I used pfSense for years. I migrated to opnsense last year due to what felt like stagnant development (or lack of development) on the consumer edition of pfsense. Meanwhile Opnsense has updates almost every month.
With that being said, pfsense CE 2.8.0 was just released after maybe 2 years of non-development. If you buy netgate hardware with pfsense+, they do get updates. The netgate people on Reddit’s r/pfsense can sometimes be arrogant, where the people on r/opnsense are a little more forgiving.
Both are fine systems though. What do you want out of it? Set it and forget it, 400-500 day uptime (provided UPS and no power / hardware interruptions)… then go pfsense. 30-40 day uptime because you reboot for updates, then go opnsense. Though nobody is forcing you to take the update, it’s just there if you need it. At work we use official Netgate 8200’s to broker a backup connection if our primary fiber goes down.
Want a turnkey solution, then Ubiquiti UniFi stuff like the UCG Max and UCG Fiber are great options. I run my UniFi controller in a Proxmox container on a Dell Optiplex. Opnsense is on there as well as a VM with Intel pci-e nic pass through. But if I get tired of that setup I’ll just get the UCG fiber. https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/cloud-gateways-compact/collections/cloud-gateway-fiber/products/ucg-fiber
My Dell Optiplex 5070 SFF running Proxmox, 3 VMs, an additional 4 port Intel nic, 32GB ram, 1TB data, 256gb nvme boot, and an assortment of LXC containers runs about 40 watts. Powertop is configured to try to run lean where possible (power wise), and the system is configured to auto boot and auto start VMs and containers in the proper order. Whole thing from plugging into power boots up with opnsense running and passing traffic in under 3 minutes. Bios set to auto power on after power fail. Proxmox grub bootloader set to 1 second delay.
The Netgate appliances or UniFi may take 15 watts or so, so much more efficient, but purpose built.
Add my UniFi switch with 5 poe devices off of it, fortigate switch, Grandstream ATA, cable modem, DirecTV power inserter and my UPS registers around 100-110 watts. Spikes up to 150-180 if I’m running something really taxing like a huge immich image and photo backup to that vm on Proxmox or initial system boot when everything is starting up.
