IT AI Index
Index › Vendors › pfSense · September 2026 Edition
2 categories · Named, not ranked

pfSense

12Judge labels
0First choices
4Negative labels
6 of 12Models named it
2Categories
September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.
Standing
4 labels, too few to rank
A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. pfSense was named 4 times in Firewalls and 1 other category, where Fortinet FortiGate led with 61%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.
By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business55 of 110
0%5 labels
under the label threshold
Mid-market27 of 100
0%3 labels
under the label threshold
Enterprise80 of 86
0%1 label
under the label threshold
In firewalls · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named pfSense for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
CategoryFunctionShareRankNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
Next-generation firewallsNetwork and edge0%27 of 1000%3under 10 labels · led by Fortinet FortiGate at 61%
SD-WANNetwork and edge0%28 of 530%1under 10 labels · led by Fortinet Secure SD-WAN at 41%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for pfSense yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated pfSense across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.
ModelFirst choiceAlternativeMentionNegativeLabels
Claude Haiku 4.500000
GPT-5.4 mini00000
Gemini 3.5 Flash01102
Perplexity Sonar01001
Grok 4.1 Fast00000
Mistral Small00000
DeepSeek V4 Flash00000
Llama 4 Maverick00000
Qwen 3.7 Flash00000
Kimi K201001
GLM 4.7 FlashX00000
MiniMax M2.500000

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct0 labelsNone
Paraphrase3 labelsNone
Comparative0 labelsNone
Budget-constrained6 labelsNone
Scale-constrained0 labelsNone
Negative3 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative12 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Best for the tightest budget: pfSense — free/open-source, but usually requires more technical skill” Perplexity Sonar · Firewalls · budget prompt · alternative
“pfSense: More mature ecosystem, deeper documentation, Netgate hardware integration” Kimi K2 · Firewalls · budget prompt · alternative
“Best Open-Source / DIY ... $0 for software.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · SD-WAN · budget prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as pfSense, over the 12 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and pfSense was named but was not.
ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
OPNsense9 of 120Not in the top three
Fortinet FortiGate4 of 123Not in the top three
Ubiquiti UniFi3 of 122Not in the top three
Fortinet Secure SD-WAN3 of 121Not in the top three
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN3 of 120Not in the top three
Palo Alto Networks Prisma SD-WAN3 of 120Not in the top three
Fortinet FortiGate 60F2 of 122Not in the top three
SonicWall TZ Series2 of 121Not in the top three
WatchGuard2 of 121Not in the top three
Cisco2 of 120Not in the top three
A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named pfSense. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 6 of the 12 answers that named pfSense and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

enterprisenetworkingplanet.com4
reddit.com4
comparitech.com3
cyberpress.org3
cybersecuritynews.com3
fortinet.com3
paloaltonetworks.com3
peerspot.com3
aibusinessinsider.org2
blog.invgate.com2

Thirty of the thirty domain citations in answers naming pfSense came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/guides/best-firewalls-for-small-medium-business4
comparitech.com/net-admin/best-small-business-firewalls3
cyberpress.org/best-next-generation-firewall-ngfw-solutions-for-every-business-size3
cybersecuritynews.com/best-next-generation-firewall3
aibusinessinsider.org/best-firewall-appliances-for-it-directors-10-reviewed-and-ranked2
blog.invgate.com/best-firewall-for-small-business2
expertinsights.com/network-security/the-top-network-firewalls2
fortinet.com/solutions/small-business/firewall2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when pfSense's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as pfSense, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at pfsense.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.

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