Netgate has immediately stopped offering its pfSense Plus software as a free download for home use. The Community Edition of pfSense remains available for free. Netgate also continues to provide pfSense Plus for free on its hardware.
Netgate confirms that the Home+Lab version of pfSense Plus is now no longer free to download for users. The company made that decision “to better align Netgate’s business model with our global customer base and partners.” Illegal redistribution of pfSense Plus Home+Lab is also ‘a growing problem’; according to Netgate, ‘several’ hardware manufacturers illegally provide the software on their devices.
The Home+Lab version is no longer listed on the pfSense website. Users who have already installed this version of pfSense Plus can continue to use it. Netgate warns that as this version is phased out, updates with bug fixes and new features may become less frequent over time.
The pfSense CE open source software, which is maintained by the community, remains available for free. A free version of pfSense Plus is also available on the hardware that Netgate sells. A free TAC Lite license for Netgate Plus is also available for use on AWS and Azure instances or select third-party hardware. Other users must purchase a Pro license for $399 per year, excluding VAT.
PfSense is an operating system based on FreeBSD. The software is used to create firewalls and routers from PCs or VMs. Users can then configure this via a web interface on their local network. Work on pfSense started in 2004 and the first release appeared two years later. There are two versions: the open source Community Edition and since 2021 the paid Plus version. The Plus version of pfSense is maintained by the commercial company Netgate, receives more regular software updates and offers additional features. There has also been a fork of pfSense since 2015, called OPNsense, which is free to download and receives more frequent updates.
PfSense Plus. Source: Netgate