Notes 
simplewall: Free and lightweight Firewall
Reviewed by Marco Wollank
simplewall
github.com/henrypp/simplewall/releases 3 ratings so far*
Rate simplewall: No account needed
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
A genuinely lightweight Windows firewall that lets you see and block what your applications phone home to, without the bloat of commercial suites. The flip side of that simplicity is that it expects you to make the allow/block calls yourself, which can overwhelm newcomers and is Windows-only. Great for a somewhat technical user who wants visible control over network traffic; if you want hand-holding and cross-platform coverage, look at Portmaster instead.
GitHub at a glance
henrypp/simplewall GPL-3.0 arm64firewallfossnetworksimplewallwfpwin64windowswindows-firewall
Stars
9,246
+35 this week
Forks
668
130 watching
Last commit
today
healthy
Latest release
v.3.8.7
1.2y ago, 100+ total
Star history
Issues
92% closed
145
open
1,626
closed
+6 / -2
opened / closed, last 4 weeks
Opened vs closed, last 12 weeks
Commits, last 26 weeks
92 commits, active 16 of 26 weeks
40 contributors since Aug 2016
Languages
- C 99.6%
- C++ 0.3%
- Batchfile 0.1%
Updated daily from the GitHub API. Star tracking since Jun 15, 2026.
simplewall alternatives
simplewall license, in plain English
GPL-3.0 Strong copyleft
Free to use and modify, but anything you distribute that is built on it must also be open under the same license.
Permits
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Patent use
- Private use
Requires
- Disclose source
- Same license
- State changes
- License and copyright notice
Does not provide
- Liability cover
- Warranty
Why it matters: Strong copyleft keeps every distributed version open. A vendor cannot fold this into a closed product and ship it without releasing their changes.
Plain-language summary of the project's license, not legal advice. Read the full text for the exact terms.
* Average ratings will show on this page once the threshold of 5 ratings is reached.