# Load balancers for small business buyers: what AI models recommend, October 2026

Gane Index, October 2026 Edition. Asked as "load balancer" and as "application delivery controller", six framings each, to fourteen models with search on, on behalf of a small B2B company. Added to the October 2026 Edition on October 4, 2026. Page: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/network/load-balancers/2026-10/smb

This is the permanent record of the October 2026 Edition, published October 1, 2026 and superseded since. The current standing: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/network/load-balancers/smb/index.md

**Standing:** HAProxy leads with 20% of first choices; verdict contested. 70 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| Rank | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [HAProxy](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/haproxy/index.md) | 20% | 15% | 65 |
| 2 | [NGINX](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/nginx/index.md) | 14% | 13% | 63 |
| 3 | [Cloudflare Load Balancing](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/cloudflare-load-balancing/index.md) | 11% | 3% | 33 |
| 4 | [AWS Elastic Load Balancing](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/aws-elastic-load-balancing/index.md) | 10% | 11% | 27 |
| 5 | [Kemp LoadMaster](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/kemp-loadmaster/index.md) | 10% | 27% | 22 |
| 7 | [Azure Load Balancer](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/azure-load-balancer/index.md) | 6% | 4% | 27 |
| 8 | [AWS Application Load Balancer](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/aws-application-load-balancer/index.md) | 3% | 15% | 20 |
| 9 | [Google Cloud Load Balancing](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/google-cloud-load-balancing/index.md) | 3% | 17% | 24 |
| 10 | [DigitalOcean Load Balancers](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/digitalocean-load-balancers/index.md) | 3% | 0% | 13 |
| 12 | [Traefik](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/traefik/index.md) | 1% | 3% | 32 |
| 18 | [Azure Application Gateway](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/azure-application-gateway/index.md) | 0% | 0% | 10 |
| 100 | [Citrix ADC](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/citrix-adc/index.md) | 0% | 88% | 17 |

Rank is by share of first choices among all 101 products named; products with the same share are tied, and the order among them carries no meaning. The table lists those with at least 10 labels.

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: NGINX; alternatives AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Google Cloud Load Balancing
- GPT-5.4 mini: Application Load Balancer; alternatives Azure Load Balancer
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: AWS Application Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing; alternatives DigitalOcean Load Balancers, Google Cloud (GCP) or Microsoft Azure Load Balancers, HAProxy, NGINX
- Perplexity Sonar: AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer; alternatives HAProxy, Kemp LoadMaster
- Grok 4.20: HAProxy; alternatives AWS Application Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancer, NGINX
- Mistral Small: Azure Load Balancer; alternatives HAProxy, NGINX
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: HAProxy; alternatives AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, Cloudflare Load Balancing, GCP Cloud Load Balancing
- Llama 4 Maverick: no first choice
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Cloudflare Load Balancing; alternatives AWS Application Load Balancer, Azure Load Balancer / Front Door, F5 NGINX, Google Cloud Load Balancing
- Kimi K2: Cloudflare Load Balancing, NGINX; alternatives AWS Elastic Load Balancing, Azure Load Balancer, HAProxy, Traefik
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Cloudflare Load Balancing; alternatives AWS Elastic Load Balancing, HAProxy, NGINX
- MiniMax M2.5: no first choice
- GPT-6 Luna: Application Load Balancer; alternatives Application Gateway, Azure Load Balancer, Cloud Load Balancing, Cloudflare Load Balancing
- Muse Glimmer 30B: Cloudflare Load Balancing, HAProxy; alternatives AWS Elastic Load Balancing, NGINX, NGINX Open Source, NodeBalancer from Linode/Akamai

## Sources the answers cite

71 of 84 answers came back with a source list, from 14 of 14 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- g2.com: 42 answers, 54 citations
- loadbalancer.org: 33 answers, 51 citations
- pickmysoft.com: 30 answers, 30 citations
- learn.g2.com: 27 answers, 30 citations
- kemptechnologies.com: 24 answers, 50 citations
- spotsaas.com: 22 answers, 32 citations
- devopsschool.com: 22 answers, 22 citations
- aws.amazon.com: 21 answers, 28 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://pickmysoft.com/blog/best-load-balancing-software (30 answers)
- https://learn.g2.com/best-load-balancing-software (26 answers)
- https://devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-load-balancers-features-pros-cons-comparison (20 answers)
- https://g2.com/categories/load-balancing/small-business (17 answers)
- https://loadbalancer.org/blog/whats-the-best-cloud-load-balancer (17 answers)
- https://spotsaas.com/list/load-balancing-software/for-small-business (14 answers)
- https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/pricing (12 answers)
- https://xurrent.com/blog/top-load-balancers (12 answers)
- https://spotsaas.com/category/load-balancing-software (11 answers)
- https://contabo.com/blog/best-open-source-load-balancers (10 answers)

## Warned against

- F5 BIG-IP: 17 of 17 labels negative. "The Verdict: Unless you are running a highly specialized, legacy on-premises data center with dedicated network engineers, avoid physical appliances entirely." (Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt)
- Citrix ADC: 15 of 17 labels negative. "Enterprise-grade hardware appliances (F5, Citrix, A10, Radware, etc.) ... a $100k+ hardware box is almost certainly overkill." (GLM 4.7 FlashX, negative prompt)
- F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager: 7 of 9 labels negative. "Avoid enterprise hardware appliances that cost six figures... a redundant pair of F5 BIG-IP or Citrix NetScaler can easily cost $100k+" (GLM 4.7 FlashX, negative prompt)
- HAProxy: 10 of 65 labels negative. "Caveat: No vendor support, no GUI (HAProxy community), and you must handle SSL offload, health checks, and WAF yourself. This is only recommended if you have in-house expertise." (DeepSeek V4 Flash, paraphrase prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/methodology
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as Gane Index, October 2026 Edition, www.gane.ai/index/it.