Nginx is a web server that happens to have reverse proxy functionality (similar to Apache).
HAProxy is a load balancer with philosophy of "do one thing and do it well".
Perhaps things changed with nginx, but when I tried it for load balancing it was very basic, it didn't even have status page or health checks unless you purchased the commercial version. It only had round robin load balancing method etc.
If your goal is load balancing haproxy is far superior, if your goal is to have a web server that hosts some static files and then redirect dynamic requests to another app then nginx might be better.
HAProxy is a load balancer with philosophy of "do one thing and do it well".
Perhaps things changed with nginx, but when I tried it for load balancing it was very basic, it didn't even have status page or health checks unless you purchased the commercial version. It only had round robin load balancing method etc.
If your goal is load balancing haproxy is far superior, if your goal is to have a web server that hosts some static files and then redirect dynamic requests to another app then nginx might be better.