Comparison of DHCP server software

The following comparison of DHCP and DHCPv6 server compares general and technical information for several DHCP server software programs.

General

Name	Author	First public release	Latest stable version	Cost	Software license	Written in
dhcpy6d [dhcpy6d 1]	Henri Wahl	2012	1.6.0 27 July 2024;10 months ago (2024-07-27)	free software	GPLv2	Python
dnsmasq	Simon Kelley	2001	2.90 (February 13, 2024;15 months ago (2024-02-13)) [±] [1]	free software	GPLv2 or GPLv3	C
ISC DHCP	Internet Systems Consortium	1999	Extended Support Version: 4.1-ESV-R16-P1 (May 26, 2021;4 years ago (2021-05-26)) [±] [2] Current-stable: 4.4.3-P1 (EOL December 2022) (October 5, 2022;2 years ago (2022-10-05)) [±] [3] [4] This software has reached EOL! Superseded by Kea (see below) [5]	free software	ISC MPL 2.0 for ver 4.4.x	C
FreeRADIUS [freeradius 1]	FreeRADIUS Development Team	2012 (First stable release including DHCPv4 support)	FreeRADIUS 3.2.6 [6] (August 24, 2024;9 months ago (2024-08-24) [7] ) [±]	free software	GPLv2	C
Kea DHCP [kea 1]	Internet Systems Consortium	2014	Kea 2.6.1 [8] (July 31, 2024;9 months ago (2024-07-31))	free software	MPL 2.0	C++
udhcpd	Matthew Ramsay	1999	busybox 1.36.1 (May 19, 2023;2 years ago (2023-05-19)) [±] [9]	free software	GNU GPLv2 only	C

Operating system requirement

In this overview of operating system support for the discussed DHCP server, the following terms indicate the level of support:

• No indicates that it does not exist or was never released.
• Yes indicates that it has been officially released in a fully functional, stable version.

This compilation is not exhaustive, but rather reflects the most common platforms today.

Server	BSD	Solaris	Linux	macOS	Windows
dhcpy6d	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
dnsmasq	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
ISC DHCP	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
FreeRADIUS	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Kea DHCP	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
udhcpd	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Feature matrix

Server	BOOTP	DHCP	DHCPv6	Other	Load balancing	Failover
dhcpy6d	No	No	Yes	PXE, Dynamic DNS	Yes	Yes
dnsmasq	Yes	Yes	Yes	PXE, TFTP	No	No
ISC DHCP	Yes	Yes	Yes	Dynamic DNS [10] [11]	Yes	Yes
Kea	Yes	Yes	Yes	Dynamic DNS [12]	Yes	Yes
FreeRADIUS	No	Yes	Yes	RADIUS, VMPS	Yes	Yes
udhcpd	Yes	Yes	No	?	?	?

See also

• Comparison of DNS server software

References

General

1. Kelley, Simon (13 Feb 2024). "Dnsmasq download page".
2. "New releases of ISC DHCP are available (DHCP 4.4.2-P1, DHCP 4.1-ESV-R16-P1)". 2021-05-26. Retrieved 2021-06-19.
3. "New releases of ISC DHCP are available (DHCP 4.4.3-P1, DHCP 4.1-ESV-R16-P2)". 2022-10-05. Retrieved 2021-10-12.
4. "Downloads - ISC". isc.org. Retrieved 2022-10-12.
5. "ISC DHCP Server has reached EOL". Internet Systems Consortium. 4 October 2022. Retrieved 14 October 2022.
6. "Releases" . Retrieved 30 September 2024.
7. "FreeRADIUS - Release Notes". FreeRADIUS. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
8. "Kea 2.6.1, Jul 2024, Release Notes". Internet Systems Consortium. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
9. "Release history" . Retrieved May 31, 2023.
10. "ISC DHCP 4.4 Manual Pages - dhcpd.conf". kb.isc.org. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
11. "ISC DHCP support for Standard DDNS". kb.isc.org. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
12. "13. The DHCP-DDNS Server — Kea 2.3.4 documentation". kea.readthedocs.io. Retrieved 2023-02-19.

dhcpy6d

1. "About: dhcpy6d". dhcpy6d.de. Retrieved 2021-04-21.

FreeRADIUS

1. "DHCP". www.freeradius.org. Retrieved 16 August 2015.

Kea DHCP

1. "Kea". isc.org. 2014-08-29. Retrieved 2014-08-31.