pfSense
Ranked 3 of 8 router firmware by recommenders
Mature, free firewall and router OS that people run for years with few issues. Common caveats: a steep learning curve and friction with Netgate, its commercial maker.
Mature, free firewall and router OS that people run for years with few issues. Common caveats: a steep learning curve and friction with Netgate, its commercial maker.
43 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 26
- criticize it
- 17
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 26 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Rich features and packages
“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” “Pfsense and maybe openwrt allow split horizon DNS that allows Wireguard tunnels to work seamlessly”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “What I self-host” “Maybe PFsense is the closest competitor with strong feature set”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper” - Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “LLM Networking with MikroTik”
- Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Installing a Let's Encrypt TLS Certificate on a Brother Printer with Certbot”
- Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Protect Your Shed”
Stable and reliable over years
“I've been with pfSense since 1.2 - before I was with monowall and IPFire. Although I'm always happy with pfSense”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “PFsense at 20. Plus and CE unified. Offline upgrades free.” “pfSense/FreeBSD is fairly robust, and a mature project”
Comment from 4 Apr 2026 in “What changes when you turn a Linux box into a router” “I used them for years and I was quite happy with them”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “DIY NAS: 2026 Edition” - Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router”
- Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router”
Long-time choice over alternatives
“I've been with pfSense since 1.2 - before I was with monowall and IPFire. Although I'm always happy with pfSense”
Comment from 31 Oct 2026 in “PFsense at 20. Plus and CE unified. Offline upgrades free.” “I've been using pfSense ever since, commercialisation / Netgate aside, force of habit.”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “A Love Letter to FreeBSD” “I’ve been using OpnSense/pfsense [0] for years and would highly recommend it.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router” - Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router”
- Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “The "Windows XP Box" (2003)”
Easy setup with few surprises
“would be better for the average user than setting up all the software manually”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router” “They're super easy to set up and don't have many surprises.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “How to Turn Anything into a Router” “They all work fine, and they're not too hard to set up.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “FCC Updates Covered List to Include Foreign-Made Consumer Routers”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Netgate commercial moves and data demands
“I've been using pfSense ever since, commercialisation / Netgate aside, force of habit.”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “A Love Letter to FreeBSD” “I loved pfSense, but I hated netgate”
Comment from 5 Apr 2026 in “The Road to NfSensei” “I can't upgrade to 2.8 without giving Netgate my personal data”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Kea DHCP: Modern, open source DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 server” Leaks public IP as DNS
“It just wasn't possible to stop it giving my devices its public IP as DNS.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn't taken over the world” “But pfsense's behaviour is a bit iffy too, unless when you say 'public IP'”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Why IPv6 is the only way forward” “published its public IP as the DNS server for internal clients”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “Why IPv6 is the only way forward” Steep learning curve
“There is a week long learning curve and it's best to put it on dedicated hardware.”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Texas is suing all of the big TV makers for spying on what you watch” “If you think most non tech people can just casually find an old pc, install and setup pfsense, then you are out of touch with reality.”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Jellyfin 12.0” Lacks IPv6 prefix changes
“It was not supported when I migrated away from it less than five years ago.”
Comment from 2 Jan 2026 in “IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn't taken over the world” “It did not support changing IPv6 prefixes. It still barely does.”
Comment from 3 Jan 2026 in “IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn't taken over the world”
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 |
| OPNsense | 71 | 15 | 83% | 13 | 5 yrs12 owners | Approved |
| pfSenseThis page | 26 | 17 | 60% | 8 | — | — |
| DD-WRT | 17 | 7 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
| MikroTik RouterOS | 17 | 7 | 71% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 56 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“The air-gapped installer is back”
“I've been with pfSense since 1.2 - before I was with monowall and IPFire. Although I'm always happy with pfSense”
“Pfsense and maybe openwrt allow split horizon DNS that allows Wireguard tunnels to work seamlessly”
“can integrate it with their normal routing/firewall behavior”
“This is what got me using pfSense.”
“If you think most non tech people can just casually find an old pc, install and setup pfsense, then you are out of touch with reality.”
“a old mini pc running pfsense/opnsense is enough”
“pfSense is safe enough :)”
“the UI was wasting so much of my time, it was worth switching to Netgate”
“Both pfSense and OPNsense have good API coverage.”
“can comfortably handle 2.5 gbps on an ancient Celeron J4125 running around 10W total”
“Maybe PFsense is the closest competitor with strong feature set”
“Just Works with tons of cool stuff on it”
“But pfsense's behaviour is a bit iffy too, unless when you say 'public IP'”
“published its public IP as the DNS server for internal clients”
“I loved pfSense, but I hated netgate”
“pfSense/FreeBSD is fairly robust, and a mature project”
“pfSense has its own issues”
“Running pfsense on it. Never had an issue.”
“ran with zero issues for the better part of a decade”
“I moved on to pfSense and didn't look back”
“They're super easy to set up and don't have many surprises.”
“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”
“pfSense has a glorious integration for it”
“They all work fine, and they're not too hard to set up.”
“It's a single checkbox to not randomize ports on outbound flows.”
“They all start "for the community", become too big, go greedy, and forget that projects/company is nothing without users.”
“you can't actually do anything useful with it other than yeet a bunch of devices on the same LAN segment”
“It did not support changing IPv6 prefixes. It still barely does.”
“It was not supported when I migrated away from it less than five years ago.”
“It just wasn't possible to stop it giving my devices its public IP as DNS.”
“There are methods to make your firewall accomplish something similar (pfsense?) but I don't know how”
“There is a week long learning curve and it's best to put it on dedicated hardware.”
“Even when I had bare metal servers connected to the internet, I would put a firewall like pfsense or something in between.”
“there's pfSense or OPNsense with packages like pfBlockerNG-devel for domain blocking and traffic shaping”
“I can't upgrade to 2.8 without giving Netgate my personal data”
“I have a couple dozen of those and had no issue during my pfSense upgrade.”
“I've been using pfSense ever since, commercialisation / Netgate aside, force of habit.”
“I used them for years and I was quite happy with them”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.