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Cisco Cloud Services Router vs MikroTik Routers and Switches comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Cloud Services Router
Ranking in Routers
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MikroTik Routers and Switches
Ranking in Routers
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Ethernet Switches (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Routers category, the mindshare of Cisco Cloud Services Router is 4.8%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MikroTik Routers and Switches is 20.4%, down from 25.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Routers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MikroTik Routers and Switches20.4%
Cisco Cloud Services Router4.8%
Other74.8%
Routers
 

Featured Reviews

VENKATESHREDDY - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate IT Director at Diligent Global
Manageable, provides excellent support, and easily integrates with other products
One central area for improvement in Cisco is its product line offering. Cisco has ISE and other products, such as DNS Center and other components. Instead of small to medium-sized customers purchasing devices and maintaining the devices, it would be great if customers could have subscriptions. A CAPEX/OPEX model instead of that Cisco code, where the pricing model is subscription-based, would give much better flexibility for the customers. The pricing and model for Cisco Cloud Services Router and other Cisco products could be improved. One good example of what I want to be added to the Cisco Cloud Services Router in its next version is for it to be more of a plug-and-play product. For example, Juniper has developed QR codes, so if you need to plug in a device, you scan from your phone and connect to the internet. That's it. You can provision the device remotely through the cloud orchestrator, so I want to see a similar function or feature in Cisco Cloud Services Router.
Rivka Alexander - PeerSpot reviewer
Content Specialist at PeerSpot
Routers and switches enhance network security and adaptability
We use MikroTik Routers and Switches for IT business, software development, networking, and tower infrastructure, although some areas are still in progress MikroTik Routers and Switches are some of the best routers around, security-wise, followed by Cisco. They are very accommodating with their…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The product is fantastic."
"Cisco has helped improve my organization in the was that it actually helped us to get the communication between on-prem and cloud to become smoother since we got it."
"The bandwidth and throughput are pretty good."
"AWS has a reference architecture to enable the Cisco routers in high availability and Transit VPC. This is a very powerful router and can enable us to use Transit VPC in AWS, and this is a very powerful feature that we use."
"The most valuable feature is the SNMP traps that I use to monitor the router and the availability of the network."
"The most valuable feature of the Cisco Cloud Services Router is it can make your migrations smooth; for example, if you want to migrate to the cloud, but you don't want to change the IP, you can extend your VLAN from on-premise to the cloud without having to change the IP."
"It is definitely scalable. It can handle a lot more traffic and group work compared to any other products that I've evaluated. It could easily scale a lot more than what I'm doing right now."
"The most valuable feature is the artificial intelligence assessment models."
"The initial setup is very straightforward. You can typically set them up in about 30 minutes."
"Overall, it is a very good solution with a lot of features."
"We have use cases like providing power over ethernet, as an access controller for Wi-Fi, and normal networking."
"MikroTik Routers and Switches are stable"
"The two most valuable features to me are the firewall and traffic bonding."
"I would rate the stability a ten out of ten."
"The flexible IP firewall and IP network address translation make it very easy to give access to internal services."
"The stability of the solution is great."
 

Cons

"The ease of use within the AWS environment needs to improve. Sometimes, it is very esoteric in how you use it. Therefore, you have to learn to use it, then you are able to."
"Cost is a big factor. We would like to see the price reduced."
"Over the past couple of years, I've noticed that the Cisco CLIs and web-based interfaces have changed. As such, there is a bit of a learning curve for people."
"There should be a system in place to help existing users make an easier transition to the newer interfaces."
"They have an online registration that happens after they pick up block months. If they could decrease to yearly or something, sometimes the device is not cell phone accessible. That becomes an issue or challenge for us. If that can be improved, that would be really great."
"Cisco Cloud Services Router could improve the GUI."
"It is too complex. It is not easy to set up, even with the documentation that they provided. It is a little confusing."
"You can use this router in a scalable solution but it has its limitations."
"The user interface allows you to do a lot of things, but it is not user-friendly."
"When we had questions around isolation and allocating different hubs and IPs, we couldn't find any verifiable answers."
"I would like to see some content filtering with MikroTik Routers and Switches."
"The solution needs to improve its security firewalls and mirror that of, for example, Sophos, or FortiGate."
"Wireless throughput has not kept up with the competition."
"It could be more scalable. Product awareness could also be better. There's a lack of awareness when it comes to MikroTik. People only know about Cisco and others, and they won't rely on MikroTik. This is primarily because of hardware limitations. While this product is good economically, it's unsuitable for high-end projects. In the next release, I want this product to be more compatible."
"The firewall and the VPN features in MikroTik are a little bit hard to set and are not user-friendly in terms of configuring those features."
"It would be very good if these products are accessible via different kinds of shells and GUI. It will make these solutions very usable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Cloud Services Router is an expensive product. My company pays for the product yearly, and the price reaches roughly $800,000. Though Cisco Cloud Services Router is expensive and its competitors offer better pricing, when it comes to support, it's unbeatable."
"This solution is kind of expensive."
"We never buy the product on the AWS Marketplace. We only download it. We always use BYOL. We never buy the license in the AWS Marketplace, because it's very expensive."
"Purchasing the product on the AWS Marketplace was very simplistic. Our organization was trying to centralize our billing costs, and simplicity was best."
"The price is a little high, more than what we wanted to pay. This is one area where we would like to understanding how the price could be brought down a bit more."
"The licensing model is good with this appliance: Bring Your Own License (BYOL)."
"The product is too expensive on the AWS Marketplace."
"The should make the Dynamic Multipoint VPN solution more affordable."
"The tool's pricing is competitive."
"It's reasonably priced. It's not the most cheap solution, but also, it's not the most expensive one."
"The solution is not expensive."
"This product is a one-time purchase."
"MikroTik is very cost-effective and quite good for the price. It performs very well. For one of our customers, the existing setup comprises Cisco Catalyst switches, and it is about 10 to 15 years old. We're looking into upgrading in a cost-effective way to get the performance and yet still be at par with the quality and expectations that customers have from Cisco. Price-wise, Cisco is really expensive, and customers are expecting something different than Cisco so that they can save on IT costs. They don't have the same budget that they had before when they installed Cisco products. That's why they're looking for a solution that can provide performance and features without too much money or investment. We're looking at some alternative brands, such as NETGEAR and MikroTik, to support our proposal."
"When you buy a license, it is for life and you don't need to buy another one every year."
"This product is cheaper than competing products by other vendors."
"In our last project, we used two hundred units and the price was approximately 500 Shekels ($140 USD)."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
16%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

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How do Cisco Enterprise routers compare with Mikrotik routers and switches?
Cisco Enterprise Routers are very stable and easy to use. They offer a very solid performance and are very secure. They also have a very good, long lifespan. We feel the command configuration is ve...
Which are better - Ubiquiti UniFi switches or MikroTik routers and switches?
Ubiquiti Unifi is a great solution. For starters, it is easy to configure and implement, and doesn’t require a learning curve because it is easy to use. It is also simple to reconfigure an AP or ga...
What do you like most about MikroTik Routers and Switches?
The price is a big factor. They are very affordable, and the quality is high.
 

Also Known As

Cisco CSR, Cisco Cloud Services Router 1000v, Cisco CSR 1000v
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Under Armour, HealthSparq, Adobe
ABB, Boingo Wireless, JPL, HP, Allied Telesis, iPass, Mips Technologies, MicroAge, Matsushita, Telia, undp, WFP, NASA
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Cloud Services Router vs. MikroTik Routers and Switches and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.