Picking a UniFi Cloud Gateway in 2026 comes down to three numbers: the IPS throughput Ubiquiti rates, the ports you’ll actually plug into, and how many cameras you want to record. The four boxes most buyers compare are the UCG Fiber, the UCG Max, the UDM Pro Max and the new UDM-Beast, and their prices run from $279 to $1,499.
The catch is that the cheapest of the four rates the same 5 Gbps of inspected traffic as a box that costs twice as much. So the right gateway depends less on speed than on whether you need a rack, drive bays for UniFi Protect, or 10GbE to many hosts at once.
We checked every spec on the Ubiquiti techspecs pages and every list price on the US UI store on October 20, 2026, then checked Amazon offers on October 21. The measured numbers come from the reviews we name, and we found no independent IPS-on test with a stated method for either Dream Machine.
UniFi Cloud Gateway comparison at a glance
| Gateway | Rated IPS | Ports | Protect cameras (4K) | Storage | Max power | UI list price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UCG Fiber | 5 Gbps | 2x 10G SFP+, 1x 10GbE, 4x 2.5GbE | 5 | NVMe slot, none included | 29.4 W, excluding PoE | $279 |
| UCG Max | 2.3 Gbps | 5x 2.5GbE | 5 | 512 GB NVMe included | 16.1 W | $279 |
| UDM Pro Max | 5 Gbps | 2x 10G SFP+, 1x 2.5GbE, 8x 1GbE | 15 | 2x 3.5-inch bays | 60 W | $599 |
| UDM-Beast | 25 Gbps | 2x 25G SFP28, 2x 10G SFP+, 8x 10GbE, 2x 1GbE | 40 | 2x 3.5-inch bays | 100 W | $1,499 |
Every price above is the base figure. The UI store now adds a memory surcharge of about 10 percent at checkout, which takes the UCG Fiber to $307 and the UDM-Beast to $1,651. None of the four has built-in Wi-Fi, and only the UCG Fiber has a PoE port, so plan for a separate switch and access points with any of them.
Which gateway fits which network
We’d pick by the internet plan first, then by storage and rack needs. Each line below names the gateway and the reason it wins in that situation:
- UCG Max: a plan under 2 Gbps, a desk rather than a rack, and a few Protect cameras on the included 512 GB SSD.
- UCG Fiber: a 2 to 10 Gbps plan or a fiber ONT (5 Gbps with IPS on), at the same $279, with a 10G SFP+ and a 10GbE port for the WAN.
- UDM Pro Max: a rack, a RAID 1 recorder for up to 15 4K cameras, or Shadow Mode failover between two gateways.
- UDM-Beast: more than 5 Gbps of inspected traffic, 10GbE copper to many hosts, or 25G uplinks to a core switch.
If none of those fits, the right answer is probably a cheaper gateway further down this guide. Most homelabs on a gigabit plan don’t need any of the four, and the UCG Ultra at $129 rates 1 Gbps of IPS.
Rated IPS throughput against measured routing
Ubiquiti rates every gateway by IDS/IPS throughput and publishes no figure for plain routing. Dong Knows Tech charted all four in its UDM-Beast review, and its method runs gateways without any security or traffic-related features enabled, so the numbers show routing headroom, not inspected speed:
| Gateway | Ubiquiti IPS rating | Measured routing, security off | Link used |
|---|---|---|---|
| UCG Fiber | 5 Gbps | 8,904 Mbps | 10GBASE-T or SFP+ |
| UCG Max | 2.3 Gbps | 2,362 Mbps | 2.5GBASE-T |
| UDM Pro Max | 5 Gbps | 6,939 Mbps | SFP+ |
| UDM-Beast | 25 Gbps | 9,496 Mbps | 10GBASE-T, limited by the 10G clients |
The UCG Fiber routed faster than the UDM Pro Max in that chart. ServeTheHome also pushed it to 10 Gbps WAN to LAN and 20 Gbps bidirectional with default firewall rules. The UDM-Beast figure is capped by the test clients, so its 25 Gbps rating is still unproven by any review we found. With IPS on, treat the Ubiquiti rating as the ceiling you’ll plan around, since nobody has published independent numbers that beat it.
Inspection also depends on what you switch on. ServeTheHome ran its attack library through a UCG Fiber on default firewall rules, without the $99 a year CyberSecure subscription, and reported that virtually everything made it through. That shows how little an out-of-the-box gateway blocks, so enable IPS and decide on CyberSecure before you count on the box for protection.
UCG Fiber: the default pick for fast internet
The UCG Fiber is the gateway we’d recommend to most homelab buyers, because it rates 5 Gbps of IPS for $279 and takes a 10G fiber line directly. It routes a 10G line for the same price as the UCG Max, which tops out at 2.5GbE.
Its spec sheet lists two 10G SFP+ cages, one 10GbE RJ45 port, four 2.5GbE ports and one PoE+ port with a 30 W budget. An NVMe slot handles Protect recording. ServeTheHome measured 6 to 6.3 W at idle and called the unit virtually silent at 1 m. It also found a fan glued to the board, so the box is not fanless as some listings claim. The base model ships with no SSD. The store sells 1 TB and 2 TB options that include the drive and tray, and a drive you supply yourself needs the $19 tray.
Three things should give you pause. NASCompares reports uploads of 400 to 600 Mbps on symmetric gigabit plans when the 10GbE RJ45 port connects straight to some ONTs, and firmware fixes have helped only partly. In separate synthetic tests, ServeTheHome saw connections fail at 1,536 simulated users in an app mix and a hard lock at 2,048 in an HTTP test. Ubiquiti rates the box for 500+ clients, so that’s a stress result, not a household limit, but it matters for a busy office. PON SFP modules are hit and miss, and one owner found the Ubiquiti-branded UF-GP-C+ did not link, so confirm the module your ISP supplies before you retire the ONT.
UCG Max: the quiet desk box under 2 Gbps
The UCG Max costs the same $279 as the UCG Fiber but trades the 10G ports for five 2.5GbE ports and an included 512 GB SSD. It suits a plan under 2 Gbps where you want Protect recording out of the box.
Ubiquiti now rates it at 2.3 Gbps of IPS on current UniFi OS releases. Older reviews and the original datasheet still say 1.5 Gbps, so check the date on anything you read. Dong Knows Tech measured 2,362 Mbps with security off, which is the 2.5GbE port running flat out. The no-storage UCG Max NS was $199 but sold out on October 20, with a restock date of October 27.
Heat is the trade-off. Mighty Gadget wrote that its unit typically reports 73°C and that other owners have seen 90°C or more. That is not surprising in a plastic box with limited venting and no fan. Ubiquiti rates it for 30+ managed devices and 300+ clients, the lowest of the four, so it is the first one you’d outgrow.
UDM Pro Max: storage and failover in a rack
The UDM Pro Max is a storage and redundancy purchase, not a speed upgrade. It rates the same 5 Gbps of IPS as the UCG Fiber at more than twice the price. You buy it for the rack form factor, the two 3.5-inch drive bays and Shadow Mode.
Two bays let Protect record to a RAID 1 pair, and the Ubiquiti spec sheet rates 50 HD, 25 2K or 15 4K cameras. The compact boxes stop at five 4K cameras. Shadow Mode pairs two of these gateways so the second takes over if the first fails, and neither compact box lists it. Dong Knows Tech measured nearly 9,000 Mbps from a 10 Gbps fiber plan, so routing speed is not the limit.
The ports are the weak spot. Eight of them are 1GbE and only one is 2.5GbE, so Wi-Fi 7 access points and NAS boxes need a multi-gig switch behind it. It also has no PoE. Dong Knows Tech measured about 900 Wh a day with two drives fitted, roughly 37.5 W on average, or about three times the 24-hour average it measured on the UCG Fiber.
UDM-Beast: inspected traffic past 5 Gbps
The UDM-Beast, which Ubiquiti calls the Dream Machine Beast, is the only one of the four that rates more than 5 Gbps of IPS. It makes sense when you inspect a 10 Gbps internet line, or when your core switch needs 10GbE copper and 25G uplinks from the gateway itself.
Its spec sheet lists 25 Gbps of IPS, eight 10GbE ports, two 10G SFP+ and two 25G SFP28 cages, plus an eight-core Arm CPU with 16 GB of memory. Ubiquiti rates it for 750+ managed devices and 7,500+ clients. Dong Knows Tech measured 9,496 Mbps on 10G clients and about 1,140 Wh a day with two drives, or roughly 47.5 W. It found the box relatively quiet for one with four fans. James Kilby runs one on a 2.3 Gbps line and reports it handles that with ease.
At $1,499, or $1,651 with the surcharge, it is a lot of gateway for a plan under 5 Gbps. NASCompares points out that it has no PoE ports and an internal power supply, so redundancy means buying the Ubiquiti external USP-RPS. No review we found has tested it at 25G or with IPS on, so the headline number still comes from Ubiquiti alone.
The cheaper gateways most homelabs skip
Several gateways sit between and below the four main picks, and each one is the better buy in a narrow case:
- UCG Ultra: $129 list, or about $185 for a third-party bundle on Amazon, 1 Gbps of IPS and a 2.5GbE WAN, for a gigabit plan with no cameras.
- Dream Router 7: $279, 2.3 Gbps of IPS with Wi-Fi 7 and one SFP+ port, but only five HD cameras on microSD.
- UDM SE: $499 list, about $550 from a third-party seller on Amazon, 3.5 Gbps of IPS with eight PoE ports and one 3.5-inch bay, if you’d rather not buy a PoE switch.
- UXG Fiber: $279, the same ports as the UCG Fiber without the UniFi OS apps, for networks that already run a controller elsewhere.
If you already self-host the controller on a server, the UXG gateways and our guide to UniFi OS Server on Ubuntu keep the network app off the gateway. If you have not committed to UniFi yet, our Omada vs UniFi comparison and the OPNsense vs pfSense mini PC guide cover the alternatives.
Storage, optics and the warranty
The gateway price is not the whole bill. These are the add-ons each box needs before it does everything on its spec sheet:
- NVMe for the compact boxes: the Ubiquiti 1 TB SSD is $390, while a Samsung 990 PRO 1TB runs about $250 to $270 from Amazon.com, plus the $19 tray. Its PCIe 4.0 speed is wasted in this slot, but it still costs less than the Ubiquiti drive.
- Drives for the Dream Machine bays: two surveillance drives such as the Seagate SkyHawk 8TB, about $420 to $440 each from a third-party seller; check the current price. Hard drive prices are inflated in 2026, so two drives can cost more than the UDM Pro Max itself.
- SFP+ links: a passive 10 Gbps SFP+ DAC cable such as this 10Gtek 1 m two-pack, about $25 to $30, to reach a switch in the same rack.
- CyberSecure: $99 a year if you want IPS signatures beyond the free set.
Dong Knows Tech confirmed the UCG Fiber accepts third-party NVMe drives beyond the 2 TB in the Ubiquiti spec. The slot runs at PCIe Gen3 x2, so buy on endurance and price rather than peak speed. For optics, NASCompares found Ubiquiti-branded modules and passive DAC cables the least trouble, while copper RJ45 and PON modules need more checking. Our SFP+ DAC, fiber and 10GBASE-T guide explains that choice.
Check the seller before you buy the gateway itself. The Ubiquiti warranty terms give two years on UI store purchases, one year from shipment to an authorized reseller, and nothing from unauthorized sellers. On October 21, Amazon itself sold none of the four. The UCG Max and UDM Pro Max listings we link are third-party sellers at about 10 to 20 percent over the UI list price, and we could not confirm their authorization, so check the seller and the current price before you order. The UCG Fiber and UDM-Beast had no Amazon offer that day, so those two links still go to the UI store.
Where each gateway stops scaling
Each box hits a different ceiling first, and that ceiling is what forces the next purchase:
- UCG Max: the 2.5GbE ports and the 300+ client rating, so a faster plan or a busy house moves you to the UCG Fiber.
- UCG Fiber: 5 Gbps of IPS and five 4K cameras, so heavy recording moves you to a Dream Machine with drive bays.
- UDM Pro Max: 5 Gbps of IPS and 1GbE LAN ports, so a 10 Gbps inspected line moves you to the UDM-Beast.
- UDM-Beast: 25 Gbps of IPS on paper. Past that, the Enterprise Firewall Core at $3,499 rates 79 Gbps, while the $1,999 Enterprise Firewall rates less than the Beast.
For most homelabs the scaling path stops at the UCG Fiber, with a multi-gig managed switch and Wi-Fi 7 access points behind it. The 10GbE homelab build shows that network side end to end, and the PoE switch guide covers powering cameras and APs that neither the UDM Pro Max nor the UDM-Beast can feed.
