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The Gateway

The Gateway vs OpenWrt

Short answer

Section titled “Short answer”

Choose OpenWrt when you need firmware for a supported router, Wi-Fi and switch management, or its open package ecosystem. Choose The Gateway when you already have a Linux gateway and want one control plane for per-device routing, tunnels, DNS, fail-closed policy, splitting, mesh, and federation.

They solve different layers and can coexist.

Choose OpenWrt when

Section titled “Choose OpenWrt when”
  • Your device is a supported consumer router and OpenWrt should own the hardware.
  • You need radio, SSID, VLAN, switch, and package management in one firmware.
  • An open-source stack is a hard requirement.
  • You prefer assembling routing and VPN behaviour from standard packages.

Choose The Gateway when

Section titled “Choose The Gateway when”
  • Your gateway runs ordinary Linux on a Raspberry Pi, mini-PC, or VPS.
  • Policies should follow named devices and groups instead of hand-maintained firewall rules.
  • A protected policy must fail closed across tunnel and daemon restarts.
  • You want traffic splitting, privacy levels, bridge proxies, or multi-gateway policy federation as first-class concepts.

Can they be used together?

Section titled “Can they be used together?”

Yes. A common design keeps OpenWrt as the access point and switch controller while a Linux box running The Gateway becomes the routed next hop. This preserves OpenWrt’s hardware support and moves policy enforcement to the dedicated gateway.

Avoid running two independent DHCP servers or two devices that both assume they own the default route. Define the routing boundary explicitly.

Important trade-off

Section titled “Important trade-off”

OpenWrt is open source and has a much larger hardware and package ecosystem. The Gateway is private Linux software with a narrower, policy-focused scope. If source availability or direct router-firmware support is mandatory, OpenWrt is the better fit.

Sources and next steps

Section titled “Sources and next steps”