HAProxy

Last updated
Original author(s) Willy Tarreau
Initial releaseDecember 16, 2001;23 years ago (2001-12-16)
Stable release
3.2.0 [1]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 28 May 2025
Repository
Written in C
Operating system Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris (8/9/10), AIX (5.1–5.3), macOS, Cygwin
License GNU General Public License Version 2
Website www.haproxy.org

HAProxy is a free and open source software that provides a high availability load balancer and proxy (forward proxy, [2] reverse proxy) for TCP and HTTP-based applications that spreads requests across multiple servers. [3] It is written in C [4] and has a reputation for being fast and efficient (in terms of processor and memory usage). [5]

Contents

HAProxy is used by a number of high-profile websites including GoDaddy, GitHub, Bitbucket, [6] Stack Overflow, [7] Reddit, Slack, [8] Speedtest.net, Tumblr, Twitter [9] [10] and Tuenti [11] and is used in the OpsWorks product from Amazon Web Services. [12]

History

HAProxy was written in 2000 [13] by Willy Tarreau, [14] a core contributor to the Linux kernel, [15] who still maintains the project.

In 2013, the company HAProxy Technologies, LLC was created.[ citation needed ] The company provides a commercial offering, HAProxy Enterprise and appliance-based application-delivery controllers named ALOHA.

Features

HAProxy has the following features:

HAProxy Community vs HAProxy Enterprise

HAProxy Enterprise Edition is an enterprise-class version of HAProxy that includes enterprise suite of add-ons, expert support, and professional services. It has some features backported from the HAProxy development branch. [20]

ALOHA

HAProxy Technologies’ ALOHA is a plug-and-play load-balancing appliance that can be deployed in any environment. ALOHA provides a graphical interface and a templating system that can be used to deploy and configure the appliance. [21]

Versions

HAProxy has had the following version releases: [22]

VersionRelease dateEnd of life
Unsupported: 1.02001-12-162001-12-30
Unsupported: 1.12002-03-102006-01-29
Unsupported: 1.22003-11-092011-08-06
Unsupported: 1.32006-06-292016-03-14
Unsupported: 1.42010-02-262018-02-08
Unsupported: 1.52014-06-192020-01-10
Unsupported: 1.62015-10-132020-Q4
Unsupported: 1.72016-11-252021-Q4
Unsupported: 1.82017-11-262022-Q4
Unsupported: 1.92018-12-192020-Q2
Unsupported: 2.02019-06-162024-Q2
Unsupported: 2.12019-11-252021-Q1
Supported: 2.2 LTS2020-07-072025-Q2 (critical fixes only)
Unsupported: 2.32020-11-052022-Q1
Supported: 2.4 LTS2021-05-142026-Q2 (critical fixes only)
Unsupported: 2.52021-11-232023-Q1
Supported: 2.6 LTS2022-05-312027-Q2
Unsupported: 2.72022-12-012024-Q1
Supported: 2.8 LTS2023-05-312028-Q2
Supported: 2.92023-12-052025-Q1
Supported: 3.0 LTS2024-05-292029-Q2
Latest version:3.12024-11-262026-Q1
Legend:
Unsupported
Supported
Latest version
Future version

Performance

Servers equipped with 6 to 8 cores generally achieve between 200,000 and 500,000 requests per second, and have no trouble saturating a 25 Gbit/s connection under Linux. [23] 64-core ARM servers were shown to reach 2 million requests per second and 100 Gbit/s. [24]

Similar software

See also

References

  1. "Release 3.2.0". 28 May 2025. Retrieved 16 June 2025.
  2. "HAProxy as Forward Proxy".
  3. "MySQL Load Balancing with HAProxy". Severalnines AB. 2011. Retrieved 19 February 2013.
  4. "HAProxy on Freecode" . Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  5. Tsoukalos, M. "HAProxy: TCP load balancer". Linux Format. 2017;(224):76-79. Retrieved July 25, 2025.
  6. "The inner guts of Bitbucket". YouTube . 24 July 2014. Retrieved 26 February 2015.
  7. "What it takes to run Stack Overflow" . Retrieved 22 November 2013.
  8. "All Hands on Deck". Slack Engineering. 29 June 2020. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
  9. "HAProxy: they use it!" . Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  10. "List of sites using HAProxy". Archived from the original on 10 June 2013. Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  11. "Tuenti+WebRTC (Voip2day 2014)".
  12. "HAProxy layer - AWS Opsworks" . Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  13. "HAProxy: design choices and history" . Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  14. "Willy Tarreau: About me" . Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  15. "LKML: Willy Tarreau: [ANNOUNCE] Linux 2.4.37.11" . Retrieved 5 April 2013.
  16. Corbett, Daniel (2018-12-19). "HAProxy 1.9 Has Arrived". HAProxy Technologies. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
  17. Ramirez, Nick (2022-05-31). "Announcing HAProxy 2.6". HAProxy Technologies. Retrieved 2023-07-30.
  18. Mhedhbi, Moemen (2018-05-31). "Hitless Reloads / Hot Restarts with HAProxy!". HAProxy Technologies. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
  19. Ramirez, Nick (2019-01-16). "HAProxy 1.9.2 Adds gRPC Support". HAProxy Technologies. Retrieved 2019-01-22.
  20. "HAProxy Technologies Announces Improvements to Performance, Management, and Security for Enterprises" (Press release). 2 May 2018. Retrieved 23 Oct 2018.
  21. "ALOHA Hardware Appliance Application Delivery Controller" . Retrieved 23 Oct 2018.
  22. "HAProxy" . Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  23. haproxy.org#plat
  24. www.haproxy.com/blog/haproxy-forwards-over-2-million-http-requests-per-second-on-a-single-aws-arm-instance/