OPNsense is a FreeBSD-based open-source firewall and routing platform, forked from pfSense. It provides a web-based interface for stateful firewall rules, VPN (WireGuard, OpenVPN, IPsec), traffic shaping, intrusion detection via Suricata, and a plugin system.
Reviewed by Marco Wollank
OPNsense
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Threat level
Hardened
A hardened pick. Worth the effort once you have chosen to shrink your footprint on purpose. Enough for most people. Threat levels
Our take
OPNsense took a clean-slate approach after forking from pfSense: weekly security releases (rather than lumped updates), a proper MVC architecture, and a REST API throughout make it the more actively maintained option for most users today. The feature set covers everything from a home edge router to multi-WAN enterprise setups with hardware failover. The honest catch is the hardware requirement: OPNsense runs on dedicated x86 hardware or a VM, not on consumer routers, so entry cost is higher than a firmware flash. For anyone willing to dedicate a box to it, OPNsense is one of the most capable network security platforms available at no cost.
GitHub at a glance
opnsense/core
Stars
4,514
+ 28 this week
Last commit
8d ago
healthy
License
BSD-2-Clause
Stars, last 31d
Website at a glance
opnsense.org
F score 0
Weak website security headers
Graded by Mozilla HTTP Observatory, tested 14d ago
Inspect this site yourself
Measures the security configuration of the tool's own website, not the privacy of the product itself. A strong tool can still score low here.
OPNsense alternatives
OPNsense license, in plain English
BSD-2-Clause Permissive
A short permissive license: use and modify freely as long as the copyright notice stays intact.
Permits
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Private use
Requires
- License and copyright notice
Does not provide
- Liability cover
- Warranty
Why it matters: Permissive licensing lets anyone reuse this, including inside closed products. That is freedom to build on, but no guarantee that downstream copies stay open.
Plain-language summary of the project's license, not legal advice. Read the full text for the exact terms.
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