Software Alternatives & Reviews

Varnish VS pfSense

Compare Varnish VS pfSense and see what are their differences

Varnish logo Varnish

High-performance HTTP accelerator

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
  • Varnish Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-09
  • pfSense Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-20

Varnish videos

Product Review 33 - AK Interactive Ultra Matte Varnish

More videos:

  • Review - Gamvar vs Liquitex - Acrylic Paint Varnish Review
  • Review - (473) Liquitex varnish review gloss vs. Matte

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!

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Varnish and pfSense)
Key-Value Database
100 100%
0% 0
Cyber Security
0 0%
100% 100
Proxy Server
100 100%
0% 0
Monitoring Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

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

Varnish Reviews

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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.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Varnish should be more popular than pfSense. It has been mentiond 16 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.

Varnish mentions (16)

  • Varnish Cache
    Varnish Cache is a tool that provides a caching HTTP reverse proxy in order to accelerate your web applications. Once Varnish Cache is installed in front of any server that understands HTTP and configured to cache the contents, delivery speeds are typically enhanced by a factor of 300-1000x, depending on architecture. Kilobyte22 finds this tool along with HAProxy to be a winning combo. Source: 11 months ago
  • Leveraging Cache to improve Web Performance
    In this case, caching mechanism is situated in the proxy server or reverse proxy server like Nginx, Apache, or Varnish, and most probably it is a part of ISP (Internet Service Provider). - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • Beyond Changing Technology: Scaling Your Applications Efficiently
    To handle this level of traffic, you can use tools such as Varnish HTTP Cache, which caches the information of a news article starting from the first user who accesses and makes the request. Once Varnish caches the page, subsequent users will receive a response that is saved in memory. This process allows you to avoid unnecessary synchronous requests and send a quick response to users. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Web resource caching: Server-side
    A couple of dedicated server-side resource caching solutions have emerged over the years: Memcached, Varnish, Squid, etc. Other solutions are less focused on web resource caching and more generic, e.g., Redis or Hazelcast. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Microfrontends: Microservices for the Frontend
    Edge Side Includes (ESI): a more modern alternative to SSI. ESI can handle variables, have conditionals, and supports better error handling. ESI is supported by caching HTTP servers such as Varnish. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
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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
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What are some alternatives?

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

Squid Proxy - Website Content Acceleration and Distribution. Thousands of web-sites around the Internet use Squid to drastically increase their content delivery. Squid can reduce your server load and improve delivery speeds to clients.

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

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.

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

memcached - High-performance, distributed memory object caching system

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