hosted services.
Fast, stable load balancer and proxy that people use for TLS termination, HTTP load balancing and fronting self-hosted services.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 24
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 92%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 24 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 12 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast and stable in production
“2+ services on seperate servers behind haproxy has been as stable as our Kubernetes Cluster”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Codex just found a "workaround" of not having sudo on my PC” “you'll struggle to find anything faster or more stable in its field”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “pg_durable: Microsoft open sources in-database durable execution” “for LB use cases, HAProxy is doing really well”
Comment from 15 May 2026 in “New Nginx Exploit” - Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Using Proxies to Hide Secrets from Claude Code”
- Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “mitmproxy adds --emudhra option”
Handles TLS and HTTP load balancing
“an haproxy load balancer was much, much better on HTTP load balancing than Python code was”
Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “We should be more ambitious with the software we build” “haproxy supports both the offload (client) and onload (backend) use case”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “Vinyl Cache and Varnish Cache” “HAproxy terminates the TLS as well as load baancing.”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “DeCloudflare” Fronts self-hosted services well
“Initially, I stuffed jellyfin (and a bunch of other stuff) behind HAProxy[0], which was fine.”
Comment from 9 Sep 2026 in “Jellyfin 12.0” “a small droplet with haproxy or nginx setup. Worked much better for me personally!”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Multiple Digital Ocean services down” “HAProxy or PGBouncer can help when self hosting.”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Go ahead, self-host Postgres” Works reliably for years
“2 bare-metals with Linux, Postgres, HAProxy and PHP work perfectly fine for 99% of apps”
Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “Choose Boring Technology (2015)” “I've found this to work quite well”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “My Homelab Setup” “worked well for many years for me”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “2026 is the Year of Self-hosting”
Other reverse proxies people recommend
The four most recommended other reverse proxies, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pangolin | 37 | 6 | 86% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Traefik | 27 | 8 | 77% | 10 | — | Approved |
| HAProxyThis page | 24 | 2 | 92% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Envoy Proxy | 14 | 7 | 67% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Nginx Proxy Manager | 10 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
27 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“an haproxy load balancer was much, much better on HTTP load balancing than Python code was”
“haproxy is also smaller than mitmproxy”
“I prefer haproxy to mitmproxy. It's faster”
“works great and not dependent on isp rules”
“haproxy can look at the beginning of the packet to see if it is ssh and forward that to a server with mutualTLS”
“require you to go through different hoops to set them up properly”
“HAproxy terminates the TLS as well as load baancing.”
“Initially, I stuffed jellyfin (and a bunch of other stuff) behind HAProxy[0], which was fine.”
“2 bare-metals with Linux, Postgres, HAProxy and PHP work perfectly fine for 99% of apps”
“pretty cool DNS resolving features in HAProxy, that's nifty”
“Haproxy is designed for this.”
“Compare that to HAProxy and Nginx (C)”
“you'll struggle to find anything faster or more stable in its field”
“having some quirks with haproxy”
“2+ services on seperate servers behind haproxy has been as stable as our Kubernetes Cluster”
“for LB use cases, HAProxy is doing really well”
“use haproxy instead of ingress controllers”
“haproxy supports both the offload (client) and onload (backend) use case”
“I've found this to work quite well”
“These days if I have a lot of rewrites I do that in HAProxy or NGinx in maps”
“Modern LBs, like HAProxy, support both active & passive health checks”
“HAproxy is smaller and faster than mitmproxy”
“worked well for many years for me”
“using a layer-7 proxy such as HAproxy to reach your management interfaces”
“HAProxy or PGBouncer can help when self hosting.”
“Now that I have proper header added by HAProxy”
“a small droplet with haproxy or nginx setup. Worked much better for me personally!”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.