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Portnox Cloud RADIUS vs. FreeRADIUS: Frequently Asked Questions

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    What are Portnox Cloud RADIUS and FreeRADIUS?

    Portnox Cloud RADIUS is a cloud-native, fully managed RADIUS-as-a-service offering. It’s part of the broader Portnox Cloud platform, purpose-built to support modern authentication use cases like passwordless login, device trust, and Zero Trust access policies—without on-prem infrastructure.

    FreeRADIUS, on the other hand, is a powerful, open-source RADIUS server widely used for wireless, VPN, and wired authentication. It’s extremely flexible—but must be manually installed, configured, and maintained by the user.

    How do they differ in terms of deployment and maintenance?

    Feature Portnox Cloud RADIUS FreeRADIUS
    Deployment Fully cloud-based SaaS Self-hosted (on-prem or cloud VM)
    Setup Time Minutes Hours to days
    Maintenance Managed by Portnox Admin is responsible
    Updates Automatic Manual upgrades and patches

    Portnox Cloud requires no server provisioning, redundancy planning, or patch management—ever. FreeRADIUS gives you control, but that comes with operational overhead.

    Which one is more scalable and reliable?

    Portnox Cloud RADIUS is built on a modern cloud-native architecture with high availability and scalability out of the box. Redundancy, failover, and load balancing are baked in.

    FreeRADIUS can scale—but only if you architect it correctly (e.g., configure load balancers, set up clustering, monitor health checks). It’s powerful but not inherently fault-tolerant.

    Which is better for modern security standards like Zero Trust and passwordless authentication?

    Portnox wins here hands down. It supports:

    • Native passwordless access

    • Device posture-based policies

    • Entra ID, Okta, and Google Workspace integration

    • Conditional access enforcement

    FreeRADIUS can support some of these—but only through significant manual integration using EAP, TLS certs, and sometimes writing custom modules.

    Which is easier to use?

    Aspect Portnox Cloud RADIUS FreeRADIUS
    Admin UI Modern, web-based CLI or config file only
    Policy Creation Guided workflows Manual config
    Monitoring & Logs Built-in dashboards, alerts Requires external syslog/SIEM
    Onboarding Users Directory integrations (Entra ID, Okta) Manual or scripted user setup

    If you want to avoid managing config files with curly braces and semicolons, Portnox is far easier to operate.

    How do integrations compare?

    Portnox Cloud RADIUS:

    • Plug-and-play with identity providers

    • Integrated NAC & device risk scoring

    • Native support for Conditional Access

    FreeRADIUS:

    • Can be integrated with almost anything—if you have time

    • Integration with IDPs like Entra ID or Duo = possible, but manual

    • NAC requires third-party tooling

    In short: FreeRADIUS is endlessly flexible, but Portnox is ready on Day 1.

    What about logging, compliance, and reporting?

    Portnox Cloud RADIUS includes:

    • Centralized cloud logging

    • Retention and compliance controls

    • Export to SIEMs

    • Alerting and dashboards

    FreeRADIUS supports logging via syslog, but you must:

    • Set it up manually

    • Pipe logs to external storage/SIEM

    • Manage retention/compliance yourself