Cloud & Infrastructure Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Jun 16, 2026 4 min read

Load Balancer Class Decision: ALB vs NLB vs GLB

Three classes of cloud load balancer. The decision rule by use case with concrete numbers.

ALB / Application LB

Layer 7. HTTP/HTTPS routing, host-based, path-based.

Best for web applications. Higher cost, more features.

Layer 4. TCP/UDP. Connection-level, higher throughput, lower latency.

Best for high-performance non-HTTP workloads.

Multi-region routing. Geo-aware DNS or anycast.

Best for global applications. Most expensive; most complex.