OPNsense: Open-source, FreeBSD-based firewall and routing
OPNsense is a self-hosted platform tool. Open-source, FreeBSD-based firewall and routing software.
Why self-host OPNsense
When you deploy OPNsense yourself, you own the instance. That means no rate limits, no pricing changes, and no worry about the service shutting down.
What it does
OPNsense falls into the Platform category of self-hosted software. It is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure, whether that is a home server, a VPS, or a local machine running Docker.
Community traction
The project has 3k stars on GitHub, which is a reasonable proxy for how widely it is used. Active repositories tend to ship bug fixes faster and have better documentation than projects that stall after the initial release.
Deployment
Docker is the most common deployment path. If you are already running containers at home, adding OPNsense to a compose file is a low-friction way to try it.
Maturity
The current release is 25.1.a. The project has moved past early development and tends to ship stable, documented releases.
License
It is licensed under BSD-2-Clause, making it freely available for personal and commercial use.
Links
If the use case fits, OPNsense is a solid choice. Most of the complexity is in the initial deploy, and the day-to-day operation is low maintenance.