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OPNsense pros and cons

Vendor: OPNsense

4.2 out of 5

43 reviews
97% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

OPNsense allows easy configuration with quick setup and valuable features like VPN integration, reporting, and visibility. While it offers robust firewall capabilities and network isolation, integration issues with virtual servers and scalability concerns are noted. Some users encounter stability and security challenges, particularly with high voice traffic. Despite providing comprehensive documentation, improvements in technical training and reporting are desired. Competitors such as pfSense may offer better performance and faster updates.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

OPNsense is easy to configure and has a straightforward initial setup process, taking only 15-30 minutes to deploy.

The VPN server feature, integrated with Radius and AAA, is highly valuable for accounting and authentication purposes.

OPNsense is recognized for its robustness as a reliable open-source firewall with frequent updates.

The reporting and analytics capabilities of OPNsense offer valuable network traffic insights and visibility.

High availability and stability are key attributes of OPNsense, with consistent performance over several months.

CONS

OPNsense shows issues with integration on virtual servers and may not be suitable for large-scale deployments.

The scalability of OPNsense needs improvement, particularly for handling large volumes of data like voice traffic.

Improvement in VPN IP address settings and better SD-WAN performance is required.

Technical documentation for OPNsense should be more comprehensive and detailed.

OPNsense's hardware needs more frequent updates following common standards and open computing principles.

OPNsense Pros review quotes

Moutaz Sheikh Alard

ISO 27001 Lead Implementer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Sep 9, 2025

OPNsense impacts my projects and home network positively because its cost-effectiveness is perfect for lab and enterprise setup without expensive licensing, and the flexibility, easy VLAN and DMZ configuration supports different zones such as web servers, mail servers, and log servers.

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Founder - Director (Technology Business) at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Apr 6, 2023

We have been operating here in our lab for several months, and everything appears to be extremely stable.

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Cloud Architect at infotek-software GmbH

May 2, 2022

The IDS and IPS features are valuable. From the usability perspective, there is a lot of good documentation. As IT professionals, we found it very easy to configure the firewall. It was easy to configure and use.

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MK

Consultant at INCONSYS GmbH

Aug 28, 2019

The feature I find most valuable, is that the program helped me to realize all the requested functionality that was needed.

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OT/ICS Information Security Specialist at SANS

Jun 25, 2020

The most valuable features in OPNsense are reporting and visibility.

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Network and Programming Specialist at Twentytwo Integration

Jun 11, 2024

The tool's integration is more like a button press.

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IT Security Director at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 20, 2023

The solution has high availability.

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Mahmoud Suleiman

Senior IT Infrastructure Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 11-50 employees

Sep 7, 2025

We saved up to half a million Egyptian pounds, which is nearly $100,000 yearly on licensing or subscription using this kind of software, and the network attacks reduced by approximately 60% after using that, even without customizing the custom configuration yet.

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HP

Hermann Potgieter

Senior Network Architect at Virtua Technologies

Jan 14, 2021

The most valuable features are reporting, the Sensei plugin, and firewall capabilities.

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AB

Antonio EugenioBurriel

CIO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Jun 27, 2019

We can open a new VPN connection easily. It's much easier than with Fortinet in our experience.

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OPNsense Cons review quotes

Moutaz Sheikh Alard

ISO 27001 Lead Implementer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Sep 9, 2025

The documentation should be clearer because I faced some difficulties navigating many options.

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Founder - Director (Technology Business) at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Apr 6, 2023

I think the most important thing is that it should be easily accessible, but currently, that doesn't seem to be the case. We need a hardware platform that's based on common standards and open computing principles, which would be like a commodity and benefit us greatly.

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Cloud Architect at infotek-software GmbH

May 2, 2022

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.

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OT/ICS Information Security Specialist at SANS

Jun 25, 2020

There are issues with stability and reliability.

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Network and Programming Specialist at Twentytwo Integration

Jun 11, 2024

pfSense has better performance and quicker updates.

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IT Security Director at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 20, 2023

The reporting part could be better.

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Mahmoud Suleiman

Senior IT Infrastructure Engineer at a real estate/law firm with 11-50 employees

Sep 7, 2025

OPNsense can be improved by making it more user-friendly, as its current UI is not that user-friendly when compared to paid software such as Sophos.

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HP

Hermann Potgieter

Senior Network Architect at Virtua Technologies

Jan 14, 2021

I would like to see better SD-WAN performance.

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AB

Antonio EugenioBurriel

CIO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Jun 27, 2019

OPNsense showed me some problems when using it in different environments. The problem is integration with a virtual server.

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Akram Zaki Hussein

System and Network Administrator at El Sadat City Language School

Sep 22, 2023

Given that OPNsense plays a pivotal role as a firewall, safeguarding against various threats, having a reliable backup ensures uninterrupted protection even if unforeseen events impact the primary virtual machine.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 39)

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Fortinet FortiGate vs OPNsense

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