AWS Load Balancing Explained: When to Use ALB vs NLB in Cloud Architecture

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Amazon Web Services offers two primary managed load balancers — the Application Load Balancer (ALB) and the Network Load Balancer (NLB) — each designed for distinct traffic handling needs. The ALB operates at OSI Layer 7, enabling content-aware routing based on HTTP headers, URL paths, and hostnames, making it suited for microservices, REST APIs, and web applications. The NLB functions at Layer 4, forwarding raw TCP/UDP packets without payload inspection, delivering sub-millisecond latency and instantaneous burst capacity for high-throughput workloads. A key architectural difference is that NLB provides static Elastic IPs per Availability Zone, while ALB relies on dynamic DNS resolution. Both load balancers support TLS handling and distribute traffic across EC2 instances, EKS pods, Lambda functions, and IP addresses across multiple Availability Zones.

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