Here at HostiFi, we get a lot of questions about what the differences are between the Ubiquiti routing products, such as the USG, USG Pro 4 and the new UXG. In this article we're going to leave out the UniFi OS Consoles as these cannot be added to HostiFi UniFi Controllers and the UDM Pro doesn't directly compare to the USG devices.

USG

Ubiquiti launched the original USG 3P back in 2014 and it served well as an entry level router and firewall for the majority of use cases. Obviously, like a lot of things some people need more, so sometime later on Ubiquiti launched the more powerful USG Pro 4. In terms of features in the initial first few years, it did leave a lot to be desired, with not many VPN options and the lack of viewing DHCP leases within the UniFi controller.

In terms of specs, the USG has a dual-core, 500 MHz MIPS64 processor

In earlier units, the port that is now WAN2/LAN2 was labelled as a VoIP port, it had a VoIP PBX included initially that was FreeSwitch based. However, shortly after being launched, this feature was removed and the port can be used as a secondary WAN port for failover or load-balancing or as LAN2.

As time went on, Ubiquiti added new features to UniFi with IPS/IDS security detection, which did put a lot of strain on the USG and limited its maximum capacity to 85mbps with every feature activated.

In 2023, Ubiquiti still has the USG listed on the store, but has been out of stock for a long time. You have to search for it to find it, instead Ubiquiti is recommending the UXG which can be adopted to HostiFi controllers and the Cloud Key Gen2 Plus.

Current versions of UniFi still support the USG.

USG Pro 4

The USG Pro 4 is essentially the same feature wise as the smaller USG, you have more ports with the addition of two SFP ports which can be used for LAN2 or WAN2 and thanks to a more powerful CPU, the maximum capacity when IDS/IPS is enabled it can handle 250mbps. While the USG Pro has more ports, with an equivalent LAN2 and WAN2 port, only one can be used at each time. For example, if an RJ45 port is used for WAN2, the WAN2 SFP port cannot be used for anything else.

Like the USG, the USG Pro is also still listed on the store, but has been out of stock for a long time. You have to search for it to find it, instead Ubiquiti is recommending the UXG which can be adopted to HostiFi controllers and the Cloud Key Gen2 Plus.

Current versions of UniFi still support the USG Pro 4.

UXG Pro

The UXG is the newest standalone routing product, that isn't a UniFi OS Console. It was announced in 2020 and was in the beta store for around two years, being out of stock for most of that time. Here at HostiFi, we have covered the setup process and feature set extensively and these can be added to HostiFi UniFi Controllers without an issue.

In terms of features and performance, the UXG is on par with the UDM Pro. The CPU is the same unit, but due to having no need to run applications, Ubiquiti has given it less RAM than the UDM Pro, 4GB vs 2GB DDR4. With the ports, the UXG Pro is a lot more flexible than the USG Pro 4, we have four ports here and all of them can be used. Two RJ45 ports and two 10G SFP+ ports and with newer versions of UniFi, the ports can be remapped.

With routing, there are a lot more features, with support for WireGuard VPN, L2TP, Teleport, policy routing and load balancing but it does lack auto IPsec site-to-site VPNs, something that the USG does support but it is understood that this will be added at some stage.

Conclusion

If you are after a Ubiquiti routing device, we would recommend the UXG Pro. It is very quiet to operate, a lot more so than the USG Pro 4 which was quite noisy. The feature set is solid with more improbvemtns being worked on and of course, it can be added to HostiFi UniFi Controllers.

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HostiFi

HostiFi provides hosting for both Ubiquiti and TP-Link software-defined-networking (SDN) applications, with servers for UniFi, UISP and Omada. We also offer professional networking consulting, with HostiFi Pro.

If you run into any issues, send an email to support@hostifi.com or contact us via live chat.