Cisco Cloud Services Router vs MikroTik Routers and Switches comparison

Cisco and MikroTik are both solutions in the Routers category. Cisco is ranked #9, while MikroTik is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.6. Cisco holds a 3.5% mindshare in R, compared to MikroTik’s 23.4% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of MikroTik users who would recommend it.

Cisco Cloud Services Router

Read 17 Cisco Cloud Services Router reviews

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442 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

MikroTik Routers and Switches

Read 68 MikroTik Routers and Switches reviews

8,369 Views
2,845 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Cisco Cloud Services Router

MikroTik Routers and Switches

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

MikroTik Routers and Switches and Cisco Cloud Services Router are strong competitors in the networking and cloud integration category. MikroTik holds an advantage in cost-effectiveness and feature accessibility without extra licenses, while Cisco excels in cloud integration and support quality.

Features: MikroTik offers robust features such as traffic bonding, flexible IP routing, and versatile routing protocols without needing additional licenses. Its affordability provides substantial functionality at a lower cost. Reliability and stability add to its appeal in bandwidth management. On the other hand, Cisco Cloud Services Router integrates seamlessly with cloud solutions like AWS and Oracle, providing high availability and excellent customer support.

Room for Improvement: MikroTik could enhance user accessibility and integration with other solutions. Improvements in wireless capabilities, user interface intuitiveness, and the inclusion of advanced features like enhanced VPN support and automated updates are suggested. Cisco Cloud Services Router could reduce complexity, provide better cloud integration, and offer more intuitive GUIs, alongside easing its pricing model.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: MikroTik is preferred for on-premises deployments due to its easy installation and configuration. However, its technical support is a weak point, often relying on community forums. Cisco Cloud Services Router offers flexibility for on-premises and cloud deployments, supported by strong and highly rated support services.

Pricing and ROI: MikroTik's major selling point is affordability, offering a lifetime license and significant cost savings, achieving a favorable pricing-to-performance ratio. Cisco Cloud Services Router incurs higher costs, especially through platforms like AWS Marketplace, but provides support and features that many users find valuable, although the high yearly costs and pricing model face criticism.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Cloud Services Router vs. MikroTik Routers and Switches Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Cloud Services Router vs. MikroTik Routers and Switches

September 2025

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Helped 871,408 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Cloud Services Router

Ranking in Routers

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

MikroTik Routers and Switches

Ranking in Routers

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Ethernet Switches (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Routers category, the mindshare of Cisco Cloud Services Router is 3.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MikroTik Routers and Switches is 23.4%, down from 28.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Routers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
MikroTik Routers and Switches	23.4%
Cisco Cloud Services Router	3.5%
Other	73.1%

Routers

Featured Reviews

VENKATESHREDDY

Associate IT Director at Diligent Global

Manageable, provides excellent support, and easily integrates with other products

One central area for improvement in Cisco is its product line offering. Cisco has ISE and other products, such as DNS Center and other components. Instead of small to medium-sized customers purchasing devices and maintaining the devices, it would be great if customers could have subscriptions. A CAPEX/OPEX model instead of that Cisco code, where the pricing model is subscription-based, would give much better flexibility for the customers. The pricing and model for Cisco Cloud Services Router and other Cisco products could be improved. One good example of what I want to be added to the Cisco Cloud Services Router in its next version is for it to be more of a plug-and-play product. For example, Juniper has developed QR codes, so if you need to plug in a device, you scan from your phone and connect to the internet. That's it. You can provision the device remotely through the cloud orchestrator, so I want to see a similar function or feature in Cisco Cloud Services Router.

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AnikIslam

Senior Executive at Lakdhanavi Limited

Cost-effective protocol support and a straightforward setup with room for login enhancements

In the network operations center, I manage our client's bandwidth. We connect with our clients through BGP and OSPF based on client demands. We also manage routing protocols, policies, internal firewalls, and other details like QE bandwidth, client manage bandwidth management, PoE, PPPoE, and DNS…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It allowed us to create a more secure VPN than we would have been able to do without it."

"It provides peace of mind because it is a stable product that you aren't going to lose sleep over at night wondering if it will be running or not."

"The most valuable feature of the Cisco Cloud Services Router is it can make your migrations smooth. For example, if you want to migrate to the cloud, but you don't want to change the IP. You can extend your VLAN from on-premise to the cloud without having to change the IP."

"The most valuable features of the Cisco Cloud Services Router are the integration with Amazon and Oracle cloud."

"What's best about Cisco Cloud Services Router is the support. It's excellent, and so far, no significant challenges. Another valuable feature of the product is easy integration with other products."

"Overall, it is a solid product and a good router."

"It is definitely scalable. It can handle a lot more traffic and group work compared to any other products that I've evaluated. It could easily scale a lot more than what I'm doing right now."

"AWS has a reference architecture to enable the Cisco routers in high availability and Transit VPC. This is a very powerful router and can enable us to use Transit VPC in AWS, and this is a very powerful feature that we use."

More Cisco Cloud Services Router pros

"The most valuable feature is controlling the bandwidth."

"One of the primary advantages is its competitive pricing in the market."

"The product is simple to use."

"We use the product for VPN."

"The product is very reliable."

"They use wireless and wired connections that include all of the features."

"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."

"The flexible IP firewall and IP network address translation make it very easy to give access to internal services."

More MikroTik Routers and Switches pros

Cons

"If you lose connectivity to the cloud, it is difficult to establish connectivity between hub and spoke."

"Cisco Cloud Services Router could improve the GUI."

"Technical support could be better. I am missing a single pane of glass, where I can see all the connections, etc."

"The configuration is difficult."

"You can use this router in a scalable solution but it has its limitations."

"Cisco Cloud Services Router could improve by having more features. It is lacking features, such as virtualization and containerization. Additionally, there should be increased security and connectivity between routers."

"I would like to see better security, where there are more access controls and data confidentiality."

"It is too complex. It is not easy to set up, even with the documentation that they provided. It is a little confusing."

More Cisco Cloud Services Router cons

"The ports could be improved, as certain areas may need to be terminated with a greater number of Ethernet ports. We initially faced challenges that hindered our network usage, especially with third-party applications that were not certified or supported. It took some time to streamline and resolve these issues."

"The CPU load is too high. This causes the Internet to lag."

"As far as improvements, there are basically only two things I would suggest. First, I think they should provide extensive training for the new releases of products, especially in the LTE space. Second, they could spend more time ensuring that their OS releases are more stable, rather than waiting for things to fall apart on the customer's premises before they make the necessary changes."

"The solution needs to offer better documentation."

"There are limitations to how many users you have simultaneously."

"This product could offer better integration with VPNs."

"I would like to see a cluster feature added, where multiple devices can be configured and managed as one. One is in a standby state while the other is active, and if one fails then the other takes over."

"Improvements could be made in terms of SD-WAN capabilities and zero-touch provisioning."

More MikroTik Routers and Switches cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost is a big factor. We would like to see the price reduced."

"Cisco Cloud Services Router is an expensive product. My company pays for the product yearly, and the price reaches roughly $800,000. Though Cisco Cloud Services Router is expensive and its competitors offer better pricing, when it comes to support, it's unbeatable."

"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was easy; click a button and you have it."

"Purchasing it through the AWS Marketplace was very simple. We went through the AWS Marketplace because it was the easiest way to get the product up and running very quickly."

"The pricing is fine, though it might have been cheaper going through a partner or doing a direct buy."

"This solution is kind of expensive."

"You do need to pay a licensing fee to use the solution. You can do a yearly or three-year subscription. The product itself is quite expensive. It would be ideal if they offered the product at a cheaper price."

"The product is too expensive on the AWS Marketplace."

More Cisco Cloud Services Router pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is very reasonable and is one of the main selling points for MikroTik devices."

"A license is not required."

"There is a lifetime subscription already embedded when you buy the product."

"MikroTik is very cost-effective and quite good for the price. It performs very well. For one of our customers, the existing setup comprises Cisco Catalyst switches, and it is about 10 to 15 years old. We're looking into upgrading in a cost-effective way to get the performance and yet still be at par with the quality and expectations that customers have from Cisco. Price-wise, Cisco is really expensive, and customers are expecting something different than Cisco so that they can save on IT costs. They don't have the same budget that they had before when they installed Cisco products. That's why they're looking for a solution that can provide performance and features without too much money or investment. We're looking at some alternative brands, such as NETGEAR and MikroTik, to support our proposal."

"The tool has a low price."

"The tool is cheap."

"The pricing of the solution is significantly lower than other solutions. There are no additional costs involved."

"There is no licensing fee in addition to the hardware, but we do pay an annual fee for support."

More MikroTik Routers and Switches pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Comms Service Provider

18%

Computer Software Company

13%

Hospitality Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	43
Midsize Enterprise	16
Large Enterprise	9

Questions from the Community

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How do Cisco Enterprise routers compare with Mikrotik routers and switches?

Cisco Enterprise Routers are very stable and easy to use. They offer a very solid performance and are very secure. They also have a very good, long lifespan. We feel the command configuration is ve...

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Which are better - Ubiquiti UniFi switches or MikroTik routers and switches?

Ubiquiti Unifi is a great solution. For starters, it is easy to configure and implement, and doesn’t require a learning curve because it is easy to use. It is also simple to reconfigure an AP or ga...

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What do you like most about MikroTik Routers and Switches?

The price is a big factor. They are very affordable, and the quality is high.

See all answers

Comparisons

MikroTik Cloud Router Switch vs Cisco Cloud Services Router

Compared 28% of the time

HPE Enterprise Routers vs Cisco Cloud Services Router

Compared 26% of the time

ADTRAN NetVanta Routers and Switches vs Cisco Cloud Services Router

Compared 12% of the time

More Cisco Cloud Services Router Competitors

TP-Link Omada Switches vs MikroTik Routers and Switches

Compared 37% of the time

Cisco Enterprise Routers vs MikroTik Routers and Switches

Compared 9% of the time

NETGEAR Switches vs MikroTik Routers and Switches

Compared 6% of the time

Aruba Switches vs MikroTik Routers and Switches

Compared 6% of the time

Huawei Enterprise Routers vs MikroTik Routers and Switches

Compared 5% of the time

More MikroTik Routers and Switches Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Cloud Services Router

October 2025

Download Cisco Cloud Services Router product report

Buyer's Guide

MikroTik Routers and Switches

October 2025

Download MikroTik Routers and Switches product report

Also Known As

Cisco CSR, Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000v, Cisco CSR 1000v

No data available

Overview

The Cisco Cloud Services Router is a reliable and scalable solution for extending network layers from the head office to the cloud, maintaining connections from branch offices through the cloud environment. Its most valuable features are its integration with Amazon and Oracle Cloud, its ability to smooth migrations without changing IP, and excellent technical support.

The product is stable, easy to integrate with other products, and offers a fantastic routing service for NPLS called Layer 3-IP. It has helped organizations by providing higher resilience solutions, centralized troubleshooting, and easy management of services on the infrastructure side.

Cisco

MikroTik Routers and Switches provide all the features necessary for network administrators to secure and monitor their networks and are suitable for companies of any size. The solution is ideal for creating Wi-Fi hotspots, connecting multiple servers, setting up firewalls and VPNs, and distributing bandwidth. MikroTik's user-friendly dashboard helps you interact easily with your hardware. With MikroTik's user interface, you can obtain real statistics by user or IP address and monitor bandwidth consumption.

Benefits and Key Features of MikroTik Routers and Switches

Affordability: MikroTik routers and switches are very reasonably priced and offer features comparable to those of other higher priced solutions.
Highly customizable: Flexible scripting policies and configuration options enable users to enhance the functionality of MikroTik's various products. MikroTik routers also offer hotspot profiles, which allows admins to create different customizable guest user authentication profiles.
Consistency: All MikroTik routers have the same operating system and features, making it simple to migrate between different products.
Routing protocols: MikroTik provides several dynamic routing protocols that can be deployed to build robust and secure networks.
Built-in firewall: MikroTik offers a very powerful firewall implementation with multiple features, including state inspection, layer-7 protocol detection, and peer-to-peer protocols filtering.
Stability and robust performance: MikroTik routers and switches are long-lasting, resilient, and perform well.

Reviews from Real Users

MikroTik stands out among competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its reasonably priced products and its user-friendly user interface, which makes it easy to work and communicate with its hardware.

Parameshwar P., a director at Navyug Networks, writes, "I like MikroTik's GUI. It's completely handy and easy to handle because of its GUI. Despite other brands like Cisco urging me to switch, I didn't because they don't have a GUI. This is the most comfortable thing in my project that anyone can use easily. It’s effortless to maintain MikroTik routers because both screens make it very easy in GUI mode. You can easily interact with your hardware.”

Rodney T., the chief solutions architect at Tech2go Strategic IT Solutions, says, "They are very good at providing the bandwidth for multi-tenants and multi-dwelling units. We're managing Wi-Fi hotspots for hundreds of locations, and the speed and performance are quite there. They also have very cheap 10G products that come with really good and flexible software. They are way cheaper than the top brands, and they're able to deliver the same performance and capabilities."

A principal consultant at a tech services company notes, "The most valuable aspect of this solution is the combination of value for money. They're extremely cost effective, yet they provide you with an extensive feature set of things you can do across the board. Also, they're pretty reliable, as far as equipment goes."

MikroTik

Sample Customers

Under Armour, HealthSparq, Adobe

ABB, Boingo Wireless, JPL, HP, Allied Telesis, iPass, Mips Technologies, MicroAge, Matsushita, Telia, undp, WFP, NASA

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Cloud Services Router vs. MikroTik Routers and Switches

September 2025

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