| Feature / Service | Azure Load Balancer | Application Gateway | Azure Front Door | Traffic Manager |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OSI Layer | Layer 4 (Transport) | Layer 7 (Application) | Layer 7 (Application) | DNS-based (Layer 7 via DNS) |
| Scope | Regional or Global | Regional | Global | Global |
| Traffic Type | TCP/UDP (non-HTTP/S) | HTTP/HTTPS | HTTP/HTTPS | Any (via DNS redirection) |
| Protocol Awareness | No content inspection | URL path, host header, SSL termination | URL path, host header, SSL termination, caching | DNS-based routing only |
| Health Probes | TCP/HTTP/HTTPS | HTTP/HTTPS | HTTP/HTTPS | DNS endpoint monitoring |
| Session Affinity | Source IP affinity | Cookie-based | Supported | Not supported |
| Web Application Firewall | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| SSL Termination | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Caching / CDN | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Public/Private Support | ✅ Both | ✅ Both | ✅ Public only | ✅ Public only |
| Use Case | Internal or external TCP/UDP balancing | Secure web apps with custom routing | Global web apps with low latency | Geo-routing and DNS-based failover |
| Best For | VM-level traffic, AKS, backend services | Web apps needing WAF, SSL offload | APIs, static content, multi-region apps | Multi-region apps needing DNS balancing |
| Pricing | Basic (free), Standard (paid) | Standard_v2 / WAF_v2 | Standard / Premium | Based on DNS queries and monitoring |
🧩 Azure Load Balancing Services – Feature Comparison
