Software Alternatives & Reviews

pfSense VS nginx

Compare pfSense VS nginx and see what are their differences

pfSense logo pfSense

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

nginx logo nginx

A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.
  • pfSense Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-20
  • nginx Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-28

pfSense videos

pfsense Firewall Setup and Features in Depth Version 2.4

More videos:

  • Review - Pfsense: 5 Reasons to Use It
  • Review - Netgate SG-3100 Teardown / Speedtest / Review of this powerful pfsense packet pusher!

nginx videos

Nginx vs Apache Webservers: Main Differences

More videos:

  • Review - Nginx Web Hosting - 5 Best Nginx Reverse Proxy That Support Millions of Web Traffic!
  • Review - NGINX as a Reverse Proxy (listening on port 80)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to pfSense and nginx)
Cyber Security
100 100%
0% 0
Web And Application Servers
Monitoring Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Web Servers
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using pfSense and nginx. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare pfSense and nginx

pfSense Reviews

Best pfSense Software Alternatives and Competitors
pfSense Software firewall is a robust, open-source security solution that is compatible with any hardware and can be tailored to meet your specific needs. It is a widely used technology, and many individuals seek dependable, popular software solutions with multi-device support, multiple concurrent connections, and protocol selections. Despite its usefulness, pfSense has...
The Best Open Source Router OS Software for Large or Small Networks
pfSense is a free and open-source router and firewall operating system based on the FreeBSD operating system. It is designed to be used on standard x86 hardware and can be deployed as a virtual machine or on dedicated hardware. pfSense offers advanced features and capabilities that are typically found in commercial routers and firewalls, making it an ideal solution for small...
Best free Linux router and firewall distributions of 2023
pfSense is one of the most popular operating systems today. It's a BSD-based system, similar to OPNSense, but with a longer history. pfSense started in 2004, and since then, it has grown to be the most well-known open-source platform in the industry. Although it gradually loses users to OPNsense, it's still an excellent system for new users because it has the most extensive...
Source: teklager.se
11 Best pfsense Alternatives To Secure Your Network
Unlike those of other available pfSense competitors, its capabilities allow it to be compared to commercial firewalls. You can also customize the pfSense firewall to match your needs based on the level of security and protection you want, as well as your specialist knowledge.
Top 7 pfSense Alternatives
Wait, I said alternatives to pfSense so what is this doing on the list? pfSense Plus recently forked away from pfSense community edition (CE). Over time pfSense Plus and pfSense CE will continue to diverge. pfSense Plus is expected to have more features.

nginx Reviews

13 Best XAMPP Alternatives
Nginx is an open-source, high-performance web server used by tech companies, including Pinterest, Airbnb, Cloudflare, and Zendesk. It has been called the new Apache for its ability to scale more efficiently than other web servers, and many developers prefer it because it’s easy to deploy. Nginx also integrates with many programming languages via FastCGI.
Source: thetechtian.com
7 Best Containerization Software Solutions of 2022
If your enterprise is undergoing digital transformation, the NGINX application platform can help you modernize your legacy applications and deliver new microservices‑based applications – with performance, reliability, security, and scale.
Source: techgumb.com
Apache, IIS, NGINX, GWS : What’s Your Choice?
Utilizing a specific type of virtual or physical server determines the type of web server software you use. If you prefer Microsoft, then you will prefer to use IIS (Internet Information Services / Server) by Microsoft as your primary web server application solution. If you use Linux distribution, you have other alternatives like Apache, NGINX and LiteSpeed.
Source: www.milesweb.in
10 Awesome Open Source Load Balancers
Nginx is a battle-tested piece of software written in C and initially introduced in 2004. Since then, it has grown to be an all-in-one reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy, and HTTP cache. It offers L7 load balancing support for HTTP, HTTPS, FastCGI, uWSGI, SCGI, Memcached, and gRPC backends. Nginx’s process worker model is highly scalable and deployed at large scales in...
10 Open Source Load Balancer for HA and Improved Performance
I know what you might be thinking. Nginx is a web server, proxy server, etc. But open-source Nginx does support a basic level of content switching & request routing distribution across multiple servers.
Source: geekflare.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, nginx should be more popular than pfSense. It has been mentiond 46 times since March 2021. 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.

pfSense mentions (10)

  • Need some help on setting up home network
    Https://pfsense.org (netgate hardware is used in businesses). Source: about 1 year ago
  • Is pfsense.org down, or is it just me?
    I am having trouble seeing available packages, updating pkg, or getting a response from pfsense.org. Is anyone else seeing this or am I going to spend the rest of my day chasing bugs? Source: over 1 year ago
  • Help with VLAN
    From the PIA Client to pfsense.org PING pfsense.org (208.123.73.69) from 10.6.112.128: 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=0 ttl=49 time=49.455 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=51.927 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=49.333 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=3 ttl=49 time=49.133 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=4 ttl=49 time=49.027 ms ... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Can Surveillance Station record offsite cameras ?
    The above setup is critical to a reliable system. I'd use enterprise quality routers for a store and home connection. I personally use https://pfsense.org but there are many to choose from and several open source. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Exposing Synology to web: best/practical practices?
    What I would do is put that thing in DMZ and install a good router behind it like https://www.pfsense.org. No affiliation, just been my router for many years. There's also it's sibling https://opnsense.org. There are many, just get a enterprise quality router. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

nginx mentions (46)

  • Nginx 1.26.0 Stable Released
    Can’t find any changelog other than this, > nginx-1.26.0 stable version has been released, incorporating new features and bug fixes from the 1.25.x mainline branch — including experimental HTTP/3 support, HTTP/2 on a per-server basis, virtual servers in the stream module, passing stream connections to listen sockets, and more https://nginx.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 days ago
  • How to securely reverse-proxy ASP.NET Core web apps
    However, it's very unlikely that .NET developers will directly expose their Kestrel-based web apps to the internet. Typically, we use other popular web servers like Nginx, Traefik, and Caddy to act as a reverse-proxy in front of Kestrel for various reasons:. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: Is nginx.org (the domain-name itself) gone?
    So at least the servers that host https://nginx.org are not down. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • [06/52] Accessible Kubernetes with Terraform and DigitalOcean
    > curl www.mydomain.com Welcome to nginx! Html { color-scheme: light dark; } Body { width: 35em; margin: 0 auto; Font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; } Welcome to nginx! If you see this page,... - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Five Apache projects you probably didn't know about
    APISIX is an API Gateway. It builds upon OpenResty, a Lua layer built on top of the famous nginx reverse-proxy. APISIX adds abstractions to the mix, e.g., Route, Service, Upstream, and offers a plugin-based architecture. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing pfSense and nginx, you can also consider the following products

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

Apache Tomcat - An open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies

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

Apache HTTP Server - Apache httpd has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996

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

Oracle WebLogic - Receive a complimentary technical review and consultation on moving your Oracle WebLogic Server applications into containers.