When an ALB Can Replace Nginx (and When It Can't)

A common pattern in AWS: traffic hits an Application Load Balancer, which forwards to an EC2 instance or container running Nginx, which reverse-proxies to your actual application. The ALB handles the L7 load balancing. Nginx handles... well, what exactly? For a lot of teams, the answer is: routing, SSL termination, and maybe a redirect or two. Things the ALB already does. Nginx is sitting in the middle adding latency, operational overhead, and another thing to patch -- without doing anything the ALB can't handle on its own. That doesn't mean Nginx is never needed. It absolutely is in some cases. But the line between "need Nginx" and "ALB is enough" is worth understanding clearly, because removing a layer from your stack is one of the most impactful simplifications you can make. What ALB gives you natively AWS ALBs have quietly accumulated features over the years that cover most of what teams historically used Nginx for. Here's what you get without running a single reverse proxy: Path-b