If you were at KubeCon North America this past week, you felt the buzz from this announcement: the community Ingress NGINX project is being retired. Best-effort maintenance will stop in March 2026, after which there will be no new releases, bugfixes, or security updates.
This news has understandably caused a wave of anxiety. Ingress NGINX is one of the most popular controllers, and with the community now racing to find stable, supported, and future-proof alternatives, we've been inundated with questions.
Our message is simple: We are here to help.
Here at HAProxy, we have a clear path to help Ingress NGINX users migrate to a more powerful, reliable, and fully-supported solution. Whether you need an immediate fix or a long-term strategic upgrade, we have you covered.
Immediate choice: HAProxy Ingress Controller
For teams facing a tight migration deadline, the HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller is the easiest, most immediate, and most direct replacement. You get a stable, production-ready solution right now for the smoothest transition possible.
This is the most direct path if you need to migrate on a timeline and are looking for an immediate, production-ready replacement.
While no migration is zero-effort, the HAProxy Ingress Controller offers a manageable, well-documented path with direct equivalents for the most commonly used Ingress NGINX annotations.
The HAProxy Ingress Controller was developed as a major alternative to the NGINX Ingress Controller. Over time, its annotation system has been built out to provide equivalent functionality for the most critical, high-usage features that most users rely on:
nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/rewrite-target->haproxy.org/rewrite-targetnginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/ssl-redirect->haproxy.org/ssl-redirectnginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/force-ssl-redirect->haproxy.org/ssl-redirectnginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/cors-->haproxy.org/cors-nginx.ingress.kubernetes.io/proxy-body-size->haproxy.org/proxy-body-size...and so on for things like rate limiting, timeouts, and backend protocols.
It's not a 100% drop-in replacement because it intentionally handles complex/unsafe things (like snippets) differently. Most of the time, you can find/replace the annotation prefixes.
We are committed to being transparent about where configurations differ and will provide clear, documented alternatives for NGINX-specific features.
Why HAProxy Ingress Controller is an upgrade, not just a replacement
The HAProxy Ingress Controller is built on the same HAProxy core that has been battle-tested for 20+ years, powering many of the world's largest websites. It's not just a replacement; it's a significant upgrade.
Superior Performance: In our public, reproducible benchmarks, the HAProxy Ingress Controller consistently handles more than double the request throughput of Ingress NGINX while consuming significantly less CPU.
Advanced Load Balancing: This is our core strength. You get immediate access to more sophisticated algorithms like "least connections" and "source IP hash," giving you far more precise control over your traffic distribution.
Better Observability: Get a richer set of native Prometheus metrics out-of-the-box, without needing extra sidecars or exporters.
Zero-Downtime Reloads: HAProxy is famous for its ability to apply configuration changes with zero dropped connections—a critical operational win.
Robust Protocol Support: It offers first-class, reliable support for Layer 4 load balancing (e.g., for database connections, gRPC, or real-time streaming) in addition to its powerful Layer 7 (HTTP/S) capabilities.
This is all available as a free, open-source project with everything you need to make the switch.
Enterprise power when you need it
For teams that need more, HAProxy One provides a complete application delivery and security platform. Its core data plane component, HAProxy Enterprise, is an enterprise load balancer built on the battle-tested open-source HAProxy foundation. With 24/7 support and enterprise-grade features like an integrated WAF, bot management, and SSO, this is the optimal solution for larger organizations that need a Kubernetes Ingress Controller at scale.
Future Proof: The HAProxy Unified Gateway
The Kubernetes community’s official long-term recommendation is to move toward the new Gateway API. We are all-in on this transition.
This week, we announced the beta of the HAProxy Unified Gateway. This is our next-generation controller, built from the ground up to provide a single, unified way to manage both Kubernetes Ingress and Gateway API resources.
This is the best part: making the change to the HAProxy Ingress Controller now sets you up for future success.
The HAProxy Unified Gateway is built on the same foundation as HAProxy Ingress Controller. When you're ready to adopt Gateway API, you won't need to replace your controller. You'll simply enable Gateway API support in your existing deployment and can migrate your Ingress resources to Gateway API resources at your own pace. This migration path will be more clearly defined in 2026.
By migrating to HAProxy Ingress Controller today, you solve your immediate Ingress NGINX problem with a superior controller and place your team on a seamless, proven path to the future of Kubernetes networking.
Common Migration Questions
Will I need to rewrite all my Ingress resources?
Mostly no. For the vast majority of resources, you will only need to update the
ingressClassName. Our migration guides will clearly document the mapping for any annotations that differ.
What about nginx.conf snippets or custom ConfigMaps?
This is a key security improvement. The Ingress NGINX retirement announcement specifically cited snippets as "insurmountable technical debt." We provide a safer, structured way to apply custom logic without allowing arbitrary configuration injection.
Our migration guides will show you how to convert common snippet-based patterns to this more secure model. Most of the time, you won't need a snippet at all, because the feature you want already has a dedicated annotation.
Is the open-source HAProxy Ingress Controller really free?
Yes! The HAProxy Ingress Controller is, and will always remain, a free and open-source project.
Start Your Migration Today
The Ingress NGINX retirement isn't happening overnight, but waiting until March 2026 means competing for support when everyone else is migrating. Start your evaluation now, and you'll have time to migrate carefully rather than urgently.
Get the Quick Start Guide: Get HAProxy Ingress Controller running in a test namespace in 15 minutes.
HAProxy Kubernetes Ingress Controller Documentation
Join our Slack: Connect with our dedicated migration support team and the wider community.
HAProxy Slack Community #ingress channel
Talk to an Expert: If you're running a complex environment, our enterprise team can provide a free consultation to map out your migration.
Find out more and get a trial
