Tomato vs. DD-WRT – Which Firmware Fork is Better?

You’ve noticed that your home router has issues.The default firmware’s performance is slow, has bugs, poor feature sets and it’s vulnerable to threats. You now want to flash it and go shopping for a new firmware and you end up swimming in an information ocean. Finally, you manage to narrow down your options to two: Tomato and DD-WRT both open-sources.

How do you go about deciding which firmware fork is better for you?User friendliness, availability, compatibility, features and community are factors to consider before choosing between the two firmware forks. Tomato is a user-friendly and streamlined firmware fork whereas DD-WRT is a more complete toolkit with the ability to run on most routers and has a bigger community.

Before proceeding, you need to find out if you have the right hardware. Check to see if your router is supported by Tomato and/or DD-WRT since not all router models are supported by both.

Differences between Tomato and DD-WRT

Tomato pros and cons

The Tomato firmware fork has several advantages and disadvantages as well. Despite its inability to support many routers and a smaller community, Tomato could be the ideal firmware fork for your router.

Tomatois easier to use since its more streamlined and has a user-friendly interface. With it, you can do exactly what you need without the additional clutter in the form of secondary features. Its latest project by AdvanceTomato has improved the existing classic Tomato interface making it sleek.This has made network management simpler and beginner friendly with aesthetic visuals.

Its new Graphical User Interface (GUI) comes with real-time monitoring of stats using animated graphs that help monitor and breakdown your router’s stats for your understanding and planning. Tomato’s bandwidth monitoring service runs 24 hours every day and comes in handy when your speeds are clogging up and you have multiple devices on your network. Also,Tomato routers experience faster speeds compared to DD-WRT.

Tomato lightweight’s nature makes it more stable since it’s codebase is smaller than DD-WRT. This makes it lean and more stable since it’s easier to maintain. This also makes it faster and an ideal choice of your router lacks the latest memory and processing power.

Tomato offers you better VPN support as it comes with a built-in OpenVPN and also has configuration options for both QoS and VPN. Tomato’s OpenVPN support is unmatched as it allows you to connect with ease to your works VPN and you can also use two OpenVPN servers side by side by being able to integrate them and switch back and forth. BitTorent and Tor have also been integrated to give you safety and privacy online. 

On the downside, Tomato supports less popular routers than DD-WRT making it to have a limited router support and a smaller community due to fewer users. This means that in the event of an issue on your router, you may be limited in terms of help and support.

DD-WRT pros and cons

DD-WRT works on a wide range of routerswith some of them including D-Link and TP-Link and more come with DD-WRTpreinstalled. Ralink-based and Atheros-based routersare compatible with DD-WRT with some being sold with DD-WRT already flashed on them. 

Since it’s the most used firmware fork, it has a huge community because of its large number of uses compared to Tomato. Their community goes as far as acting as a support for routers not officially supported by DD-WRT.DD-WRT is a big player in the firmware industry and supports more routers than Tomato making it have a bigger community due to more users. In fact, some routers are sold with DD-WRT already flashed on them.

It has more features compared to Tomato including a Wake-on-LAN that wakes up your router from a remote location, a VPN (i.e. OpenVPN) that you can easily configure and comprehensive QoS (Quality of Service). It also comes with a powerful firewall which makes your connections more secure. DD-WRT has repeaters that canbe used on alternate subnets. It also has more advanced inbuilt features such as Sputnik and Wifidog to help you create a Wi-Fi hotspot.

However, having all these features and functionalities makes it buggy and you may find it not so user-friendly due to a cluttered user interface. DD-WRT is not easy to flash and you may need a professional in some cases.

Comparison table between Tomato and DD-WRT Firmware 

Feature	Tomato	DD-WRT
VPN GUI	Supported	Supported
802.11AC Support	Yes	Yes
Cost	Free	Free

Conclusion: Which one should I install?

The major difference between these two is which router they work on. Regardless of this, with either of the two firmware forks, you’ll notice an improvement with your router’s performance and features.

These two improve your router’s security, speeds and give you access to VPNs such as OpenVPN and real-time bandwidth monitoring. They also receive regular updates maintaining their performance.

FAQs

I have an old router; does it come with a firmware?

Yes, your router by default comes with the OEM firmware. Since it is buggy with poor sets causing slow performance, you can switch to a new firmware that offers you more improved features.

I want to Tomato, how do I go about it?

Go to Tomato and enter your router model. If it’s supported, click on it to download and follow the flashing guide of your respective model on the download pane.