What are the Differences between HAProxy and Ngnix in reverse proxy mode?

Question

What are the differences between HAProxy and Nginx when it comes to their abilities as a reverse proxy?

Answer 1

HAProxy is really just a load balancer/reverse proxy. Nginx is a Webserver that can also function as a reverse proxy.

Here are some differences:

HAProxy:

• Does TCP as well as HTTP proxying
• More rate limiting options
• The author answers questions here on Server Fault ;-)

Nginx:

• Supports SSL directly
• Is also a caching server
• No support for HTTP/1.1 features. If you need keep-alive support for your web application HAProxy is likely the choice for you.

At Stack Overflow we mainly yse HAProxy with nginx for SSL offloading so HAProxy is my recommendation.

Answer 2

I use nginx to frontend HAProxy, but only for SSL termination.

HAProxy is a much more tunable and manageable load balancer (in my experience).

I also incorporate Varnish for static object caching. (as a specific backend of HAProxy)

See this Server Fault question for more info. Ordering nginx/varnish/haproxy

Answer 3

nginix. Because there is no Haxproxy.

But seriously I think Haproxy makes a better load balancer while nginix would make a better caching server. If you only want availability haproxy is your choice. If you want to increase performance go with nginix.