# Banana Pi BPI-R4

6 Hacker News commenters recommended Banana Pi BPI-R4 and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a 10G router board with hardware-accelerated networking, suited to PPPoE links and simple router, firewall and DNS setups.

## Why people recommend it

- Hardware acceleration for networking (2 comments): "The BPI-R4 is great for use as a 10G WAN router if your ISP uses PPPoE since the network processing engine has hardware acceleration for it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47301662)) "it has excellent hw acceleration for networking tasks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48809953))
- Near 10 gigabit routing speed (2 comments): "The BPI-R4 is great for use as a 10G WAN router if your ISP uses PPPoE since the network processing engine has hardware acceleration for it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47301662)) "can easily route traffic at near 10 gigabit wire speed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50103792))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [MikroTik router](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mikrotik-router.md): 59 recommend
- [GL.iNet travel router](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gl-inet-travel-router.md): 54 recommend
- [Ubiquiti UniFi Travel Router](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unifi-travel-router.md): 35 recommend
- [OpenWrt One](https://hackerapproved.com/p/openwrt-one.md): 34 recommend
- [Ubiquiti UniFi 5G](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unifi-5g.md): 17 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Banana+Pi+BPI-R4+router+board&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Official site](https://www.banana-pi.org/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Banana Pi BPI-R4", https://hackerapproved.com/p/banana-pi-bpi-r4/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).