We performed a comparison between OPNsense and pfSense based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: OPNsense ultimately won out in this comparison. Our reviewers agree that OPNsense is easy to install and easy to use, while pfSense was less so. One area where pfSense did come out on top was in the free support category.
"The Adversity Malware Protection (AMP) feature is the most valuable. It is also very easy to use. Every technical user can operate this solution without any difficulty. The dashboard of Cisco Firepower has every tool that a security operator needs. You can find every resource that you need to operate through this dashboard."
"The most valuable feature is the access control list (ACL)."
"Its Snort 3 IPS has better flexibility as far as being able to write rules. This gives me better granularity."
"The main thing that I love the most is its policy and objects. Whenever I try to give access to a user, I can create an object via group creation in the object fields. This way, I am not able to enter a user in the policy repeatedly."
"Another benefit has been user integration. We try to integrate our policies so that we can create policies based on active users. We can create policies based on who is accessing a resource instead of just IP addresses and ports."
"I like the firewall features, Snort, and the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)."
"IPS and Snort are very important because they also differentiate Cisco from other vendors and competitors."
"It has a good security level. It is a next-generation firewall. It can protect from different types of attacks. We have enabled IPS and IDS."
"The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility."
"The system in general is quite flexible."
"The most valuable features are reporting, the Sensei plugin, and firewall capabilities."
"OPNsense is easy to scale when running on the hardware."
"The initial implementation process is simple."
"I have found the solution has some great features overall, such as guest access capabilities, dashboards, and ease of use. There is plenty of documentation and support and it has the plugins that I needed."
"The VPN server feature is the most valuable. It is integrated with Radius and AAA for doing accounting and authentication. Insight view is also an important feature for me at this time. It allows me to assess our network traffic. I also like the firewall feature. The BSD kernel has a packet filter. It is one of the most solid frameworks for firewalls. Its user interface is one of the best interfaces I have used."
"We have found pretty much all the features of the solution to be valuable."
"The solution has good customization abilities and plenty of features."
"A valuable feature is that the solution is open source."
"One of the advantages of pfSense is that it is very easy to work with. It is a very good open-source solution, and it works really well. pfSense provides a complete package. For some features, it could be the first solution in the world. It is a very good alternative in the market for a firewall solution. You don't need to go to Cisco or other brands with expensive firewalls. pfSense also allows us to offer some support services."
"I especially like the VPN part. It works like a charm."
"The classic features such as content inspection, content protection, and the application-level firewall, are the most important."
"Some of the terminologies were more familiar to me than it was when I first encountered Cisco."
"The concurrent users are perfect for us."
"I have found the most valuable features to be antivirus and malware protection."
"One of my colleagues is using the firewall as an IPS, but he is worried about Firepower's performance... With the 10 Gb devices, when it gets to 5 Gbps, the CPU usage goes up a lot and he cannot manage the IPS."
"The solution could offer better control that would allow the ability to restrictions certain features from a website."
"The ability to better integrate with other tools would be an improvement."
"My team tells me that other solutions such as Fortinet and Palo Alto are easier to implement."
"The initial setup could be simplified, as it can be complex for new users."
"In a future release, it would be ideal if they could offer an open interface to other security products so that we could easily connect to our own open industry standard."
"Web filtering needs improvement because sometimes the URL is miscategorized."
"FlexConfig is there as a bridge for features that are not yet natively integrated into Firepower. It is a way of allowing you to be able to configure things that wouldn't otherwise be possible until the development team can add them into Firepower's native capability. There is still some work that needs to be done around FlexConfig. There are still quite a few complex things, like policy-based routing, that have to be done in FlexConfig, and it doesn't always work perfectly. Sometimes, there are some glitches. It is recommended that you configure FlexConfig policies with Cisco TAC. It would be good to see Cisco accelerate some of those configurations that you can only do in FlexConfig into the platform, so that they are there natively."
"The interface needs to be simplified. It is not user-friendly."
"The logging could improve in OPNsense."
"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."
"The solution could be more secure."
"There are issues with stability and reliability."
"I would like to see better SD-WAN performance."
"We did not like the fact that you have to configure everything with the graphic user interface. We have used other firewalls, such as FortiGate, that you can configure via code. OPNsense is not easy to integrate. When you are deploying via GitHub or another source repository, this is not possible. That's one thing we didn't like much."
"The interface isn't so friendly user. But we have some technicians here who are quite confident with this tool. OPNSense could maybe add sets of rules so it's simpler to manage different groups with particular needs."
"They could improve their commercial stance and be more agile when it comes to the commercial pricing of enterprise deals."
"They can improve the dynamic of the input of IPs from outside."
"The integration should be improved."
"The access control aspect of the product could be improved."
"The solution could improve by having centralized management and API support online."
"The solution requires a lot of administration."
"pfSense could improve by having a sandboxing feature that I have seen in SonicWall. However, maybe it is available I am not aware of it."
"Lacks instructional videos."
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OPNsense is ranked 16th in Firewalls with 9 reviews while pfSense is ranked 3rd in Firewalls with 61 reviews. OPNsense is rated 7.8, while pfSense is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of OPNsense writes "Unbeatable pricing and easy to configure and use, but it can be configured only through the GUI, and the integration with Azure cloud is difficult". On the other hand, the top reviewer of pfSense writes "Feature-rich, well documented, and there is good support available online". OPNsense is most compared with Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos XG, Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos UTM and Cisco ASA Firewall, whereas pfSense is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate, Sophos XG, Untangle NG Firewall, Sophos UTM and Zyxel Unified Security Gateway. See our OPNsense vs. pfSense report.
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We monitor all Firewalls reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
