Feature comparison · as of
18 features of ScalWS 1.0.0 next to NGINX Plus, LiteSpeed Web Server Enterprise and HAProxy Enterprise. The cells about the other products come from each vendor's own public documentation and product pages, read on ; every cell links its source. This page compares documented features, not speed: measurements are on the benchmarks page.
of 18 compared features are part of ScalWS 1.0.0, which is free of charge (binary packages).
partial in ScalWS: .htaccess support.
not in ScalWS, ScalWS behind: Active health checks, Web application firewall (WAF) and Commercial support.
cells of the other products are not confirmed either way by the vendor's documentation. They are shown as not documented, never as no.
| Feature | ScalWS 1.0.0 | NGINX PlusF5 | LiteSpeed Web Server EnterpriseLiteSpeed Technologies | HAProxy EnterpriseHAProxy Technologies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Load balancing | ||||
| Active health checks | No Passive health only (members ejected after consecutive failures); no polling of members | Yes Active HTTP, TCP, UDP and gRPC checks; passive checks also in open source Source: docs.nginx.com | Not documented | Yes Continuous health checks per server Source: haproxy.com |
| Session persistence (sticky sessions) | Yes Affinity cookie, header or client IP hashing; cookie key is per process Source: ScalWS docs: guide/load-balancing (Choosing a member) | Yes Sticky cookie, route and learn methods Source: docs.nginx.com | Not documented | Yes Stickiness by TCP/IP or HTTP request properties Source: haproxy.com |
| Change upstream servers at run time via API, without reload | Yes Admin API replaces the members of an API-managed pool (PUT /v1/upstreams/{name}) Source: ScalWS docs: reference/admin-api, ScalWS docs: guide/load-balancing | Yes NGINX Plus REST API; persistence across reloads needs a state file Source: docs.nginx.com | Not documented | Yes Runtime API and Data Plane API Source: haproxy.com |
| Operations | ||||
| Monitoring dashboard and metrics (Prometheus) | Yes Prometheus /metrics endpoint; live traffic view in ScalWS Console (with scalws-controller) Source: ScalWS docs: guide/logging-metrics, ScalWS docs: console-architecture | Yes Live activity dashboard and REST API; Prometheus via the Prometheus-njs module Source: docs.nginx.com, docs.nginx.com | Yes Real-Time Stats in WebAdmin; Prometheus exporter Source: docs.litespeedtech.com | Yes 150+ metrics, native Prometheus; historical dashboards in HAProxy Fusion Source: haproxy.com |
| Configuration check before apply | Yes scalwsd --check; a failed reload keeps the running configuration; scalwsctl history, diff and rollback on scalwsd.service; history in ScalWS Console Source: ScalWS docs: reference/programs/scalwsd, ScalWS docs: guide/files-and-services, ScalWS docs: guide/upgrading (Rollback) | Yes nginx -t tests the configuration Source: nginx.org | Not documented | Yes hapee-lb -c checks the configuration Source: haproxy.com |
| TLS and protocols | ||||
| Automatic TLS certificates (ACME) | Yes Built in, HTTP-01 only (no wildcard certificates) Source: ScalWS docs: guide/tls | Yes ACME dynamic module, HTTP-01 Source: docs.nginx.com | Not documented | Partial Native ACME from 3.2r1 (HTTP-01; DNS-01 from 3.3r1), documented as experimental Source: haproxy.com |
| HTTP/3 (QUIC) | Yes Per listener, off by default Source: ScalWS docs: guide/configuration, ScalWS docs: guide/tls | Yes Supported since NGINX Plus R30 Source: f5.com | Yes Production HTTP/3 implementation Source: litespeedtech.com | Yes HTTP/3 over QUIC Source: haproxy.com |
| Security | ||||
| Web application firewall (WAF) | No No content-inspecting WAF; deterministic security rules instead (deny paths, rate limits, host and SNI checks) Source: ScalWS docs: ARCHITECTURE, ScalWS docs: THREAT_MODEL, ScalWS docs: guide/security | Add-on F5 WAF for NGINX needs its own subscription Source: docs.nginx.com | Yes ModSecurity rule engine Source: litespeedtech.com | Yes Listed as part of HAProxy Enterprise Source: haproxy.com |
| Request rate limiting | Yes Per client IP and per path, 429 with Retry-After Source: ScalWS docs: guide/security | Yes limit_req Source: docs.nginx.com | Yes Requests per second limits for static and dynamic requests Source: docs.litespeedtech.com | Yes Rate limiting; global limits with HAProxy Fusion Source: haproxy.com |
| Caching | ||||
| Response cache | Yes Memory and disk tiers Source: ScalWS docs: guide/caching | Yes Content caching Source: docs.nginx.com | Yes LSCache, ESI Source: litespeedtech.com | Yes Caching and compression Source: haproxy.com |
| Cache purge | Yes By URL, prefix, Cache-Tag or all; CLI, admin API, controller and console Source: ScalWS docs: guide/caching | Yes proxy_cache_purge is part of the commercial subscription Source: nginx.org | Yes X-LiteSpeed-Purge header, by URL or tag Source: docs.litespeedtech.com | Not documented |
| Applications | ||||
| PHP serving | Yes FastCGI to a managed or existing PHP-FPM pool; no LSAPI Source: ScalWS docs: guide/applications | Yes FastCGI Source: nginx.org | Yes LSAPI Source: litespeedtech.com | Yes FastCGI to PHP-FPM since 2.1r1 Source: haproxy.com |
| Managed application runtimes | Yes Node.js, Python (ASGI, WSGI) and containers (podman or docker), supervised Source: ScalWS docs: guide/applications | Not documented | Yes Node.js, Python and Ruby applications Source: litespeedtech.com | Not documented |
| Hosting | ||||
| Per-tenant resource limits (cgroups) | Yes cgroup v2 CPU, memory, pids and disk I/O per tenant | Not documented | Yes cgroups v2 per user from LSWS 6.0 (CPU, memory, tasks, I/O) Source: docs.litespeedtech.com | Not documented |
| Control panel integration (cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk) | Yes Replaces the panel's web server; tested matrix per panel and OS in the guide | Not documented | Yes cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk, CyberPanel and others Source: litespeedtech.com | Not documented |
| .htaccess support | Partial Per site, a documented safe subset of directives Source: ScalWS docs: howto/htaccess | Not documented | Yes Full .htaccess support, reads Apache configuration Source: litespeedtech.com | Not documented |
| Kubernetes | ||||
| Kubernetes Ingress and Gateway API | Yes scalws-ingress: Ingress and Gateway API (GATEWAY-HTTP profile) Source: ScalWS docs: guide/ingress-controller, ScalWS docs: guide/gateway-api | Yes Separate F5 products: NGINX Ingress Controller and NGINX Gateway Fabric, both with NGINX Plus Source: docs.nginx.com, docs.nginx.com | Add-on Separate LiteSpeed Ingress Controller on the licensed WebADC engine Source: docs.litespeedtech.com | Yes HAProxy Enterprise Kubernetes Ingress Controller; Gateway API from 1.10 Source: haproxy.com, haproxy.com |
| Support | ||||
| Commercial support | No No paid support plan in the 1.0.0 documentation Source: ScalWS docs: README | Yes Included with the subscription Source: f5.com | Yes Free basic support; premium support sold separately Source: docs.litespeedtech.com | Yes 24/7/365 support Source: haproxy.com |
| Licence and price | ||||
| Licence and price | Free of charge Binary packages. Source: releases.scalws.com | Quote-based Commercial, annual enterprise subscription Source: f5.com | Free Starter tier (1 domain); paid tiers from $10/month (published list prices) Commercial licence (monthly, yearly or owned) Source: litespeedtech.com | Quote-based Commercial subscription Source: haproxy.com |
4 of the 18 rows, stated plainly, with what the other products document for the same row.
No in ScalWS
Passive health only (members ejected after consecutive failures); no polling of members.
No in ScalWS
No content-inspecting WAF; deterministic security rules instead (deny paths, rate limits, host and SNI checks).
No in ScalWS
No paid support plan in the 1.0.0 documentation.
Partial in ScalWS
Per site, a documented safe subset of directives.