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Cisco Umbrella vs Quad9 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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 Umbrella
Ranking in Internet Security
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (1st)
Quad9
Ranking in Internet Security
10th
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Managed DNS (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Internet Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 30.4%, down from 37.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quad9 is 5.3%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Internet Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Umbrella30.4%
Quad95.3%
Other64.30000000000001%
Internet Security
 

Featured Reviews

Emilio Montoya - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at PROA
Ensures internet navigation safety and boosts productivity
The features of Cisco Umbrella I prefer most are DNS protection and traffic redirect. With Cisco Talos's threat intelligence, we reduce the impact of malware traffic in our network, and we currently see the behavior of equipment and choose the correct sites. Cisco Talos has helped us reduce the impact of malware traffic. We can see the behavior and choose the correct sites. We're currently testing secure access with Umbrella in order to secure access to core applications. It's a product that the user doesn't even know is there, even though it is protecting them. It's not hard on the equipment. And, for us, it centralizes everything, which improves productivity. With the Experience Insights feature of Cisco Secure Access, we've seen impacts on the management of user connectivity by allowing us to deliver safe connectivity. We are testing the Secure Access product with Cisco Umbrella to improve our connectivity with our users in order to secure access to the corporate applications. Cisco Umbrella is in the cloud, which is nice.
Louis Geoffroy - PeerSpot reviewer
President at IDEBUG
It's easy to use and set up, but I've faced performance problems
I have experience with Quad9 and most other filtering solutions. Quad9 was working well initially, but it started slowing, so I switched to OpenDNS. I recently checked Tom's Hardware, an IT review site, and read a review of seven DNS filters. Open DNS was ranked the fastest, and Quad9 was second. Google was on there too, but they said it didn't filter enough.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found the malware protection feature valuable. It is helpful and deliverable and is able to protect my entire organization from getting compromised. It also prevents us from visiting any malicious sites which are not visible to the users."
"Umbrella, being one pane for managing, being all-encompassing, allows us to quickly go in, make a change, and it applies to either every location, if we want it to, or we can have policies in place that only apply to certain users or certain computers."
"The core business of Cisco Umbrella is non-malware. That's all it does: block the malware on the gateway."
"Web proxy adds an effective layer for security."
"Its simplicity is most valuable. I can install it and get it up and running, and it can be pervasive across my business within a business day. It is pretty simple and straightforward to install and configure. Its remit is reasonably clearly defined. When you look at solutions like Darktrace and Carbon Black, the mission objective isn't as clearly defined. Cisco Umbrella, Sophos Central, or some of the other solutions have a more standardized approach to antivirus, which includes enhanced response from the machine learning or deep learning perspective."
"Helps block personal email accounts."
"We've found it to be stable and good for our customers."
"Cisco Umbrella scales incredibly with the growing needs of my organization."
"Setting up Quad9 is straightforward if you know what you're doing, and it's easy to use overall."
"The most valuable feature of Quad9 is that it is a free solution."
 

Cons

"Cisco Umbrella is difficult to manage and needs to include a dashboard. It needs to improve pricing as well."
"Hopefully, it works with the Canvas and starts feeding results into the AI canvas. That would be excellent."
"Its price could be better."
"The product can be pretty expensive."
"Its reliability and the response time of the support team can be better."
"We've noticed some issues with the SWG where, when I'm connected, it thinks I'm in Miami, Florida instead of Savannah, Georgia."
"I'm hoping for the conversion of Cisco ZTNA's features from Duo to Umbrella."
"I am unsure if Cisco Umbrella offers a Windows option for running the server."
"Quad9 could improve by having more free features, such as custom DNS filtering."
"It used to work fine for all the devices, but it started to slow and become non-responsive. I would have to reload the page two or three times before all the pages loaded. With OpenDNS, I only need to load the page once."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In the region I'm from, that of EMAR, Europe, the Middle East, Eastern Asia and Africa, our organizations do not have many liquid cash assets, so the price could be better."
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"There are no hidden costs with Umbrella. Everything is included in the package."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"We have a security Enterprise Agreement with Cisco, so the pricing is good."
"Cisco Umbrella is not a cheap product. However, it's not a matter of the cost; it's more a matter of the value of security. It is easy to measure this value when you have a security incident. I think the price is a good trade-off for a product that can help you avoid security threats."
"Cisco Umbrella is expensive and could be cheaper."
"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."
"The price of Quad9 is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
24%
Computer Software Company
9%
Hospitality Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business49
Midsize Enterprise30
Large Enterprise51
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
 

Also Known As

OpenDNS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
CISCO, Netlab, proofpoint
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Umbrella vs. Quad9 and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,565 professionals have used our research since 2012.