Portmaster
200 likes
Free, open-source privacy suite monitoring all network activity, blocking unwanted connections, using trusted filter lists for ads and malware, enforcing DNS-over-TLS, providing custom app and global rules, and supporting advanced privacy management.
EUPlatforms
- Windows
- Linux
Features
Portmaster News & Activities
Highlights All activities
Recent News
No news, maybe you know any news worth sharing?
Share a News TipRecent activities
DeinitLabs added Portmaster as alternative to NetworkTuna
R0sbif added Portmaster as alternative to Aegis-eBPF- Usnyn liked Portmaster
- freashuping liked Portmaster
- g1eds0n liked Portmaster
- theelitegamer121 added Portable as a feature to Portmaster
- Raphty added No Logs as a feature to Portmaster
harbor_privacy added Portmaster as alternative to Harbor Adblock
DevBen added Portmaster as alternative to PEShield- heheudueueh liked Portmaster
Featured in Lists
The ultimate list of apps/services for better Security, Privacy & Anonymity; Defense against Surveillance. What...
List by Sooraj Sathyanarayanan with 199 apps, updated
All your FOSS cravings, mainly for Windows.
List by Tybyte with 31 apps, updated
Clean, small, use! For activation use: [https://massgrave.dev/](https://massgrave.dev/) or...
List by littlebighorse with 53 apps, updated
What is Portmaster?
Portmaster Videos
Portmaster information
Developed by
Safing ICS Technologies GmbH Licensing
Open Source (GPL-3.0) and Freemium product.Pricing
Subscription ranging between $5 and $11 per month + free version with limited functionality.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.2Alternatives
40 alternatives listedBadge
Get an embeddable badge for PortmasterSupported Languages
AlternativeTo Categories
Security & Privacy, Network & Admin, Web BrowsersGitHub repository
- 13,742 Stars
- 578 Forks
- 103 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
It's not a bad app, but it is quite bloated, and lacks useful features like anonymized DNS through DNSCrypt currently. It would actually use less system resources to have Simple Wall + a dns service like YogaDNS, unbound, pi-hole. And you can have better ad-blocking with a client adblocker like Zen ad-blocker (and of course browser ad-blockers are even better, being able to block scripts and content filters).
It does have pretty granular control over connection, so that's good. But not as easy or intuitive as Simple Wall.
The paid SPN is a cool idea, so this could be an all-in-one thing. If they were to implement anonymized DNS, this would definitely be my choice.
Portmaster also, by default, adds a bunch of filter lists that are redundant, which will slow down your connections by a bit.
Finally, and perhaps most damaging, with Windows firewall or Simple Wall, you already have a robust firewall. Someone can reply to this comment if they have a good answer, but I don't see how adding to the kernel improves upon it. If anything it makes it more difficult to secure.
Bloated, Confusing and Annoying. These are my first impressions of this software, unless you're a control freak I don't think you would find this software good for daily drive, I would recommend Fort (by tnodir & Contributors) or SimpleWall (By Henrypp & Contributors)
If you like these modern apps that consume 500Mb of ram. My eyesight doesn't allow me to see dark themes with a lot of white letters. Heavy interface with annoying notifications and guides, which nobody read. From the first launch it sets some dns (?) settings that can be not reachable from the place where you are, and they don't revert it back until you find these settings among these convoluted small letters in the darkness.
Great insight into individual app connections. Allows for extremely granular control. First-class support for DoH, DoT, and DoQ. Overall, great app!
Easy to use and set, awesome controls, excellent on free-tier already, but great premium features.
It works like a charm. Great app!
I like the concept of Portmaster mixing firewall with adblocking rules, however Portmaster is not ready to be used on a productivity PC. For starters Portmaster crashes the host computer, a lot. The GUI process also tends to become unresponsive and will have to restart for it to be operative again, which is a minor pain. The learning curve is somewhat steep but is manageable. The features shown to you in the UI are a mishmash of things that should be free by default (network activity history) but are not and things that want to upsell you. In short, feels like a classic "free" antivirus. If you don't mind your computer crashing from time to time and would like to use it, go for it.
Edit: Safing has been acquired recently by a VPN company called IVPN but their own page about Ownership does not reflect this acquisition