Operating Systems · pricing
OpenWrt pricing
OpenWrt publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the operating systems tools listed alongside it.
As of 31 August 2026, OpenWrt pricing is free. Figures are the vendor's list prices as recorded on this page's last check; the vendor's site is the final word.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open source, no licence fee
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
OpenWrt plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenWrt | Free | 4 | Entry tier |
Where OpenWrt stops being free
OpenWrt, Free
- No licence fee for any device count
- All packages from the official feeds
- Community support via forum and wiki
- Hardware sold separately by third parties, including the project's own OpenWrt One
No paid tier on record
OpenWrt lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full OpenWrt feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- Package manager
- LuCI web interface
- Traffic shaping
- VPN and DNS
- VLAN and multi-network
- OpenWrt One
People bring OpenWrt in for extending the useful life of an isp-supplied router that has stopped receiving security updates, separating guest, iot and work devices onto vlans on hardware that does not offer it natively, running wireguard, ad blocking or dns over tls at the edge rather than configuring every client, building small industrial or retail gateways where a full linux distribution is too heavy. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to OpenWrt are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Operating Systems
Too few operating systems tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenWrt (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | |
| Alpine Linux | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs OpenWrt |
| Rocky Linux | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs OpenWrt |
| AlmaLinux | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs OpenWrt |
| NixOS | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs OpenWrt |
| openSUSE | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs OpenWrt |
| Qubes OS | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs OpenWrt |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the OpenWrt badges page.
Before you pay for OpenWrt
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
OpenWrt runs on routers, access points, x86-64, arm, mips, embedded gateways, and is published by OpenWrt Project, a member project of Software Freedom Conservancy of New York, United States. The full record is on the OpenWrt review, and the rest of the category is under best operating systems tools.
OpenWrt pricing questions
- How much does OpenWrt cost?
- OpenWrt publishes a single tier, OpenWrt, at Free.
- Does OpenWrt have a free plan?
- Yes. The OpenWrt tier costs nothing and covers no licence fee for any device count, all packages from the official feeds, community support via forum and wiki.
- Which operating systems tools can I use without paying?
- 7 of the 8 operating systems tools listed alongside OpenWrt have a free tier: Alpine Linux, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, NixOS, openSUSE.
- What am I actually paying for with OpenWrt?
- The record lists 6 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for extending the useful life of an isp-supplied router that has stopped receiving security updates, separating guest, iot and work devices onto vlans on hardware that does not offer it natively, running wireguard, ad blocking or dns over tls at the edge rather than configuring every client.
- Does OpenWrt charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these OpenWrt prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare OpenWrt against before paying?
- The closest operating systems tools in this directory are Alpine Linux, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, NixOS. Each has a side-by-side comparison with OpenWrt covering price, platforms and features.