VyOS is a complete network operating system, built on Debian, that turns an ordinary server or a virtual machine into a router, a firewall and a VPN gateway. Its story begins with Vyatta, a system launched in 2006 that came in a free edition and a paid one. When Brocade bought Vyatta in 2012 and dropped the free edition, the community took the last free release, 6.6R1, and started VyOS in 2013. In 2014 the maintainers founded a company, first named Sentrium and later reorganised under the VyOS brand, to fund development through support, consulting and subscriptions. The code remains published under free licences, GPL and LGPL depending on the repository.
What VyOS is for
What sets VyOS apart is its unified command-line interface. Every feature is configured with the same grammar, in a tree that you edit and then apply in one go with a commit command, with the option to roll back or to schedule a commit that cancels itself if you lose access to the device. Anyone who has worked on a Juniper router will recognise this logic. The same configuration is reachable through an HTTP API, which opens the door to Ansible, Terraform or home-grown scripts.
Beneath that configuration layer, VyOS assembles proven free software. The routing protocols, BGP, OSPF, IS-IS and RIP, come from FRRouting, to which the VyOS documentation refers directly for its BGP implementation. Firewall and NAT rely on the Linux kernel mechanisms. VPNs cover IPsec, WireGuard and OpenVPN. DHCP and DNS servers, quality of service, load balancing and high availability through VRRP complete the picture. The whole thing installs on a physical x86-64 machine, inside a hypervisor or on the main public clouds, where the company offers pay-as-you-go images.
Compared with its neighbours in this software library, the difference is clear. FRRouting on its own only provides routing, with no firewall, no VPN and no coherent configuration system: VyOS wraps it into a finished product. Cumulus Linux, now NVIDIA Cumulus, and Arista EOS are tied to hardware switches, whereas VyOS runs on any server. In a GNS3 or EVE-NG lab, VyOS is in fact a very common image for playing the role of an edge router.
Who is it for?
VyOS suits small and medium businesses that want a site router without buying an appliance, hosting providers and cloud teams that need a gateway between virtual networks, service providers that roll out access routers in volume, and students learning routing on a lab topology. The documentation sets the minimum at 4 GB of memory and 10 GB of storage, which remains modest.
Two constraints must be accepted, though. The first is the lack of a graphical interface: everything goes through the command line or the API, which will put off anyone looking for a point-and-click firewall. The second lies in the distribution model. LTS images, hand-tested and recommended for production, are reserved for subscribers, with a Corporate subscription listed at 10,000 US dollars a year on vyos.io when we checked, or for the beneficiaries of the free programmes described below. For personal use or a lab, the free rolling release is enough, but it is not tested manually and its syntax can change from one image to the next.
Download VyOS safely
Official images live on vyos.net and vyos.io. The nightly builds page offers a fresh rolling ISO image for amd64 every day, together with a minisign signature to verify before installing, since the documentation states that GPG verification was removed in version 1.4.3. VyOS Stream, whose latest image was 2026.03 when we checked, is a quarterly preview of the next LTS and is free as well. LTS images, 1.5.1 and 1.4.5 announced on 7 September 2026, are downloaded from the support portal with a subscription, or free of charge for code contributors, educational institutions, non-profit organisations and emergency services, who apply through vyos.net.
Because the source code is free, anyone can rebuild an LTS image themselves, and that is exactly where caution is needed: third-party sites distribute recompiled LTS ISOs with no signature and no guarantee about what was added along the way. A VyOS LTS image offered as a free download outside the VyOS Networks portal is not an official image.
Frequently asked questions
Is VyOS free?
The source code is free, and the rolling release and VyOS Stream images can be downloaded at no cost. LTS images require a paid subscription, except for contributors, educational institutions, non-profits and emergency services, who can obtain free access on request.
What is the difference between VyOS and FRRouting?
FRRouting is a suite of routing protocols that you install on an existing Linux system. VyOS is a complete operating system that embeds FRRouting for routing and adds firewall, NAT, VPN, DHCP, DNS and a unified configuration interface on top.
Does VyOS run on Windows?
Not as a program. VyOS is an operating system in its own right, but it installs easily in a virtual machine under Hyper-V, VirtualBox or VMware, or inside a GNS3 or EVE-NG lab on a Windows workstation.
