Software Alternatives & Reviews

OPNsense VS Pi-hole

Compare OPNsense VS Pi-hole and see what are their differences

OPNsense logo OPNsense

OPNsense® you next open source firewall. Free Download. High-end Security Made Easy™. Offers Intrusion Prevention, Captive Portal, Traffic Shaping and more.

Pi-hole logo Pi-hole

Pi-hole is a multi-platform, network-wide ad blocker.
  • OPNsense Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-26
  • Pi-hole Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-12

OPNsense videos

Introduction to OPNSense firewall the PFsense fork. Overview

More videos:

  • Review - pfSense vs OPNsense
  • Review - ✅ OPNsense Install - not what i was expecting!

Pi-hole videos

Block EVERY Online Ad with THIS - Pi-Hole on Raspberry Pi

More videos:

  • Review - I tried Pi-Hole for the first time... (DNS level Ad Blocker)
  • Review - Pi-hole -- Worth it? Gotchas?

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to OPNsense and Pi-hole)
Operating Systems
100 100%
0% 0
Security & Privacy
0 0%
100% 100
Perimeter Security And Firewalls
Ad Blockers
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using OPNsense and Pi-hole. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare OPNsense and Pi-hole

OPNsense Reviews

Best pfSense Software Alternatives and Competitors
OPNsense is the best open-source and free firewall alternative to pfSense Software. OPNsense is a user-friendly, open-source, FreeBSD firewall and router. Most of the same capabilities are available in this fork of pfSense Software. It distinguishes itself from other firewalls by combining highly sophisticated features with an open-source system. First, the OPNsense firewall...
The Best Open Source Router OS Software for Large or Small Networks
OPNsense is an open-source router OS software that is based on FreeBSD. It is designed to be used as a firewall, router, and VPN gateway, and it includes a range of advanced networking features. OPNsense is a fork of the pfSense project, and it is actively maintained by the OPNsense community.
Best free Linux router and firewall distributions of 2023
OPNsense makes the top of the list in 2023 because, for the last four years of maintaining this list, it has proved to be one of the most quickly developing operating systems on the market. It's an easy to use, mature system with a slick UI. OPNSense includes most, if not all, features found in expensive enterprise commercial firewalls. It has the quality of a commercial...
Source: teklager.se
11 Best pfsense Alternatives To Secure Your Network
By screening out unnecessary network traffic and malicious apps, firewall software protects networks and computers from attacks. For safeguarding your secure network from malware attacks and unauthorized access, OPNsenseis arguably top on our list of pfSense alternatives.
Top 7 pfSense Alternatives
OPNSense is a rising star in the router software arena. It is powered by HardenedBSD, which is a security-oriented fork of FreeBSD. Its current development pace is rapid, and it’s packed with features. It also has one of the best user interfaces of all of these options. Like a lot of these options, its primary weakness is its Wi-Fi support. A lot of OPNSense users started...

Pi-hole Reviews

22 NextDNS Alternatives
Pi-hole App contains an informative web interface that shows stats on all the domains being queried on the network that you are using. Pi-hole - Network-wide Ad Blocking is a signifying ad-blocking platform that helps its global users to block all the harmful and unhealthy advertisements on your online networks. You can run Pi-hole in a container or deploy it right to...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Pi-hole seems to be a lot more popular than OPNsense. While we know about 1185 links to Pi-hole, we've tracked only 94 mentions of OPNsense. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

OPNsense mentions (94)

  • How to bypass public IP and NAT
    Firmware's like Asuswrt-Merlin or OpenWRT can support dynamic-dns, or you can do like I do and run something like OPNsense in an x86 VM with a NIC passed through, or buy an inexpensive firewall appliance (up to 500mbps/1gbps/10gbps). Source: 5 months ago
  • Stop ISP from getting into my Router
    The easiest solution is to buy your own router, set it up, disable the router functionality on the Fritzbox 7590 and plug your router into it. It'll be cheaper and easier than a Cisco Firewall, but if you want to go the dedicated firewall route then I would recommenced OPNsense. Source: 5 months ago
  • OpenBSD Innovations
    BSDs may not have a significant presence on desktops, but they're well known in the networking world for their reliability. They also were the foundation used to build OSes for specific applications. OpnSense and XigmaNAS, for example, are two excellent FreeBSD based applications aimed at firewalling/security and NAS/services. https://opnsense.org/ https://xigmanas.com/xnaswp/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • Switches That You Actually Own
    For switches? OpenWrt supports a few models toward the lower end, and SONiC support a bunch at the higher-end datacenter ToR market, but none of these options are SME production-ready like Linux servers or OPNsense firewalls. Source: 11 months ago
  • Having to pay postage to ship back a DoA product sucks from a customer perspective
    That’s a stupid policy, and it looks like one of my UDMs is defective. I’m an idiot for not just buying good quality open boxes and putting https://opnsense.org/ on them. 🤦🏻‍♂️. Source: 11 months ago
View more

Pi-hole mentions (1185)

  • Ask HN: For what purposes do you use a Raspberry Pi?
    Pi-hole to block ads and tracking for my less technically savvy relatives https://pi-hole.net/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Runs on your OpenWrt box: AdGuard Home is network-wide blocking ads and tracking
    I ran a competing project[0] on my home network for a few years before I discovered NextDNS[1]. What I lost in performance (requests don't leave my house) I gained in portability: ALL my devices can take advantage – at home and away – and time-saved. PiHole works 90% of the time, but when it did stop working, I'd have to spend a bit of time fixing it. At $20/year, I simply couldn't compete with NextDNS. Note: This... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • YouTube Says It Has More Than 100M Premium and Music Subscribers
    Can the piHole help us eliminate bandwidth wasting ads on TV's? https://pi-hole.net/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Higher fees, more ads: streaming cashes in by using the old tactics of cable TV
    It definitely IS an option, but at the network level. https://pi-hole.net/ It runs on damn near everything, and is a DNS level adblocker for the whole network. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • In 2024, please switch to Firefox
    I recently switched to Wipr [0]. It’s dead simple to use, and will auto update its filter lists in the background. Adguard [1] is a decent free option. I also use a Pi-hole [2] on my network. [0] https://kaylees.site/wipr.html [1] https://adguard.com/en/adguard-safari/overview.html [2] https://pi-hole.net/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing OPNsense and Pi-hole, you can also consider the following products

pfSense - pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more

NextDNS - Block ads, trackers and malicious websites on all your devices.

MikroTik RouterOS - The main product of MikroTik is a Linux-based operating system known as MikroTik RouterOS.

Blokada - The best ad blocker for Android. Free and open source.

OpenWrt - OpenWrt is an open-source firmware based on Linux for wireless routers

AdGuard - Surf the Web Ad-Free and Safely. Shield up!