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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
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 (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Internet Security category, the mindshare of Cisco Umbrella is 30.0%, down from 37.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quad9 is 4.9%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Internet Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella30.0%
Quad94.9%
Other65.1%
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

"The customer experience is very good, and the product improves security posture."
"We like Cisco Umbrella because of DNS security. It's one step ahead of whatever we are using for regular web filtering. In that way, it's more secure than other web filtering products."
"You can manage and create policies based on a group of users. It can permit some URLs and block others."
"The DNS data exfiltration and the blocking of DNS tunneling are the most effective features for threat prevention in our company."
"In general, Umbrella is a competitive solution for small or large enterprise."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the Web Filtering and the APT."
"Cisco Umbrella is the first layer of security that protects me while surfing the net, identifying untrusted websites to prevent access."
"The implementation is pretty easy."
"The most valuable feature of Quad9 is that it is a free solution."
"Setting up Quad9 is straightforward if you know what you're doing, and it's easy to use overall."
 

Cons

"There are a couple of different pieces that have different portals. I know they're working on getting them all into one portal, but that's probably the biggest thing that needs improvement right now. It's not a single pane of glass yet."
"It's somewhat pricey for us, however, it's an awesome solution."
"A feature I would appreciate seeing enhanced in Cisco Umbrella would be the ability to add or remove agents that we have, instead of just relying on how long the devices have been connected to the platform."
"I would like to have the ability to prevent certain sites/data from showing on the reports."
"If we're trying to deploy it to a Mac through Meraki, it's impossible. The method of deployment for a Mac, and the features available in Meraki, are not compatible at all."
"Although Cisco Umbrella has an excellent global network footprint, there is still room for improvement and growth in this area. Additionally, there are bandwidth limitations associated with the connectors that need to be addressed. To be a viable solution for larger offices, Cisco Umbrella must continue to expand and improve its capabilities in these areas."
"iOS devices and mobiles are huge in my environment right now, and I cannot run them on Cisco Umbrella 24/7."
"They can maybe simplify the configuration. For example, sometimes, the proxy part is quite difficult, and that's why we didn't deploy that."
"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

"The price depends on the use case, and it's a bit linear. But it depends on the customer's strategy and how Cisco plans to optimize the costs."
"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."
"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."
"Our costs were negotiated, and they are okay."
"I rate the tool's pricing a five out of ten."
"When talking about Cisco solutions in general there pricing model is horrible. For example, you can sell a Meraki-based solution, but if the customer starts shopping around, someone is going to have access to the pricing at a level that you cannot compete because they do not have uniform pricing. Not everybody gets fair pricing. Unless you are one of the real major corporations selling the solution your ability to compete is impossible. Cisco will acknowledge the situation and assure you next time it will be in your favor but it never becomes favorable for you. Cisco is not very good in this regard. However, Umbrella is good."
"We did a good negotiation, and at the moment, its price is fine."
"The licensing part for Umbrella is really flexible."
"The price of Quad9 is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Hospitality Company
7%
Government
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 ...
 

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: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.