UniFi Switch Comparison 2026: Every Ubiquiti Switch Explained

How to choose: the four questions

UniFi sells more than twenty switch models and the naming does not make the hierarchy obvious. Work through these four questions and the list narrows to one or two candidates.

The UniFi switch range by tier

Utility and desktop — Flex Mini, Ultra, Flex 2.5G

Small, fanless switches for a desk, a TV cabinet or a remote corner of a site. The Flex Mini is a five-port gigabit switch powered by USB-C or PoE, with no PoE output — the cheapest way to add managed ports. The Ultra adds eight gigabit ports with PoE+ output and can itself be powered by PoE++. The Flex 2.5G PoE is the interesting one: eight 2.5 GbE PoE++ ports plus a 10 GbE port and a 10G SFP+, in a compact chassis that can be powered over PoE+++.

Lite and Standard — Lite 16 PoE, USW-24-PoE, USW-48-PoE

Rack-mount gigabit switching at the lowest cost per port. The Lite 16 PoE gives 16 gigabit ports with 8 PoE+ and a 45 W budget. The USW-24-PoE offers 24 ports with 16 PoE+ on a 95 W budget, and the USW-48-PoE gives 48 ports with 32 PoE+ on 195 W. Note the pattern: on this tier, not every port has PoE, and budgets are modest.

Pro Max — 16, 24 and 48 PoE

The volume tier for business. The Pro Max 16 PoE mixes 12 gigabit PoE+ ports with four 2.5 GbE PoE++ ports and two 10G SFP+ uplinks on a 180 W budget. The Pro Max 24 PoE and Pro Max 48 PoE scale that up with 400 W and 720 W budgets respectively, Layer 3 routing and USP-RPS redundant power support.

Enterprise — 24 and 48 PoE

Built around one idea: 2.5 GbE on every port. The Enterprise 48 PoE gives 48 ports of 2.5 GbE with PoE+ on all of them, four 10G SFP+ uplinks, a 720 W budget and fully non-blocking 160 Gbps switching — the natural choice when every access point and desk should have multi-gigabit.

Pro XG — 8, 24 and 48, with and without PoE

Where 10 GbE copper becomes the norm. The Pro XG 8 PoE is a compact 10 GbE PoE++ switch. The Pro XG 24 PoE delivers 16 10 GbE plus 8 2.5 GbE ports with 90 W PoE+++ and a 720 W budget behind 25G SFP28 uplinks. The Pro XG 48 PoE doubles that to 32 10 GbE plus 16 2.5 GbE ports with up to a 1,080 W budget, and the Pro XG 48 is the same platform without PoE for self-powered endpoints.

Enterprise Campus (ECS) — 24 and 48 PoE

The top of the access-layer range, and genuinely different: every port is PoE+++ capable and power comes from dual replaceable supply modules. The ECS 24 PoE provides 16 10 GbE and 8 2.5 GbE ports, all PoE+++, with a 1,050 W shared-mode budget from two 600 W modules and 2 25G SFP28 uplinks. The ECS 48 PoE scales to 32 10 GbE and 16 2.5 GbE ports with up to a 2,150 W budget and 920 Gbps switching capacity.

Aggregation — Aggregation, Pro Aggregation, Pro XG Aggregation

Core switches with no copper access ports. The Aggregation offers eight 10G SFP+ ports for small cores. The Pro Aggregation mixes 28 10G SFP+ with four 25G SFP28. The Pro XG Aggregation is all-25G: 32 SFP28 ports, 1.6 Tbps of switching capacity and 800 Gbps non-blocking.

Master comparison table

All figures from Ubiquiti's published specifications.

PoE, PoE+, PoE++ and PoE+++ explained

Power over Ethernet carries power and data on one cable. The classes matter because a device that needs a higher class simply will not power up on a lower-class port.

How to calculate your PoE budget

1. List every powered device and its maximum draw — not its typical draw. Access points 10–43 W, 4K cameras 10–20 W, PTZ cameras 20–30 W, door readers 5–6 W, phones 5–15 W.
2. Add them up for your worst case, with everything running at once.
3. Add 30% headroom for growth and for devices that draw more in cold weather or with heaters on.
4. Check the per-port class separately — the highest-draw single device sets the minimum class.
5. Check cable length. PoE is rated to 100 m of Cat5e or better; long runs lose power.

Example: a small office with 6 access points at 25 W, 8 cameras at 15 W and 4 door readers at 6 W needs 150 + 120 + 24 = 294 W, plus 30% headroom = roughly 380 W. A Pro Max 24 PoE at 400 W just fits; a Pro XG 24 PoE at 720 W leaves comfortable room to grow.

Port speed: when 1 GbE is not enough

Gigabit was sufficient for a decade. It is not any more in three specific places:

• WiFi 6, 6E and 7 access points. A modern AP can move well over 1 Gbps of real wireless traffic. Plugged into a gigabit port, the cable becomes the bottleneck and you never see the performance you paid for. This is the single strongest argument for the Enterprise or Pro XG tiers.
• Servers, NAS and video editing. 10 GbE turns a large file transfer from minutes into seconds.
• Uplinks. Twenty-four devices sharing a single gigabit uplink will congest. Uplinks should be a tier faster than the access ports beneath them.

Layer 2 vs Layer 3 switching

A Layer 2 switch moves traffic within a VLAN. A Layer 3 switch also routes between VLANs in hardware, without sending that traffic to the gateway and back.

This matters once you have several VLANs with real traffic between them — cameras writing to a recorder, staff reaching servers, VoIP crossing segments. Sending it all through the gateway wastes uplink bandwidth and adds latency. The Pro Max, Enterprise, Pro XG, Enterprise Campus and Pro-tier aggregation switches all support Layer 3 routing with up to 1,000 VLANs; the Lite, Standard and utility models do not.

Uplinks, aggregation and network design

A healthy UniFi network is usually three layers:

Two design habits worth adopting: use link aggregation (LAG) to bond two uplinks for both capacity and redundancy, and prefer fibre or DAC between racks — SFP+ and SFP28 ports accept direct-attach copper cables for short runs at a fraction of the cost of optics.

Redundant power and uptime

Switch power failure takes down everything attached to it — including cameras and door readers. UniFi offers three levels of protection:

• USP-RPS DC input — supported on Pro Max, Enterprise, Pro XG and Pro aggregation models. An external redundant power unit takes over if the internal supply fails.
• Dual internal supply modules — the Enterprise Campus (ECS) range takes two 600 W modules, which can run in shared mode for maximum PoE budget or redundant mode where either module alone can carry the load.
• UPS on the rack — worth doing regardless, and the only protection against a mains failure.

Which switch for which site

Five common sizing mistakes

1. Checking total PoE but not per-port class. A 400 W PoE+ switch cannot run one 90 W device.
2. Forgetting uplinks consume ports. A 24-port switch with two uplinks gives you 22 usable ports.
3. Gigabit ports for WiFi 6/7 access points. You pay for wireless throughput the cable cannot carry.
4. No headroom. Sites grow. Sizing to exactly today's device count means buying again in a year.
5. Ignoring cable category. 10 GbE over old Cat5e will not reach 100 m — check before specifying.