Azure Firewall vs. pfSense

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Firewall
Score 6.3 out of 10
N/A
Azure Firewall is a cloud-native, intelligent network firewall security service that offers threat protection for Azure cloud workloads. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service, featuring built-in high availability and unlimited cloud scalability.
$0.40
per deployment hour $0.065 per GB processed
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…
$179
per appliance
Pricing
Azure FirewallpfSense
Editions & Modules
Basic
$0.395
per deployment hour $0.065 per GB processed
Standard
$1.25
per deployment hour $0.016 per GB processed
Premium
$1.75
per deployment hour $0.016 per GB processed
SG-1100
$179
per appliance
SG-2100
$229
per appliance
SG-3100
$399
per appliance
SG-5100
$699
per appliance
XG-7100-DT
$899
per appliance
XG-7100-1U
$999
per appliance
XG-1537
$1,949
per appliance
XG-1541
$2,649
per appliance
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure FirewallpfSense
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure FirewallpfSense
Features
Azure FirewallpfSense
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
Azure Firewall
8.0
1 Ratings
7% below category average
pfSense
8.5
15 Ratings
1% below category average
Identification Technologies8.01 Ratings7.913 Ratings
Visualization Tools7.01 Ratings8.512 Ratings
Content Inspection7.01 Ratings7.914 Ratings
Policy-based Controls9.01 Ratings8.615 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP8.01 Ratings6.712 Ratings
Firewall Management Console9.01 Ratings9.714 Ratings
Reporting and Logging7.01 Ratings8.415 Ratings
VPN8.01 Ratings9.215 Ratings
High Availability9.01 Ratings9.814 Ratings
Stateful Inspection8.01 Ratings9.214 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings7.514 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure FirewallpfSense
Small Businesses
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
Sophos UTM
Sophos UTM
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
pfSense
pfSense
Score 9.4 out of 10
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Quantum Firewalls and Security Gateways
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.5 out of 10
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Palo Alto Networks Virtualized Next-Generation Firewalls - VM Series
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure FirewallpfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.5
(28 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.8
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure FirewallpfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Azure Firewall is well suited for most mid sized and large sized companies that deal with thousands of users within multiple environments. Azure Firewall allows you to protect business assets by preventing malicious attacks from entering the network. Azure Firewall would be less suited for a small company that does not use a vpn or have users outside of the office as something smaller would be more appropriate.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
pfSense is incredibly budget friendly and capable for organizations of all sizes. My specific scenario, working for a non-profit organization, requires budget consciences decisions without compromising security and function. pfSense has helped tremendously in accomplishing this. It specifically tackles advanced routing, static routing, remote access, intrusion prevention, in a single platform, mostly available for free.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Azure Fire wall is easy to use
  • Azure fire wall is easy to set up
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
  • Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Azure Fire wall pricing may not always be competitive
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
  • When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
  • I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
  • I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
  • I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.
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Usability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
pfSense can be a very elementary firewall but can also be as comples as you want, according your needs. I'd always reccomend a HA solution when used in a company and, for bigger companies, commercial license is recommended. It's also very adptable to everyone's needs.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Azure Firewall is a very competitive product that exceeds or meets the competitions offerings and is able to effectively manage a company network and securely lock down the domain environment with seamless integration and easy to use tools while offering great support assistance. We selected Azure Firewall because the customer service that comes with the product is second to none and allows us to keep maximum uptime to protect our assets.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Azure Firewall decreased our overhead by over 7%
  • Azure fire wall has increased efficiency within the security department
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
  • The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.
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ScreenShots

Azure Firewall Screenshots

Screenshot of a diagram of Azure Firewall BasicScreenshot of a diagram of Azure Firewall StandardScreenshot of