OPNsense
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 8 router firmware by recommenders
Free FreeBSD-based firewall that people run for years with little maintenance. Common caveat: weaker hardware driver support than Linux, and a UI that can be maddening.
Free FreeBSD-based firewall that people run for years with little maintenance. Common caveat: weaker hardware driver support than Linux, and a UI that can be maddening.
86 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 71
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 83%
Recommended in 13 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 5 years
Median of the 12 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it carries the badge
- 71 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 13 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Rock solid with little maintenance
“Now I do the same mini-PC thing as the OP's article but I just put OpnSense on it. Agree the UI can be maddening at times but the thing is rock solid”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router” “rock solid performance with near zero maintenance beyond adjusting VLANs and setting up a 6in4 tunnel”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router” “You will spend basically 0 time on system maintenance and just focus on the actual networking stuff.”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “The Kimwolf Botnet Is Stalking Your Local Network” - Comment from 8 Aug 2026 in “Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?”
Runs on commodity PC hardware
“Pfsense or OPNsense can handle ~5 gbps routing/firewall on a low power AMD or Intel embedded chip”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Tenda firmware (multiple versions) contains hidden authentication backdoor” “OPNsense (or other bog-standard-PC FOSS alternatives like VyOS) can be competitive even in TCO”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router” “ones like OPNsense that will run on a vast array of PC hardware”
Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Starlink Mini as a Failover” - Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router”
- Comment from 15 Oct 2026 in “Wanted to download an ISO, ended up writing a kernel exploit”
VPN, VLAN, shaping and firewall features
“If you have OPNSense, it has an ACME plugin with Synology action. I use that to automatically renew and push a cert to the NAS.”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “When internal hostnames are leaked to the clown” “the functionality made it a worth while investment: traffic shaping, wireguard and the like have been mostly a joy”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router” “there's pfSense or OPNsense with packages like pfBlockerNG-devel for domain blocking and traffic shaping”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban” - Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Home Assistant waters my plants”
- Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “2026 is the Year of Self-hosting”
Separates routing from wireless
“a router with something like OpenWrt or OPNsense + an access point with OpenWrt will do the job”
Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days” “How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP?”
Comment from 6 Jul 2026 in “OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router” “I run OPNsense with a collection of Unifi radios (local controller) with great success.”
Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Drilling down on Uncle Sam's proposed TP-Link ban” - Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Drilling down on Uncle Sam's proposed TP-Link ban”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Throughput falls short at 2.5G or 10G
“I was never able to get FreeBSD (TrueNAS CORE, OpnSense) to get anywhere near 10 Gbps.”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router” “BSD-based opnSense struggles to push 2.5G on modern low-end hardware”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again” “I could never get anywhere near full 10G throughput.”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Moving from OpenBSD to FreeBSD for firewalls” FreeBSD lags Linux hardware support
“these run on FreeBSD which seems to lag behind Linux for hardware support”
Comment from 4 Apr 2026 in “What changes when you turn a Linux box into a router” “I had issues with driver compatibility because of the FreeBSD core”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “FCC Updates Covered List to Include Foreign-Made Consumer Routers” UI is imperfect and changes frustrate
“I will concede that the OpnSense UI is far from perfect.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router” “Some recent changes are driving me up the wall though”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router”
Other router firmware people recommend
The four most recommended other router firmware, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OpenWrt | 170 | 34 | 83% | 13 | 7 yrs9 owners | Approved |
| OPNsenseThis page | 71 | 15 | 83% | 13 | 5 yrs12 owners | Approved |
| pfSense | 26 | 17 | 60% | 8 | — | — |
| DD-WRT | 17 | 7 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
| MikroTik RouterOS | 17 | 7 | 71% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 115 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I'm not depending on firmware updates from a company that has no incentive to make them.”
“If you want a bit more power or firewall capability a minipc running OPNSense also works.”
“it runs on commodity hardware that you have full control over”
“a router with something like OpenWrt or OPNsense + an access point with OpenWrt will do the job”
“The biggest win in all this was dumping the off the shelf firewall/router and moving to Opnsense.”
“Not only has it been the most reliable router I’ve ever had at home”
“far better served buying a second hand Sophos baremetal/server rack mounted, and installing OPNSense in it”
“Pfsense or OPNsense can handle ~5 gbps routing/firewall on a low power AMD or Intel embedded chip”
“I was never able to get FreeBSD (TrueNAS CORE, OpnSense) to get anywhere near 10 Gbps.”
“OPNsense (or other bog-standard-PC FOSS alternatives like VyOS) can be competitive even in TCO”
“just go with opnsense virtualized so you get at least some the benefits of the better linux drivers”
“rock solid performance with near zero maintenance beyond adjusting VLANs and setting up a 6in4 tunnel”
“How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP?”
“I'm using OPNSense now which is FreeBSD based instead of completely rolling my own”
“Opnsense uses the dhcp portions of dnsmasq only (and unbound for the dns parts) which just feels 'wrong'.”
“a minimal FreeBSD and Deciso supports an enterprise distribution-quality of it affordable by mere mortals”
“these run on FreeBSD which seems to lag behind Linux for hardware support”
“an N150 router/fw/DNS/VPN box with 2.5GB NICs running OPNSense”
“Some recent changes are driving me up the wall though”
“there is zero reasons to manage the whole network and what not via CLI, GUI makes life so much easier”
“Now I do the same mini-PC thing as the OP's article but I just put OpnSense on it. Agree the UI can be maddening at times but the thing is rock solid”
“I will concede that the OpnSense UI is far from perfect.”
“the functionality made it a worth while investment: traffic shaping, wireguard and the like have been mostly a joy”
“I recommend Pfsense or OpnSense if your hardware works with a FreeBSD-based thing.”
“Version control is in the GUI, you can adapt for your needs the number of changes you need.”
“I’ve been using OpnSense/pfsense [0] for years and would highly recommend it.”
“would be better for the average user than setting up all the software manually”
“I had issues with driver compatibility because of the FreeBSD core”
“ones like OPNsense that will run on a vast array of PC hardware”
“I have a complicated set of rules in OPNsense to route IOT VLAN traffic out via a VPN connection”
“opensense FRR and Cilium BGP to peer your cluster and home LAN is actually a really seamless way to self host things”
“If you have OPNSense, it has an ACME plugin with Synology action. I use that to automatically renew and push a cert to the NAS.”
“This is all based on my experience with opnsense as the vpn host”
“You will spend basically 0 time on system maintenance and just focus on the actual networking stuff.”
“I have my LG TV dumbed down with some firewall rules in OPNsense. Something similar may help you”
“there's pfSense or OPNsense with packages like pfBlockerNG-devel for domain blocking and traffic shaping”
“I could never get anywhere near full 10G throughput.”
“I run OPNsense with a collection of Unifi radios (local controller) with great success.”
“Separating routing from WiFi has been the best thing I’ve ever done for my network.”
“BSD-based opnSense struggles to push 2.5G on modern low-end hardware”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.