Side by side

AWS Elastic Load Balancing vs PureLB

Both stand on load balancing software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

AWS Elastic Load Balancing

Free plan APILinuxMac+3

ELB combines several traffic-routing options with health checks, scaling, and monitoring. Costs depend on usage and region, and Application Load Balancers use a different API set from Classic Load Balancers.

Visit AWS Elastic Load Balancing

PureLB

Free plan LinuxMacSelf-hosted

PureLB provides address allocation and announcement for bare-metal Kubernetes, with local and BGP-based options. Note the Linux and CNI requirements, and treat Netbox support as limited.

Visit PureLB

The facts

	AWS Elastic Load Balancing	PureLB
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	No	Not published
Runs on	API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows	Linux, Mac, Self-hosted
Lowest paid plan	Free or on request	Not published
Plans published	5	None
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	aws.amazon.com	purelb.io
On load balancing software	#2 of 32	#6 of 32

AWS Elastic Load Balancing: what it does well

Offers four load balancer types.
Adjusts capacity as application traffic changes.
Runs configurable health checks on targets.
Includes CloudWatch metrics and logging for all four types.
Can route across AWS and on-premises resources.

What to know first

Usage-based charges vary by region.
Data transfer and public IPv4 charges may apply.
Application Load Balancers require a different API set from Classic Load Balancers.

PureLB: what it does well

Free under the Apache License, Version 2.0
Supports IPv4 and IPv6 pools
Optional BGP announcements
Can be installed with Helm or kubectl manifests
Exposes Prometheus metrics

What to know first

Requires a Kubernetes cluster with an operational CNI
Requires Linux nodes
Netbox integration is unsupported
Netbox integration may fail with recent versions

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