Vultr Load Balancer vs Caddy
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Vultr Load Balancer and Caddy.
Quick Verdict
3.5/5
Vultr Load Balancer
0 reviews
4.2/5
Caddy
0 reviews
Caddy is rated higher (4.2 vs 3.5). Vultr Load Balancer distributes traffic across Vultr instances in any of their 33 global regions. Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) with configurable health checks and automatic failover. No SSL termination — TLS must be terminated at the backend. Hourly billing at $0.015/hour. Caddy is a modern open source web server and load balancer with automatic HTTPS (Let's Encrypt/ZeroSSL) by default. No SSL configuration needed. Used for reverse proxying and load balancing.
Vultr Load Balancer Managed Layer 4 load balancer across 33 global regions | Caddy Automatic HTTPS load balancer and web server | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 3.5 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | free |
| Starting price | From $10/mo | Free✓ |
| Best for | Teams already on Vultr who want managed failover and health-checked traffic distribution for a single-region cluster and handle TLS on their backends | Developers and SaaS teams who want a reverse proxy or web server that handles TLS certificates automatically with minimal configuration |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | hourly billingmanaged optioneu datacenterus datacenterapac datacenter | free tieropen sourceself hostable |
| Visit Vultr Load Balancer → | Visit Caddy → | |
Vultr Load Balancer
Pros
- + Fully managed with built-in health checks and automatic failover — no balancer VM to patch
- + Simple pricing: from $10/month ($0.015/hour), and bandwidth is charged on attached instances only
- + Available in all 33 Vultr regions, with optional global routing to the nearest healthy server
- + Full API/CLI support, so it fits Terraform and Ansible workflows
- + Works with any TCP/UDP application: web, APIs, game servers, database pools
Cons
- - No SSL termination despite marketing language about certificates — TLS must be handled at the backend
- - Layer 4 only: no path-based routing, header rules, WAF, or rate limiting
- - Balances Vultr instances only, in the same region — no hybrid or multi-provider backends
- - Price varies by data center without a published per-region table
- - DDoS mitigation is not part of the product; it is handled at Vultr's infrastructure level or as a paid add-on
Caddy
Pros
- + Automatic HTTPS by default — certificate issuance and renewal built in
- + Free, Apache 2.0, single static Go binary with no runtime dependencies
- + Reverse proxy with load balancing, health checks, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3
- + On-Demand TLS for SaaS platforms issuing certs on customer domains
- + Live JSON config API plus Caddyfile; fleet-wide cert coordination via shared storage
Cons
- - Raw throughput behind Nginx at extreme concurrency
- - Smaller module ecosystem; plugins require compiling a custom binary
- - Businesses are expected to buy sponsorships ($2,999/mo+) for support
- - No SLA or contractual support from a large vendor
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