Ubiquiti·networking
UniFi Dream Machine Pro
Based on 41 credible posts from Hacker News & Bluesky.
Medium confidenceA solid sample; expect small shifts as more owners post. How we score
Scored September 27, 2026
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Owner reviews
Overall owner mood
Owners are split: 49% of 41 reviews are positive, 17% negative, and the rest mixed or neutral. Praise centers on software & ai and price & value. The most common complaint is software & ai (4 owners). Owners with 6+ months of use are more positive (80%), which suggests it holds up well.
What owners like
Software & AI praised by 5 owners
“10g, protect for camera selfhosting which works great, new updates made wireguard first class citizen, and if you want anything more complicated it's just a dumb debian underneath (which I do a bunch of stuff).”
Price & value praised by 3 owners
“Their WAPs are a bit pricey on for 6E support, but otherwise are generally considered the best prosumer WAPs available, and competitive (and cheaper) then most enterprise options.”
Camera praised by 2 owners
“10g, protect for camera selfhosting which works great, new updates made wireguard first class citizen, and if you want anything more complicated it's just a dumb debian underneath (which I do a bunch of stuff).”
Sound praised by 2 owners
“Oh man, having a 25U rack sounds really fun.”
What owners complain about
Software & AI raised by 4 owners
“DNS is the only real dependency that can cause problems for me when the hypervisor reboots for updates.”
Build & durability raised by 3 owners
“I eventually moved to OPNSense but the router I bought from them died.”
Performance raised by 2 owners
“I wish they would just stop telling everyone to switch to WG and fix the performance issue that is clearly Unifi specific.”
What owners talk about
- Software & AI5 praise · 4 complain
- Price & value3 praise · 1 complain
- Camera2 praise · 1 complain
- Build & durability0 praise · 3 complain
- Sound2 praise · 1 complain
- Performance0 praise · 2 complain
Built from the reviews themselves — every quote links to the owner who wrote it.
Full text of every credible post we scored. Bot-like and off-topic comments are hidden.
[...] I'm using the UDM Pro Max with an XGSPON ONU flashed with the community firmware from PON Wiki (see ) and the 2.5GbE port as my second WAN link to the Spectrum modem. [...] There's a short DAC cable connecting the UDM Pro Max to a Switch Pro XG 24-POE which serves 10GbE to the rest of the house. [...] Most of the devices in the house connect to WiFi served by the UniFi U7 Pro XGS APs, which take 10GbE w/ POE and give off WiFi 7. [...]
Unifi G4 Doorbell Pro [0] is a great self-hosted option. I've been very happy with mine over the last year, but I was already bought into the unifi ecosystem with a UDM Pro SE and U6 mesh APs. 0:
The UDM pro has the controller built in. [...] The controller software runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. [...]
In January of 2020 I bought a Unifi Dream Machine Pro. [...]
[...] I was surprised, watching TV the other day, to randomly get a 1.2Gbps speedtest which is one of the faster ones I've seen on WiFi. (10gbps internet, UDM Pro, UDM enterprise 2.5Gbps switch for clients, PoE WiFi 7 APs on 6ghz). Honestly, I'd say overall 6ghz has been more trouble than it's worth. Flipping the switch to WPA2/3 as required by 6ghz broke all of my clients last year, so I had to revert and now I just have a separate SSID for clients I have the energy to manually retype the password into. [...] There were bugs last year in Apple's "Disable 6e" setting so it kept re-enabling itself. MLO was bad, so it would stick to 6ghz even when there was basically no usable signal. Over the course of the past year, it's gotten pretty tolerable, but sometimes I still wonder why I bother-- I'm pretty sure my real world performance would be better if I just turned 6ghz off again.
[...] My UDM Pro absolutely chokes and stalls with intrusion detection enabled on the firewall and 8 cameras connected. Network goes down, cameras disconnect, devices disconnect from Wi-Fi every time a car drives past a camera due to AI features triggering, etc. [...]
Don't worry, I also use Ubiquiti, and self-host Home Assistant on my TrueNAS :) I have a little server rack cobbled together out of wood under my basement stairs, with a UDM Pro, 24 port POE switch, and an ancient Dell 2U poweredge for TrueNAS.
a UDM pro is a router (as well as other things). [...] I bought a Cloud Fibre Gateway as everybody recommended Unifi. [...] Couldn't do any of that until I figured out a way to tether my phone to my OpenWRT router that the Unifi was supposed to replace, and wire them together over ethernet. [...]
Having seen a few slippery slope situations like this over the years with IoT and other services, I'm simply not willing to make any concessions in that direction. I use a UDM Pro and turning on cloud access requires associating that hardware with a Unify cloud account. That's already undesirable if you want to safeguard privacy.
Recently switched from a UDM Pro Max to a Firewalla Gold Pro and couldn't be happier about the move. Software that works software that has everything but requires magic to get checkboxes to adhere to a save state-this is a common issue with UniFi Network options. [...]
Oh man, having a 25U rack sounds really fun. [...] I have a 35U (I don’t need that many slots, but at the time I did need it tall enough that my kids couldn’t reach the top, where I put the keys), with: 3x Dell R620 2x Supermicro (one X9, one X11) 1x APC UPS w/ external battery Unifi UDM Pro Unifi Enterprise 24-port switch The Dells have Samsung PM863 NVMe drives which are used by Ceph (managed by Proxmox), with traffic sent over an Infiniband mesh network via Mellanox ConnectX3-Pro. [...] Also, I’m now in the uncomfortable position of being stuck on Proxmox 7, because v8 (or more accurately, the underlying Debian release) dropped support for my HBAs, so the NAS would be dead in the water. [...]
[...] I run a bypass directly into my UDM-Pro using a WAS-110. [...]
Wireguard running on my router (Unifi Dream Machine Pro) - but I have a static IPv4 address, as well as a routed /48 IPv6 block. Anything that needs to be exposed to the internet (which was essentially TeslaMate during setup) through a cloudflare tunnel, which terminates on a server behind my router.
[...] Now it’s have a nice script that distributes my key automatically to 20 or so hosts and apps and have a real SSL cert on everything from my UDM Pro to my Synology to random Raspberry Pis running containers. [...]
[...] This gets various lists of public DNS over HTTPS servers and updates a blocklist on my Unifi Dream Machine Pro. [...]
Ubiquiti UDM-Pro has it, but I'm not sure how they're regarded in popular opinion these days. I've had good luck with everything but the PoE on mine, and they gave me a free injector to fix that.
Yes, I've had one on the top of my shelves in my office for years. [...] These days, I just go with the UDM-Pro SE's and if I need more than 8 PoE ports, I add on a Unifi switch via SFP. [...]
Another example: Ubiquiti gateway consoles like the UDM-Pro. You can install an SSH key but these are erased on reboot. So after every reboot I have a script that uses the SSH user password to re-install an SSH key but this can’t be relied upon and I haven’t found a way to make an SSH key persist.
It’s been through quite a few iterations, but the current setup is a 35U Sysracks (not filled, I just like the space) with: 3x Dell R620 running K3os on clustered Proxmox 1x X11 Supermicro 2U with ZFS handling the disk array 1x X9 Supermicro 2U, also with ZFS, that is a backup target for the other one (WoL to ingest, then shutdown) UniFi Dream Machine Pro UniFi 24 port PoE 1G switch 2x UniFi UAP-AC-PRO APs (not in the cabinet, obvs) APC UPS with battery extension The Dells have Samsung PM863 3.84 TB drives for Ceph, which Proxmox handles. [...] The Supermicros have some cheap ADATA NVMe SSDs for boot (the X9 has a modded BIOS to make this possible). [...]
I have a Dream Machine Pro (UDM-Pro), and disabling remote access is as simple as finding the setting and turning it off. I disabled it on mine a while ago as an extra security measure.
[...] Their WAPs are a bit pricey on for 6E support, but otherwise are generally considered the best prosumer WAPs available, and competitive (and cheaper) then most enterprise options. [...] The VOP and security cameras and phones are solid. [...] You buy the hardware, the software is free and runs locally. Even their enterprise software is being ported to run on device (and free for prosumer use cases) This is part of three new devices that are strongly targeting the old Apple base station market. [...] IF you want to run their VOIP / camera / door system, there is the UDM Pro and UDM Pro SE. I have the base level UDM Pro with a 2.5 GB/s primary and a 1GB fiber secondary. [...] In general, if you want WIFI and network that just works, but still does policy based routing, VLAN management, can dump to Prometheus (with unifipoller), run VOIP and security cameras (even with Homekit secure support, thanks to Scrypted), this is the solution for you. [...]
[...] Regarding price, the value is in the software. [...] And I'm fine with paying for that, because software is expensive, and apparently no one else has managed easy to use software that supports a prosumer featureset, and I was sick of spending hours configuring my UDM or OPNSense router. I get your concern about closed source, but that's not a problem for me personally - most of my devices run closed source code, including my Ubiquiti gear, and it's not like anyone compiles OPNSense or PFSense from scratch when installing onto their router anyways. The thing cools fanlessly/passively, can do IDS/IPS + WireGuard server and client at 1Gb speeds, and is trivially easy to configure even with a smartphone, which neither my OPNSense DEC-840 or my UDM Pro could do (at much greater price points.) If you can find similar functionality and ease of use at a lesser price point, I'd love to know.
[...] InTune doesn't even list it as a supported VPN, and everything I see to deploy it suggests some kind of hack to bypass UAC for one specific app because the end-user software requires Admin permissions to startup and hook. When we use L2TP with UDM Pro we get 0.1Mbps across the wire from macOS and 20Mbps across the wire with Windows, and yet the same VPN server running on a Mikrotik will easily achieve 300Mbps. [...] I wish they would just stop telling everyone to switch to WG and fix the performance issue that is clearly Unifi specific. [...]
I don't disagree, but since buying the UDM-Pro years ago, I feel like the software has gotten great. And recently, they've baked in Wireguard replacing L2TP. Personally, I'd like to see more prosumer devices that support 2.5GbE/10GbE.
Udm pro SE is the best thing I bought. 10g, protect for camera selfhosting which works great, new updates made wireguard first class citizen, and if you want anything more complicated it's just a dumb debian underneath (which I do a bunch of stuff). I'm reallt happy with it.
[...] My UDM Pro felt like a total scam, with the IDS/IPS being nowhere close to advertised. [...] I also experienced strange bugs in the stack. I eventually moved to OPNSense but the router I bought from them died. [...] I use this with Ubiquiti APs connected to my Pi running the Ubiquiti management software, which works out quite well. [...]
[...] DNS is the only real dependency that can cause problems for me when the hypervisor reboots for updates. [...] Now I just buy a UDM Pro and forget about it!
[...] That’s a UniFi Dream Machine Pro, UniFi 24 port switch (powering two APs), 3x Dell R620s with a few SSDs and NVMe, and 2x Supermicros (one of which is the aforementioned backup server), each with a lot of spinners. [...]
[...] Also, I didn't realize my UDM Pro was kneecapped at 3-4Gbps IDS/IPS throughput. I think when I bought it I only had a 1 gig internet connection so it was overkill, but now I've got 10gig. [...]
[...] Oh man, having a 25U rack sounds really fun. [...] 2 UPSes (one for networking one for compute + storage) a JBOD with about 400TB raw in ZFS RAID10 a little intertech case with a supermicro board running TrueNAS (that connects to the JBOD) 3 to 6 NUCs depending on the usage, all running Talos, rook-ceph cluster on the NVMEs, all NUCs have a Sonnet Solo 10G Thunderbolt NIC 10 Gig unifi networking and a UDM Pro misc other stuff like a zima blade, a pikvm, shelves, fans, ISP modem, etc I'm not necessarily thinking about downsizing but the NUCs have been acting up and I've gotten tired of replacing them or their drives so I thought I'd maybe build a new machine to rule them all in terms of compute and if I only want one host then k8s starts making less sense. [...] I'm a professional k8s engineer I guess, so on the software side most of this comes naturally at this point.
[...] Their hardware is simple to manage and excellent for the low-ish price though! [...] the UDM-Pro which is a 10 Gbit capable router for €350, and the UCG-Ultra looks great for budget networks.
I recently encounter this as my ISP upgraded me to 10 Gbps over fiber: the UDM-PRO/SE does/can have a 10/2.5 Gbps WAN port over SPF+, but all the Ethernet ports go over to the COU via the same 1/2.5Gbps interface bottleneck [1]. [...]
[...] My UDM Pro seems to top out around 800mbit per UDP stream - pegged at 100% CPU on a single core. [...] Replaced UDM Pro with a pfsense machine. [...]
I do use this connected to a UDM Pro Max, but it's not really relevant what it goes to because the XGSPON does all of the heavy lifting, the device you insert the SFP into essentially treats it like an Ethernet connection.
Yeah mine solved once I got a UNVR as well but I would have rather paid for a better processor in the UDM Pro and not needed to buy a separate UNVR.
Right, but for example my fiber ONT only has an rj45 port so I'm stuck using one of these for the link to my UDM Pro. The router and my core switch use cheap DACs.
[...] However a UDM pro is a router (as well as other things). [...]
That's what google is showing me as well, but reading into it there seems to be a community of sysadmins who are frustrated that remote workers are asking for webcam/voice support that KVM's generally don't have. It seems like KVMs have historically targeted a market that wants to control many devices with keyboard/mouse/display only. What I'm trying to do is control a single device with all that + webcam/microphone tinypilot doesn't support webcam/mic ratarian Dominion KX IV-101 doesn't support microphone(2) or possibly (3)(4), and plan to route it through a UDM Pro for remote access (5)(6) 1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: I'm having trouble understanding how I would "Remote Desktop" into a KVM.
I honestly can't recall that ever being true for the controller, but it absolutely was true for the UDM/UDM-Pro on release and for quite a while after, so I guess it might have been true for the controller as well for a while around then too, I don't setup controllers that often.
[...] A UDM-Pro could be added to the mix but simply pushes the issue out. [...]
Didn’t work for me with safari and no lockdown mode. I do have significant blockers on UDM Pro with NextDNS though…
The claims, and the evidence
What the brand claims
No published claims on file for this product yet.
What owners report
“[...] I'm using the UDM Pro Max with an XGSPON ONU flashed with the community firmware from PON Wiki (see ) and the 2.5GbE port as my second WAN link to the Spectrum modem. [...] There's a short DAC cable connecting the UDM Pro Max to a Switch Pro XG 24-POE which serves 10GbE to the rest of the house. [...] Most of the devices in the house connect to WiFi served by the UniFi U7 Pro XGS APs, which take 10GbE w/ POE and give off WiFi 7. [...]”
after 8 monthsView on Hacker News“Unifi G4 Doorbell Pro [0] is a great self-hosted option. I've been very happy with mine over the last year, but I was already bought into the unifi ecosystem with a UDM Pro SE and U6 mesh APs. 0:”
after 1 yearView on Hacker News“[...] I was surprised, watching TV the other day, to randomly get a 1.2Gbps speedtest which is one of the faster ones I've seen on WiFi. (10gbps internet, UDM Pro, UDM enterprise 2.5Gbps switch for clients, PoE WiFi 7 APs on 6ghz). Honestly, I'd say overall 6ghz has been more trouble than it's worth. Flipping the switch to WPA2/3 as required by 6ghz broke all of my clients last year, so I had to revert and now I just have a separate SSID for clients I have the energy to manually retype the password into. [...] There were bugs last year in Apple's "Disable 6e" setting so it kept re-enabling itself. MLO was bad, so it would stick to 6ghz even when there was basically no usable signal. Over the course of the past year, it's gotten pretty tolerable, but sometimes I still wonder why I bother-- I'm pretty sure my real world performance would be better if I just turned 6ghz off again.”
after 1 yearView on Hacker News“a UDM pro is a router (as well as other things). [...] I bought a Cloud Fibre Gateway as everybody recommended Unifi. [...] Couldn't do any of that until I figured out a way to tether my phone to my OpenWRT router that the Unifi was supposed to replace, and wire them together over ethernet. [...]”
Common UniFi Dream Machine Pro problems
Issues at least two owners independently report.
- Build & durability3 mentionsView on Hacker News
“[...] My UDM Pro felt like a total scam, with the IDS/IPS being nowhere close to advertised. [...] I also experienced strange bugs in the stack. I eventually moved to OPNSense but the router I bought from them died. [...] I use this with Ubiquiti APs connected to my Pi running the Ubiquiti management software, which works out quite well. [...]”
- Performance2 mentionsView on Hacker News
“[...] InTune doesn't even list it as a supported VPN, and everything I see to deploy it suggests some kind of hack to bypass UAC for one specific app because the end-user software requires Admin permissions to startup and hook. When we use L2TP with UDM Pro we get 0.1Mbps across the wire from macOS and 20Mbps across the wire with Windows, and yet the same VPN server running on a Mikrotik will easily achieve 300Mbps. [...] I wish they would just stop telling everyone to switch to WG and fix the performance issue that is clearly Unifi specific. [...]”
- Software & AI4 mentionsView on Hacker News
“[...] InTune doesn't even list it as a supported VPN, and everything I see to deploy it suggests some kind of hack to bypass UAC for one specific app because the end-user software requires Admin permissions to startup and hook. When we use L2TP with UDM Pro we get 0.1Mbps across the wire from macOS and 20Mbps across the wire with Windows, and yet the same VPN server running on a Mikrotik will easily achieve 300Mbps. [...] I wish they would just stop telling everyone to switch to WG and fix the performance issue that is clearly Unifi specific. [...]”