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Cisco Umbrella vs Quad9 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
123
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
Quad9
Ranking in Internet Security
8th
Average Rating
6.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Managed DNS (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Internet Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 27.9%, down from 37.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quad9 is 5.1%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Internet Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella27.9%
Quad95.1%
Other67.0%
Internet Security
 

Featured Reviews

BB
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Ensures comprehensive protection with seamless threat logging and efficient policy management
My favorite feature of Cisco Umbrella is probably just the DNS and the fact that when a security threat happens, all of that gets logged in their Umbrella portal, and it's very easy to find who's been accessing the site and how many people have accessed it, so that we can go to them and make sure they're not compromised. The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by providing less time to search for things through logs, to look for what we need. It's just one place to go, and we just search for it, and we find it really fast. The fact that there's a virtual database that has all that information is great on our portal.
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

"This product is very straightforward and simple to setup."
"Umbrella enables customers to be secure. We are happy with this and this is the most important benefit for customers."
"I was pretty amazed by the wide variety of security features and reports on a single dashboard."
"The feature I appreciate most about Cisco Umbrella is the dashboard and how easy it is to see the reporting, what is blocked and allowed, and it makes it very user-friendly."
"The most valuable thing is how easy it is to deploy. We did it with 9,000 users at my last job, and it took a week to get to all the endpoints. Doing that without having to physically touch all those endpoints was very simple."
"As far as the IT infrastructure team goes, we're all happy with the product; it definitely takes a lot of load off of our plate and it's been functioning very efficiently and effectively, doing everything we need it to do."
"I had worked for Juniper support before and I worked for other tech support teams and I feel that Cisco's type of support is the best."
"It enables us to finally allow laptops to be used as workstations and allow data to leave the building."
"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

"There are some situations where we would like to block things for specific user groups. I know that Umbrella does that, but it's not that easy."
"Cisco Umbrella does not have a Malware Protection engine itself."
"Actually, we recently switched over to Zscaler because it has more features and it's more scalable than Cisco Umbrella."
"I would be happy if they could add the whois information of an IP."
"The pricing changes too fast. We get the license and we need to relicense it because they already made changes to it. We always need to be on top of the licenses because they're always changing."
"Basically, it is not fully mature, which means it's not yet ready to replace the WSA, however, over a period of time, it could to a certain extent."
"They need to improve analytics so they report on more of the specifics of user activity."
"It has happened in the past that Cisco Umbrella has denied us access to secure websites."
"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."
"Quad9 could improve by having more free features, such as custom DNS filtering."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is quite good."
"The price could be lower."
"I am not sure, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it's $1.00 or so per device/month."
"Pricing depends on the automation requirements of the organization."
"Cisco has a set price for a single license up to 100, but whenever we get over 100, we have to ask for a quote."
"Cisco is expensive. For example, we are looking at Nexus Dashboard, and it's costing about 250,000 euros. I ask, "What do I get from it?" I'm still not convinced that we have to spend on it, so pricing is a problem."
"You get what you pay for if you break the solution up into tiers."
"​The pricing is fair."
"The price of Quad9 is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Hospitality Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?
The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bundle with other Cisco purchases.
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

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: April 2026.
892,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.