| Sr.No | Base of difference | Azure Load Balancer | Azure Application Gateway | Azure Traffic Manager |
| 1 | Basic Definition | Load balancing refers to evenly distributing load (incoming network traffic) across a group of backend resources or servers. | Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. | Azure Traffic Manager operates at the DNS layer to quickly and efficiently direct incoming DNS requests based on the routing method of your choice. |
| 2 | Layer or Technology | Layer 4 load balancing uses information defined at the networking transport layer (Transport Level(at Layer 4)). | Azure Application Gateway works at the application layer (Layer 7 in the OSI network reference stack). | Used with Azure LB or App Gateway (DNS Level) |
| 3 | SSL offloading | This will not support SSL offloading. | This will support SSL offloading. | This is not appliable in Azure Traffic Manager. |
| 4 | Endpoint Monitoring | Supported via probes (Probes are configured in a two-step process through the portal). | Supported via probes (Probes are configured in a two-step process through the portal). | This will supported via HTTP or HTTPS Get |
| 5 | Web Application Firewall(WAF) | This will not have support for web application firewall. | This will have a support for web application firewall but not for small backend instances. | This will not applicable in Traffic Manager |
| 6 | Load Balancing Mode | When we say about mode this have 5 Tuple like Source IP, soucre port,destinition IP, destination port, protocol type. | This will have Round Robin Routing based on URL and Cookie-based affinity. | This will have Traffic Manager routing methods (Performamcne, Geographic and Priority weighted). |
| 7 | Application Protocols Supported | This will support all protocols ( TCP/UDP-based protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, and SMTP, and protocols used for real-time voice and video messaging applications) and (Layer 4 ports). | This will support HTTP, HTTPS and Websockets. | This will support any Protocol but we have one thing that is HTTP endpoint is required for endpoint monitoring. |
| 8 | Deployment Scenario | L4 Application load balancing within a region (Internal & Internet facing) | L7 Application load balancing within a region (Internal & Internet facing) | Global Load Balancing across multiple regions. |
| 9 | Endpoints | Azure VM and Azure Cloud Services instances | Any Azure internal IP address,public internet IP address, Azure VM, or Azure Cloud Service | Azure VMs, Cloud Services, Azure Web Apps, and external endpoints |
| 10 | VNET Support | Internet facing and Internal (VNET) facing applications | Internet facing and Internal (VNET) facing applications | Internet facing applications |
| 11 | Scope | Subscription/Region/VNET | Subscription/Region/VNET | Load Balancing Across Regions. Endpoints can span across multiple subscription (except for Azure Web Apps) |
| 12 | Auto Scaling | This will not support auto scaling but in new VMs we can add manually without impact. | This will not support auto scaling but in new VMs we can add manually without impact. | This will not applicable. |
| 13 | Throughput | Here in Load Balancer throughput depends on the backend VM throughput. | Throughput depends on the instance size and backend page size. More details can be found here. | Not officially published by Azure |
| 14 | Pricing | Here basic Load Balancer is free and Standard load balancer will be charged once it is GA. | Whenw e say about pricing it is based on size (Small, Medium and Large) + Charged based on Data Processed + Additional cost for WAF + Outbound Data Transfer Cost (more info here) | Charge per million DNS queries + Charge based on endpoint health check + Charge based on features enabled (more info here) |
| 15 | Redundancy | Automatic Zone Redundancy supported for Standard Load Balancers
| Supported when more than 1 instances are deployed | Resilient to failure |