12 Best Free and Open Source Load Balancers
L7 load balancing is more CPU‑intensive than packet‑based L4 load balancing, but rarely causes degraded performance on a modern server. L7 load balancing enables the load balancer to make smarter load‑balancing decisions, and to apply optimizations and changes to the content.
Load balancers can be hardware-based or software-based.
The ratings chart below summarizes our verdict. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion here.