Application Load Balancer vs Basic Load Balancers

Developers should use Application Load Balancers when building modern web applications or microservices that require advanced routing, SSL/TLS termination, or integration with containerized workloads meets developers should use basic load balancers when building scalable web applications or services that require high availability and fault tolerance, such as e-commerce sites or apis handling moderate traffic. Here's our take.

Application Load Balancer

Nice Pick

Developers should use Application Load Balancers when building modern web applications or microservices that require advanced routing, SSL/TLS termination, or integration with containerized workloads

Pros

• They are essential for scenarios like A/B testing, blue-green deployments, and handling high-traffic websites, as they provide features like sticky sessions, health checks, and WebSocket support
• Related to: aws, microservices

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Basic Load Balancers

Developers should use Basic Load Balancers when building scalable web applications or services that require high availability and fault tolerance, such as e-commerce sites or APIs handling moderate traffic

Pros

• They are ideal for scenarios where simple, cost-effective traffic distribution is needed without advanced features like SSL termination or content-based routing, making them suitable for basic redundancy and performance improvements in cloud or on-premise environments
• Related to: application-load-balancers, reverse-proxy

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Application Load Balancer is a platform while Basic Load Balancers is a tool. We picked Application Load Balancer based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Application Load Balancer wins

Based on overall popularity. Application Load Balancer is more widely used, but Basic Load Balancers excels in its own space.