PFSense vs UniFi Dream Machine - Whats the BEST ROUTER

Who makes the best firewall for a homelab / business? UniFi VS PFSense. This question has gotten harder from the past few years due to the fact that unifi has been adding a significant number of new features, that have really closed the gap!

Overall the UniFi dream machine pro is going to be much simpler to setup and cheaper than an equivalent PFSense router from netgate, but netgate gives you so much more flexibility with PFSense.

#unifi #pfsense #firewall

TOC:
00:00 Introduction
01:20 What is a firewall?
03:06 PF Sense and Unifi overview
06:33 Which is best for you?
10:21 Product offerings and price
14:49 Deploying on your own hardware
16:21 Ease of use
19:14 Updates and stability
21:26 Features missing from Unifi
24:45 Conclusion

[apin]

how about a OPNsense comparison as well?

[babu]

I'm a network engineer working as consultant for government. You know what? I ordered a UDM SE. I'm dumping my opnsense (was fortigate before) for this UDM. I know it's not as powerful but it will do 99% of what I need for my network/lab. Network application 8 added a lot of stuff I needed.

I already have APs and switches from Unifi so it's nice to have the full stock. Would I install unifi stuff for companies bigger than SMB? Absolutely not. For SMB and home, yes

[mistakek]

pfsense+ was the version that was for homelab, and they said from the get go was going to go under their tac lite license for $129, but was initially free. The main feature that people liked with it, was boot environments which is essentially zfs snapshots, so you can restore after breaking something really quickly.
pfsense CE, is still free, and it's 99% the same software.
You can just restore your pfsense+ config, to pfsense CE, and carry on

[yuliydubovyk]

One of the best breakdowns of networking eq selection I've seen! Thank you!

[jonathan.sullivan]

Unifi is great but for my edge device I run a Netgate 8200 Max. With backing unifi switched and AP's. Their network controller (running in a container) is becoming more and more like the UDMP dashboard. To me this is the best of both worlds. I much prefer the "native" HAproxy over having to side load it onto the UDMP. I started running pfsense on my own hardware, to the UDMP for 2 years and now back to Pfsense on their own appliance and couldn't be happier.

[mrfluffyhedgehog]

7 Months later I find this video looking at getting a pfsense for HA ... and 5 minutes later I see your new video about unifi now doing HA.

nice :)

[mistakek]

pfsense, cheaper to run, has a great built in reverse proxy, much easier to create firewall rules, and generally has lots of great features.
I even have a backup one setup in proxmox ready to go incase my main baremetal one craps out. Just move the cables, turn on the system, and I'm back up and running.

[garycox]

You should also take a look at Synology's offerings. They are obviously most well known for their NAS lineup..but they have some really solid wifi and routing gear. I run a synology setup at my house and it works really well. As a professional network engineer/architect..my standards are pretty high and my need to tinker is always a priority..and the synology stuff definitely checks the boxes for me as a home user. I think it would be a very good fit for smaller businesses as well..though admittedly I wouldn't spec it out for anything larger than SOHO/doctor's office/similar applications unless the data flows were pretty limited in complexity to keep the ACLs/policies reasonable. Anyway...just a data point to consider. Have a good one!

[graham]

Good video overall, but one thing that I think is worth also mentioning is that the mandatory cloud-accessibility of unifi firewalls is a security nightmare waiting to happen. Anyone, anywhere, can potentially log into your firewall. Once they do they own you. Even putting security aside, the fact that these things are managed via their cloud UI means that you are completely beholden to Ubiquiti - if they decide to start charging for any of this, you're SOL. If they decide to deprecate your current firewall model, you're SOL (because it will then stop checking into the cloud UI due to old firmware, and also then no longer be accessible). Also, like you mentioned, stability is a problem with Unifi. Imo even random "netgear" type firewalls are a much better choice for home users given the fact that they aren't externally accessible to the entire world by default like unifi firewalls are. Businesses and more security-conscious home users should be using

[tangoseal]

Unifi is good for a neutered it just works approach. Pfsense is a superior firewall.

[pantoqwerty]

There seems to be quite a few forum posters out there that recommend OPNSense after the wireguard situation.

[doriankandi]

We skipped over the fact that this video didn't start with "how's it going y'all?"

So how's it going! :D

[Nitroburner]

For home, this Xmass holiday I will be spending time on PFSense on a 4port 2.5Gb miniPC, Omada AP, 2.5Gb Managed switch and 3 VLANs to improve security

[PowerUsr]

Once a UDM can do dynamic routing (OSPF, BGP) and clean up that mess of firewall rules creation...I am fully onboard and ditching my Netgate.

[muhamadkhalaf]

Great video
hope in future gaving mikrotik router's explaining i think they do decent work

Appreciate your works and videos

[canesever]

Question for those who went pfsense, what did you do for WiFi?

[jonathanmatthew]

Can you do multiwan (3x ISPs) in ubuiti?

[Olofberglund]

Unfortunately, ubiquiti routers are a bit expensive (comparatively) in Europe. The regular dream machine is about $320 (excl sales tax/VAT) and the pro is about $400 which is closer at least (although VAT/sales tax is 23-25% though so for prosumer use it’s a bit heft I think).

[rahulshah]

This is the kind of info I was looking for. Thank you.

[pbrigham]

I run away from everything that has subscriptions, I like to buy hardware not rent it.