The Zyxel XGS1210-12 is the best cheap OpenWrt 2.5G switch right now
I run OpenWrt as the firmware on my core switch, a Zyxel XGS1210-12: eight gigabit ports, two 2.5GbE copper ports, and two SFP+ cages that do 10G, for around $120. If you want a cheap, multi-gig managed switch that runs open-source firmware and still does VLANs and the rest, I think it’s the best option right now. It’s on the hardware list in the OpenWrt Beginner’s Guide, which is where I’d check for current recommendations since this moves quickly.
For me the appeal is owning the hardware outright, more than any feature list. With open firmware I can see exactly what the switch runs, test a fix myself when I hit a bug, and send a patch upstream if it comes to that. Closed gear leaves you one update away from changes that suit the vendor more than you, and for something as tied to privacy and security as networking equipment, the transparency is worth it.
UniFi is the obvious alternative, and credit where it’s due: its UI and single-pane-of-glass view of a whole network are genuinely nicer, so going the OpenWrt route is hard mode. But it costs a lot more. A comparable UniFi switch with 2.5G and a 10G SFP+ uplink, the Pro Max 16, runs a few hundred dollars ($399 with PoE, less without) versus $120 here, and that adds up fast across several switches. The open-source enterprise options don’t help on price either: SONiC, DENT, and Cumulus all need $1,000-plus whitebox gear.
Under the hood it’s a Realtek RTL9302, and getting the 2.5G copper ports working was genuinely hard. The PHY spoke a proprietary Realtek protocol the Linux kernel couldn’t drive, and the fix took getting proper support upstream so it could switch modes by link speed. The whole saga is in issue #19640; the breakthrough landed in PR #19843 in August 2025, and the rev B1 board got its fix in PR #21605 in January 2026. That work came from Birger Koblitz (who started OpenWrt’s Realtek port), Tobias Schramm, Markus Stockhausen, Jan Hoffmann, Jonas Jelonek, and Sander van Heule. I’m surely forgetting people, so check the linked PRs and issue thread for the full list.
None of it came with a datasheet. Realtek doesn’t publish one, so the whole thing was reverse-engineered from GPL source dumps and a lot of register poking. Sander van Heule documents the internals at svanheule.net and even built a web tool for browsing these chips’ registers. People doing that for free, with no documentation, is the reason a $120 switch can run mainline Linux at all. I appreciate it a lot.
OpenWrt itself is worth appreciating too. It’s a remarkably flexible Linux build, and with all sorts of tricks to squeeze it down, it’ll run a full, configurable network OS on devices with only a few megabytes of flash. Getting real Linux into that little space is the cool part.
A couple of things to flag. There’s no PoE on this model, so APs and cameras need injectors or a separate PoE switch. And the 2.5G work is on the snapshot builds rather than the stable release for now, so flash a recent snapshot that matches your board revision (mine’s the B1). As of writing that’s r35109-f5d928e52a. Beyond that it’s been solid for me, and for a cheap, open, multi-gig managed switch it’s the one I’d get.