OPNsensevs
FreeBSD
FreeBSD: Pick plain FreeBSD with pf when you want to build and script the firewall yourself and consider a web interface an unnecessary attack surface.
OPNsense
FreeBSD-based firewall and routing platform with weekly updates and a full configuration API
As of 30 August 2026, OPNsense is free to use. An open source firewall distribution forked from pfSense in 2015 and developed by a Dutch hardware company, with a fixed weekly update cadence and every setting reachable through an API. Softwr lists it under Networking. OPNsense is made by Deciso B.V., available on x86-64 appliances, Virtual machines, Deciso hardware.
Overview
What OPNsense does
OPNsense is an operating system for network edge devices built on FreeBSD, using the pf packet filter with a web interface and plugin system on top. It covers stateful firewalling and NAT, IPsec, WireGuard and OpenVPN, Suricata intrusion detection and prevention, Unbound DNS with filtering, captive portal, traffic shaping, multi-WAN failover and high availability pairs with state synchronisation. Configuration is stored as a single XML document and the entire settings tree is exposed through a REST API, which makes the firewall configurable from Ansible or Terraform rather than by clicking. The fork itself is the distinguishing fact. Deciso, a Netherlands firewall appliance manufacturer, forked pfSense in 2015 over code quality and release process concerns. The dispute that followed included a domain registered by the incumbent vendor hosting material attacking the fork, which a WIPO panel ruled against in 2017. The practical inheritance is a project that publishes on a predictable weekly schedule under an MIT licence with no feature held back for a paid edition, funded by hardware sales and a business subscription that adds a stabilised update track and commercial support. Buyers are small and mid-sized organisations replacing a subscription firewall appliance, managed service providers standardising branch edges, and homelab operators. The trade-off is throughput. Software firewalling on commodity x86 handles a gigabit comfortably but deep packet inspection at ten gigabits needs hardware selected carefully, and there is no vendor sizing guide that will be wrong on your behalf if you get it wrong.
What people use it for
- Replacing a small business firewall appliance whose renewal quote exceeded the cost of the hardware
- Branch offices where the firewall configuration must be produced by Ansible rather than by hand
- Sites that need WireGuard and intrusion prevention on the same box without separate feature licences
- A homelab or lab network needing VLAN routing, multi-WAN and DNS filtering on one machine
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about OPNsense.
- Throughput depends entirely on hardware you selected yourself, and intrusion prevention at multi-gigabit rates will saturate a machine that handled plain firewalling fine, with no vendor sizing commitment to fall back on.
- The weekly update cadence is good for security but means more change events than a team used to annual appliance firmware, and occasional regressions reach production installations.
- FreeBSD underneath limits driver support compared with Linux, so recent network cards and some virtualisation drivers can be unsupported or slow.
- The plugin ecosystem is uneven in quality; some plugins are maintained by a single contributor and can lag a major release, breaking a function you depended on.
- Community support is a forum, so an outage at two in the morning on the free edition is your problem alone unless you bought the business subscription in advance.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of OPNsense
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- OPNsensevsZabbix
Zabbix: Pick Zabbix alongside rather than instead; OPNsense reports on itself but is not a monitoring system for the wider network.
Pricing
What OPNsense costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
OPNsense Community Edition
Free
- MIT licence with no feature restrictions
- All VPN, IDS and HA features included
- Weekly updates and two major releases a year
- Community forum support
OPNsense Business Edition
On request
- Stabilised update track lagging community releases
- Commercial support from Deciso
- Additional enterprise plugins and configuration backup
- Sold as an annual subscription per installation
Capabilities
Features
Stateful firewall on pf
Rule-based filtering and NAT with aliases, schedules and floating rules
VPN suite
IPsec, WireGuard and OpenVPN with site to site and road warrior configurations
Suricata IDS and IPS
Inline intrusion prevention with rule sets from ET Open and commercial feeds
Full configuration API
Every setting exposed over REST for Ansible, Terraform and scripted provisioning
High availability
CARP failover pairs with configuration and state synchronisation
Weekly update cadence
Security and bug fix releases published on a fixed schedule rather than when convenient
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
How is it different from pfSense?
It is a 2015 fork with an MIT licence, a fixed weekly release cadence, a complete configuration API and a different interface. Feature coverage is comparable; the release process and API are the real differences.
Do I need the Business Edition?
Only if you want commercial support or a slower, stabilised update stream. No features are withheld from the community edition.
Can it handle a gigabit internet connection?
Plain firewalling on modest current hardware, comfortably. With Suricata inspection enabled, expect to need a considerably stronger CPU.
Keep looking
Where to go from OPNsense
- OPNsense alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- OPNsense pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- OPNsense badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Networking softwareThe full category
- Best Networking softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Networking software for
Compare OPNsense with
- Zabbix
- MikroTik RouterOS
- pfSense
- OpenVPN
- ZeroTier
- Cisco Meraki
- Nebula
- Auvik
- Catchpoint
- Icinga
- Headscale
- ThousandEyes
- Traefik
- Juniper Mist
- Eclipse Mosquitto
- ngrok
- ZeroTier
- Nebula
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Pricing on request12 researched notesSmall, EPL-licensed MQTT broker that runs on hardware other brokers cannot
Open source12 researched notesReverse tunnel service that gives a local or private service a public URL without opening a firewall
Free plan12 researched notesSoftware-defined mesh networking, free up to 10 devices and one network, then billed per device
Free plan12 researched notesCertificate based overlay network from Slack, with identity and firewall rules carried in the certificate
Open source12 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for OPNsense, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on OPNsense
OPNsense alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
OPNsense pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare OPNsense
Put it head to head with anything we hold
OPNsense badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
Best Networking software alternatives
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Open source, no licence fee; commercial support sold by a third-party partnerInternet and digital experience monitoring, with a genuinely published entry price through its WebPageTest product line
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Network observability platform built on flow and traffic data, sold on annual-only contracts starting around $24,000/year
Annual contract only, per tierCloud-managed networking hardware where the licence is mandatory and the hardware stops passing traffic if it lapses
quote, hardware plus mandatory recurring licenceCloud-based network monitoring and management priced by managed device count, quote-only
quote, per managed device