CleanBrowsing publishes all pricing on its website. You can sign up and start using the service in minutes without talking to a sales representative. Plans start at $59.99 per year with no hidden fees and no contracts.

Cisco Umbrella does not publish pricing publicly. Getting a quote requires a sales conversation, and contracts are typically annual. Based on industry reports, Cisco Umbrella pricing typically runs into the thousands of dollars per year, even for smaller organizations.

If you value knowing exactly what you will pay before you commit, CleanBrowsing's self-service model is the clear winner.

CleanBrowsing is a focused DNS filtering service. It does one thing and does it well: filtering content at the DNS layer for families, schools, businesses, and Wi-Fi providers.

Cisco Umbrella is a full SASE platform that bundles DNS filtering with a secure web gateway (SWG), cloud access security broker (CASB), remote browser isolation, and more. These are powerful tools for large enterprises, but they come with enterprise-level complexity and pricing.

If you only need DNS-based content filtering, why pay for features you do not use? CleanBrowsing delivers the DNS filtering capabilities most organizations need at a fraction of the cost.

OpenDNS Home is still available as a free tier, but it has seen limited development since the Cisco acquisition. It lacks encrypted DNS support and offers only basic content filtering with limited customization.

CleanBrowsing's free tier includes three distinct filter profiles (Family, Adult, and Security), full encrypted DNS support (DoH, DoT, DNSCrypt), and requires no account creation or signup. It is one of the most capable free DNS filtering services available today.

For anyone looking for a free DNS filtering solution, CleanBrowsing provides significantly more functionality out of the box than OpenDNS Home.

Cisco Umbrella benefits from Cisco Talos, one of the largest commercial threat intelligence teams in the world. Talos processes massive volumes of telemetry data and provides industry-leading malware and phishing protection.

CleanBrowsing maintains curated threat feeds that are updated every 3 hours. Our categorization engine integrates community feedback, and we keep ourselves honest by making our categorization publicly available at categorify.org.

Cisco Talos is undeniably powerful, but CleanBrowsing provides solid, reliable threat protection at a fraction of the cost. For most organizations, our threat coverage is more than sufficient.

Cisco Umbrella is a powerful platform, but that power comes with complexity. Full deployment typically requires installing agents on endpoints, integrating with existing Cisco infrastructure, and having dedicated IT staff to manage the platform.

CleanBrowsing deploys in minutes by simply changing your DNS settings. No agents are required for basic filtering. For organizations that need roaming clients, they are included in all paid plans at no additional charge.

If fast, simple deployment matters to you -- whether for a home network, a school, or a business -- CleanBrowsing gets you up and running without the overhead.