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Menlo Secure vs OPNsense comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

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

Menlo Secure
Ranking in Firewalls
52nd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (25th), ZTNA (26th), Cloud Security Remediation (9th)
OPNsense
Ranking in Firewalls
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Firewalls category, the mindshare of Menlo Secure is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OPNsense is 7.9%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Firewalls Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OPNsense7.9%
Menlo Secure0.4%
Other91.7%
Firewalls
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2701794 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Bluechip Enterprise at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
Provides strong protection and multiple use cases but struggles with market recognition
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco. What can be improved is market awareness and adoption of the technology. When selling it in the channel, regardless of how good the technology might be, success depends more on market adoption and awareness.
Moutaz Sheikh Alard - PeerSpot reviewer
ISO 27001 Lead Implementer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Has helped simulate enterprise security setups and strengthens network segmentation practices
For my capstone, I use OPNsense for my project and its broader benefits for enterprise and cybersecurity context. OPNsense is an open source based firewall and routing platform. It offers enterprise-grade features such as intrusion detection and prevention system, VPN support, traffic shaping, and web filtering, all without license cost. This platform has a modular design, a clean web-based GUI, and frequent updates that prioritize security and usability. It competes with commercial firewalls such as Cisco ASA, FortiGate, and Palo Alto, but stands out because it's community-driven, cost-effective, and transparent. I find OPNsense's feature of acting as a central firewall and gateway most valuable, providing robust point segmentation between the internal network and DMZs in my capstone project, intrusion detection to monitor malicious traffic, VPN services for secure remote access, and logging and monitoring for compliance and auditing. This allows me to simulate a real-world enterprise environment on a smaller scale, demonstrating both security hardening and network efficiency. OPNsense impacts my projects and home network positively because its cost-effectiveness is perfect for lab and enterprise setup without expensive licensing. The flexibility, easy VLAN and DMZ configuration supports different zones such as web servers, mail servers, and log servers. The security-first design for IDS/IPS integration helps me showcase modern defense-in-depth strategies. The user-friendly management through the web GUI makes it possible to manage complex firewall rules clearly, which is critical when documenting and presenting a capstone. Scalability is also an advantage. Although my project is lab-based, OPNsense can scale into production deployments in SMBs and enterprise.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For us, the primary goal is protection on the web, and that's extremely important. We're not using any of the other services at this time. The web part is key to the success of the organization. It gives us the ability to protect. It can isolate. It opens the session in an isolated format so that the code isn't running locally. It is running over in the Menlo environment, not in ours. It is not running on the local computer, whereas if you were to go to a normal website, it would run Java or something else on the local machine and potentially execute the malicious code locally. So, it does give us that level of protection."
"It has reduced security events to follow up on. While it is not 100%, there has been probably a 90% or more reduction. We were getting hit left, right, and center constantly from people browsing the Internet and hitting bad websites. It was not just bad websites that were stood up to be malicious, but good sites that were compromised."
"We have definitely seen ROI, as we save a ton of money and time because the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools prior to implementing them had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged."
"Accessing the internet with a proxy from anywhere is the most valuable feature. It ensures that users are only able to browse legitimate websites. If they happen to go to a legitimate website with a malicious payload, the isolation feature will take care of that."
"The fact that it is a cloud proxy solution is another feature we like. For example, if you acquire a new company, you can use it to protect that new company without the need to install anything physically on their networks."
"The solution is invisible to our end users, so it doesn't have any impact on their work or performance."
"We are not aware of a single compromise from the web since implementing the solution."
"Either you have access to something or don't have access to it, and if you do, we can ensure, 100 percent of the time, that there is nothing malicious that is going to impact our system in any way."
"Its pricing is unbeatable in comparison to other firewalls."
"For the initial setup of OPNsense, I find that it is very simple."
"OPNsense is very stable, easy to upgrade, and maintain."
"The most valuable thing about this product is that it is very easy to use, the graphic user interface is very good, and it is user-friendly."
"With the VPN solutions, it is possible to cover up all the scenarios which we have."
"The most valuable features of OPNsense are the GUI and frequent updates."
"We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable."
"I find the solution to be user-friendly. It has a lot of reports and easy settings."
 

Cons

"Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which makes it challenging to compete with larger companies such as Palo and Cisco."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists."
"In the best of all worlds, we wouldn't have to make any exceptions. However, that is a big ask because a lot of that depends on how websites are constructed. For example, there are some very complex, application-oriented sites that we end up making exceptions for. It is really not that big an issue for us to make the exceptions. We feel like we are doing that without a huge impact on our security posture, but we do have to make some exceptions for complex sites, e.g., mostly SaaS-type sites and applications."
"We are now transitioning to another solution. The main reason for that is that managing all of the exceptions and troubleshooting all of the issues our users have had connecting to the internet has become too significant in terms of workload, compared to what we hope we will have with another solution."
"Currently, I don't have a good way to see which of my rules are being used in the access control lists. I have numerous entries, but are they all still needed? A report that would show me my list of who is allowed and whether we're actually using it would be useful because I can then go clean up my list. It would be easier to manage. We would eliminate the vulnerability of unused services."
"The user monitoring could still be improved."
"OPNsense struggles to handle large volumes of voice traffic, indicating scalability issues in that specific use case."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"The feature that I would like to see in the next release, I think, would be to improve the VPN (Virtual Private Network) selection."
"My mark for OPNsense technical support is a four for the free version since they do not care when they realize you are using the free version; they just ghost on you."
"An area for improvement in OPNsense is the hardware, which needs to be updated more frequently. DNS blocking is another good feature I want to be added to the solution. pfSense has a peer-blocking feature that I also want to see in OPNsense."
"There should be more technical documentation."
"The only thing that I would like to see improved is the Insight or the NetFlow analysis part. It would be good to have the possibility to dig down on the Insight platform. Right now, we can easily do only a few analyses. If this page becomes more powerful, it surely will be a well-adopted platform."
"While they do have paid options that actually gives better features, for most of the clients, if they tend to take a paid option will instead opt for Fortinet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We save a ton of money and time. Previously, the numerous hits that we were receiving from our security tools, prior to implementing them, had to all be chased down, dispositioned, and endpoints had to be reimaged. It was just a ton of effort to do all that. That is where the savings from time and money come in."
"The solution is expensive. It's more expensive than the solution I previously used. Compared with the other cloud-based solutions, it's very competitive."
"It is appropriately priced for what they're doing for us. Considering the protection provided, I feel their pricing is spot-on."
"OPNsense is open source software so at this time it is free for us to use."
"We are not paying any licensing fees. OPNsense is completely free for us."
"The price of OPNsense is good."
"The solution is not expensive."
"It costs about $1000."
"It is open source and free."
"As an appliance, it's in the medium price range."
"It is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
There aren't specific areas for improvement; however, they're not as well known as the big vendors such as Palo Alto. Menlo Secure is a smaller company with limited resources and funding, which mak...
What is your primary use case for Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
People are mainly using it for zero trust web access. Menlo Secure is built from the ground up to provide zero basic access, and by doing it that way, it has multiple use cases. For example, it man...
What advice do you have for others considering Menlo Security Secure Web Gateway?
Secure file sharing and data protection is not exactly what Menlo Secure is designed to do. While it can handle some of these functions, people typically choose another technology for those specifi...
What is the difference between PfSense and OPNsense?
Two of the most common and well recognized firewalls, PfSense and OPNsense both support site-to-site IPsec VPN and client, Open VPN and client, and PPTP client. Both also have intrusion detection a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OPNsense?
Setup cost is almost zero as one can simulate the whole environment using open source version. Pricing seems fair enough. Open source license allows a beginner to have a complete firewall solution ...
What needs improvement with OPNsense?
When I talk about VPN, I am not completely satisfied with the VPN functions of OPNsense. What I have received so far is that sometimes the VPN route caches for some time and sometimes I want to cha...
 

Also Known As

Menlo Security Web Security, Menlo Web Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Deciso B.V. 2. iXsystems, Inc.  3. EuroBSDCon  4. Netgate  5. Claranet  6. Voleatech  7. Open Systems AG  8. Securebit AG  9. Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH  10. AVM Computersysteme Vertriebs GmbH  Additional customers include: T-Systems International GmbH, Deutsche Telekom AG, Vodafone GmbH, 1&1 IONOS SE, OVHcloud, Hetzner Online GmbH, Strato AG, PlusServer GmbH, Host Europe GmbH, United Internet AG, 1&1 Versatel Deutschland GmbH, QSC AG, Bechtle AG, Cancom SE, Computacenter AG & Co. oHG, T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, Atos SE, Capgemini SE, Accenture plc, IBM Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Menlo Secure vs. OPNsense and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.