UniFi vs. eero: There's only one good option for homelabbers like me

Published Oct 9, 2026, 11:31 AM EDT Patrick Campanale has been in the tech space for well over a decade, specializing in PC/gaming news and reviews, as well as maker-focused products to build small businesses. With a start in technology back in 2010 surrounding the Palm/webOS ecosystem, Patrick spent his formative years developing mobile applications as well as blogging for various publications, eventually leading to starting his own website in 2014. After running a technology blog for a few years, he stepped out of that role and into the world of high-end custom PC manufacturing and building, with a focus on YouTube video production and overclocking. Then, in 2017, Patrick joined the 9to5Toys team as an editor/writer/reviewer with over 14,000 articles being published during his time there, ranging from deals and roundups to in-depth reviews on the latest technology, video games, 3D printers, and more. In his free time, Patrick loves to create projects from wood using various robots and methods, including leveraging the technologies of CNCs and lasers. If Patrick isn't working on a computer or playing video games, he's likely in his 2-car garage workshop creating something unique. In addition to all this, Patrick is also the media director at his local church where he feels God has called him to serve, and he loves every minute of it. There are two big players in the home networking space—eero and UniFi. They both target different audiences, and I have extensive experience with both. I've chosen UniFi to run my homelab because, at this point, it's the only good option out there for my needs. Here's why I use UniFi and why I left eero in the dust. Eero is a great plug-and-play system It's simple by design The first networking system I ever purchased was eero Pro back in 2017. I loved my eero Pro setup. It was simple, it gave me more options than the other routers I had used in the past, and it looked great. The simplicity of eero is what drew me to it initially. Back then, I was tinkering with computers, but mostly building custom systems for gaming. I wasn't homelabbing yet, so I didn't have any more advanced needs. The most advanced I got with networking was forwarding port 32400 for Plex. This made eero the easy choice for me. Today, while I've looked into eero, it's just too simple for what I need to do. I love how simple eero is, and I've recommended it to friends and family often in the past. However, it just doesn't suit my needs anymore and I've started recommending UniFi to people. The plug-and-play design of eero just doesn't stack up to my needs for a homelabber like me anymore, and that's why I switched to UniFi. UniFi is more feature-packed by design But it definitely adds a lot of complication I first heard about UniFi in the mid 2010s when it was definitely more of an enterprise solution. I thought it was cool, and it seemed like it could be fun to tinker with, but it was not something I was going to deploy in my home. Fast forward to 2020 and my wife and I just bought our first home, and I was still using my eero Pro system I had owned for a few years. It wasn't giving me the gigabit speeds I was paying for, and UniFi still wasn't affordable. So I sold the eero Pro system and just used my AT&T-provided router for a while. Eventually, a friend of mine offered to trade a cutting board (I do woodworking) for his AmpliFi Alien router, which is a more consumer-focused brand under Ubiquiti. I jumped at the chance and was instantly hooked. Then, in early 2025, UniFi launched the Dream Router 7, a long-awaited update to its Dream Router line and that's when I finally decided to take the full plunge on UniFi. I've not looked back since. UniFi is a much more complicated system than eero. If eero is Windows, UniFi is Arch Linux. If eero is iPhone, UniFi is the most modded version of Android you've ever seen. I know that's a lot of talk, but what does UniFi actually do differently than eero? Well, to start with, UniFi is a full ecosystem of products, not just a few models of routers. With UniFi, you can set up your network however you want. If you want a plug-and-play system, there's the UniFi Express 7 or Dream Router 7. If you want something a bit more enterprise-ready, there's the Dream Machine line. UniFi also focuses on things like wireless access points and wired security cameras instead of full-on routers in each location. It's built to have one main router and then everything else is lighter weight down the line. This is because UniFi was built for enterprise first, and consumers came afterward. So, everything about UniFi is built for large-scale deployments, it just happens to work in small-scale too. However, my favorite part about UniFi is the amount of control it gives you. With eero, you don't even get a web dashboard—not really, at least. The entire eero experience is designed to be handled from a phone. With UniFi, it's the opposite. You can do some stuff on your phone, but the majority of UniFi setup needs to take place using the web portal. UniFi also gives me way more access to settings and configuration options than eero does. I can choose specific Wi-Fi bands, create multiple VLANs, and even have up to eight Wi-Fi SSIDs broadcast from a single access point. UniFi Dream Router 7 9/10 Brand Unifi Range 1,750 square feet The Unifi Dream Router 7 is a full-fledged network appliance offering NVR capabilities, fully managed switching, a built-in firewall, VLANs, and more. With four 2.5G Ethernet ports (one with PoE+) and a 10G SFP+ port, the Unifi Dream Router 7 also features dual WAN capabilities should you have two ISP connections. It includes a 64GB microSD card for IP camera storage, but can be upgraded for more storage if needed. With Wi-Fi 7, you'll be able to reach up to a theoretical 5.7 Gbps network speed when using the 10G SFP+ port, or 2.5 Gbps when using Ethernet. My homelab couldn't function the way it does without UniFi A managed network is just something Eero doesn't do At the end of the day, my homelab simply requires the more advanced features that UniFi offers. One of my favorite features that UniFi has that most other platforms don't is being able to route any external port to any internal port. So, I can route port 8475 to port 37, for instance. eero supports this now, but it didn't when I was using it several years ago. This is very useful when port forwarding services like HTTP/HTTPS, as when you use a system like Unraid or another platform that utilizes ports 80/443 for its own management pages, you need to run things like Nginx Proxy Manager on other ports. I've used this functionality quite a bit, actually. However, I also heavily rely on the managed network side of things. While eero lets you reserve IP addresses, UniFi goes a step further with proper VLAN (virtual local area network) support. This allows me to create a secondary "network" within my network called "untrusted" that I use when I'm plugging in an untrusted system. I do IT work at my church and people have brought me virus-riddled computers before. Plugging them into a normal network is a nightmare scenario as a potential virus could jump to other networked computers. With a VLAN, I can segregate a specific Ethernet port on my switch to go to that untrusted network which only has access to the outside world and nothing on my local network. Plus, the firewall options on UniFi are far more advanced than what eero offers. While I haven't dove super deep into the firewall options on UniFi yet, I love that I can do it. That's the thing with UniFi. If something is possible to do with a network, chances are, it can do it. There might be some very outlier functionality that it can't do, but it definitely can do just about anything you or I would need to do in a homelab. The right networking setup can make or break a homelab Having the right network is crucial to a homelab. You can homelab on almost any networking system. You could even homelab just by networking two computers together—that's how they did it in the early days. But, having a proper networking setup like UniFi provides is crucial to my homelab at this point, and I couldn't imagine not having it.