Ubiquiti UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber vs Palo Alto Networks PA-7500: Specs & Price Comparison

Ubiquiti UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber

★ 5.0 Value Score

Firewall Throughput: Not published by Ubiquiti; 5 Gbps IDS/IPS-secured routing throughput is the only headline figure (reviewer and retailer listings)
Threat Prevention Throughput: 5 Gbps IDS/IPS
IPsec VPN Throughput: Not published
Max Sessions: Not published; 500+ simultaneous users and 4,000-entry MAC address table
New Sessions/sec: Not published
Interfaces: 2x 10G SFP+; 1x 10GbE RJ45 (10G/2.5G/1G); 4x 2.5GbE RJ45 (2.5G/1G/100M/10M); 2 of the 6 WAN-capable ports are default WAN (1x 10G SFP+ and 1x 10GbE RJ45), with the other ports selectable as WAN
Form Factor: Compact desktop; 212.8 x 127.6 x 30 mm; 675 g without SSD
CPU / RAM: Quad-core ARM Cortex-A73 at 2.2 GHz / 3 GB RAM
Storage: Optional NVMe SSD up to 2 TB (NVR storage)
PoE Budget: 30W total from one PoE+ port (port 4)
Max Power Consumption: 29.4W excluding PoE output

✔ Pros: Lowest-cost Ubiquiti gateway with 5 Gbps IDS/IPS, rated above the UDM-SE's 3.5 Gbps at a lower launch price ($279 MSRP vs. $499); Multi-gig flexibility with 10GBASE-T, dual SFP+ and four 2.5GbE ports; Compact desktop design with optional NVMe storage for UniFi Protect/NVR use; Supports site-to-site VPN plus OpenVPN, WireGuard and L2TP server functions, with integrated PoE+ for one device; Managed through the UniFi Network controller with 500+ simultaneous user capacity
✘ Cons: No official routing, IPsec or WireGuard throughput figures published by Ubiquiti; community WireGuard numbers (around 400-500 Mbps) are unverified; Only one PoE+ output port (30W total) versus eight PoE ports on the UDM-SE; Lower device and user capacity and less storage expansion than the UDM-SE; No published IPsec tunnel or concurrent session limits; Reseller prices now often run above the launch MSRP (about $320-$346 USD at US resellers)
Est. Price: $279 - $346

Palo Alto Networks PA-7500

★ 3.2 Value Score

Firewall Throughput: 1,500 Gbps (App-ID enabled, Palo Alto spec sheet; resellers agree)
Threat Prevention Throughput: 1,440 Gbps (Palo Alto spec sheet; resellers agree)
IPsec VPN Throughput: 407 Gbps per Palo Alto spec sheet as reported in search summaries; a reseller lists 850 Gbps. Unverified, because the PDF could not be parsed
Max Sessions: 440,000,000 concurrent sessions
New Sessions/sec: 7,200,000
Interfaces: Modular: nine card slots holding MPC/NPC/DPC front-slot cards plus SFC switch fabric cards. Port counts depend on installed cards; not verified
Form Factor: 14RU chassis, 24.4 in H x 31.0 in D x 17.4 in W, up to 460 lb depending on configuration; 10 hot-swap AC or DC power supplies

✔ Pros: Very high App-ID and threat prevention throughput in the 1.4 to 1.5 Tbps class, aimed at large data centers and carriers; Modular, field-replaceable card architecture (DPC, NPC, MPC, SFC) allows capacity to be scaled by adding cards; Redundant hot-swappable power supplies and fans suit high-availability deployments; Very high concurrent session capacity (440M) and 7.2M new sessions per second; Part of the ML-powered Palo Alto Networks NGFW platform with the full PAN-OS feature set
✘ Cons: Very high acquisition cost: a single DPC-A card alone is listed around $272,000 to $302,000 at one reseller, and the full chassis is not publicly priced, so price_max is an estimate rather than a quote; Large footprint at 14RU and up to 460 lb, requiring data-center rack space, cooling, and floor loading planning; Heavy power and cooling requirements; Spec figures conflict across sources (IPsec VPN in particular), so verify against the official Palo Alto Networks datasheet before procurement; Official datasheet and docs pages were not reachable in this research, so some figures come from reseller and third-party copies; Port configuration is fully dependent on the cards ordered, which adds complexity to quoting and ordering; Overkill for most enterprise sites compared with smaller PA-Series models
Est. Price: $272,250 - $1,500,000

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