TrueNAS vs Unraid: License Cost, ZFS vs the Unraid Array, and Hardware

Short answer: TrueNAS vs Unraid comes down to cost and how you want your disks to work. TrueNAS Community Edition is free and open source, and it stores everything in ZFS pools, which want matched drives planned up front. Unraid is paid software with a one-time license ($49, $109 or $249 on its pricing page) and a free 30-day trial. Its main array lets you mix drive sizes and add disks one at a time, protected by up to two parity drives. Pick TrueNAS for ZFS data integrity at no cost. Pick Unraid if you want to grow a server from mismatched drives.

TrueNAS vs Unraid at a glance

Versions and prices were checked on each vendor’s site on September 26, 2026.

What Unraid costs

Unraid’s pricing page lists three perpetual licenses, each a one-time payment:

What the licensing FAQ adds:

• Updates after year one. Starter and Unleashed owners can pay an optional $36 annual extension fee to keep getting updates. If you don’t, you keep your license and your installed version “indefinitely,” and you still get patch releases for your minor version while it’s supported. Once that minor version reaches end of life, security fixes stop.
• Device limits. Attached storage devices count, except one eMMC device and one USB device. Unraid’s array documentation warns that the array “will not start” if you attach more devices than your license allows.
• Per server. Every license covers one server.
• No refunds. The FAQ says “all sales are final,” and recommends the trial first.
• Upgrades. Moving from Starter to Unleashed costs $69, and from Unleashed to Lifetime $149.

How the Unraid trial works

The pricing page offers a free 30-day trial with “no credit card required.” According to the licensing FAQ, the trial has full functionality with no storage device limit, but it needs an internet connection at boot to validate. When it ends, the array stops. You can request two 15-day extensions, for 60 days in total, from Tools > Registration with the array stopped.

There’s no legitimate way to keep using Unraid past the trial without a license, and we don’t link to anything that claims otherwise.

What TrueNAS costs

Nothing. TrueNAS describes Community Edition as “the singular, free, open source storage platform for non-enterprise users.” There’s no license key, device limit or trial clock. Its source code is on GitHub, where the main repositories are licensed under GPL-3.0 and LGPL-3.0.

The trade-off is support. Community Edition users get help from the TrueNAS forums. Paid support comes with TrueNAS Enterprise, which TrueNAS says is typically provided as turnkey appliances. Unraid’s pricing page likewise points buyers to community support through its forums and Discord.

ZFS vs the Unraid array

This is the real difference between the two, more than the price.

TrueNAS: everything is ZFS

TrueNAS stores data in OpenZFS pools. The TrueNAS hardware guide says ZFS “provides the best available data protection of any file system at any cost.” The TrueNAS guide lists the minimum for a pool as “two identically-sized devices.” OpenZFS defines capacity the same way: a RAIDZ group of N disks of size X with P parity disks holds about (N-P) x X, and a mirror of disks of size X holds X. That is why ZFS builds normally use matching drives.

Growing a ZFS pool follows ZFS rules. Unraid’s ZFS documentation summarizes them well, and they apply to OpenZFS generally: a single RAIDZ group can be expanded one drive at a time, but pools made of several groups or mirrors grow by adding complete groups. TrueNAS’s documentation includes a RAIDZ extension calculator for planning this.

Unraid: a parity array of independent disks

Unraid’s main array works differently. Each data disk keeps its own file system. XFS is the default for array drives, and Unraid’s docs say each XFS drive “acts as a self-contained file system, making data recovery straightforward on any Linux system.” One or two parity drives protect the whole array.

The rules, from Unraid’s documentation:

• You can mix drive sizes and add new drives one at a time.
• A parity disk must be at least as large as the largest data disk.
• With dual parity, both parity drives must be at least the size of your largest data disk, but they can differ from each other.
• Unraid doesn’t support TRIM for SSDs in the main array. Put SSDs in pools instead.

The cost is write speed. Unraid’s docs list typical array write speeds of 20 to 40 MB/s in the default read/modify/write mode, and 40 to 120 MB/s in turbo write mode, which spins up every drive. A fast SSD cache pool absorbs writes, and the “mover” transfers them to the array later.

Unraid also supports ZFS. Its cache pools can be formatted as ZFS or Btrfs, and since Unraid 7.2, single-group RAIDZ pools can be expanded one drive at a time.

Which is safer?

They protect against different things. Unraid’s parity rebuilds a failed disk, but its docs warn that parity “cannot fix file system problems” and will copy corruption onto a rebuilt drive. ZFS stores checksums with your data, and a scrub checks every block and repairs corruption on redundant layouts. Neither is a backup. Keep a copy of important data on another machine or off site.

Hardware flexibility

• Boot device. TrueNAS installs to an SSD of at least 20 GB and advises against USB sticks as boot drives. Unraid traditionally boots from a USB flash drive, and the license is tied to that drive’s GUID. Unraid’s docs warn that counterfeit drives often lack a unique GUID. From Unraid 7.3, supported systems can switch to internal boot during setup.
• Memory. TrueNAS lists 8 GB as the minimum. Unraid’s docs say it runs from RAM with a “minimal memory footprint” but don’t give a minimum in the pages we checked.
• Disk controllers. TrueNAS says not to use a hardware RAID card’s RAID mode. Use HBA or passthrough mode so ZFS sees the raw disks.
• Apps and VMs. Both run Docker apps and virtual machines. Unraid’s pricing page advertises “10,000+ apps and plugins” through Community Apps. If you plan to run Immich, its documentation lists community install guides for both TrueNAS and Unraid.

When to choose which

Choose TrueNAS Community Edition if:

• You don’t want to pay for your storage OS.
• You can buy matching drives, or you’re building a pool from scratch.
• Data integrity checking matters more to you than mixing old disks.

Choose Unraid if:

• You have a pile of drives of different sizes and want to use them all.
• You want to add one disk at a time as you grow.
• You’re fine paying once for a license and want a large app catalog built in.

Not sure? Unraid’s trial is free for 30 days, and TrueNAS costs nothing, so you can test both on spare hardware. If you mostly want VMs rather than a NAS, Proxmox VE is another free option.

What neither one is

• Not free-with-a-catch in Unraid’s case. It’s paid software with an honest trial. Any site offering an “unlocked” Unraid is not offering the real product. See how to spot fake download sites.
• Not a backup. Parity and ZFS redundancy survive a failed drive. They don’t survive deletion, ransomware, fire or theft.
• Not a desktop app. Both are operating systems that take over a machine.

Official downloads and hashes are on our TrueNAS and Unraid app pages. For the TrueNAS side in detail, read our TrueNAS Community Edition download guide.

Questions

Is Unraid free?

No. Unraid is paid, with a free 30-day trial that can be extended twice by 15 days. Licenses cost $49, $109 or $249 one-time.

Is TrueNAS free?

Yes. TrueNAS Community Edition is free and open source. Paid support is part of TrueNAS Enterprise.

Is Unraid a subscription?

No. Licenses are perpetual. Starter and Unleashed include one year of updates, then an optional $36 a year to keep receiving new versions.

What happens when the Unraid trial ends?

The array stops. You can buy a license or request an extension, up to two 15-day extensions.

Can TrueNAS use drives of different sizes?

TrueNAS lists two identically sized devices as the minimum for a pool, and ZFS capacity is calculated on matching drive sizes. Mixed sizes are where Unraid’s array is more flexible.

Does Unraid support ZFS?

Yes. Unraid supports ZFS for pools and for individual array drives. Multi-device pools must use ZFS or Btrfs.

Which is faster, TrueNAS or Unraid?

It depends on the layout. Unraid’s own docs put typical array writes at 20 to 120 MB/s depending on write mode, which is why they recommend an SSD cache pool. The TrueNAS hardware guide says eight drives configured as striped mirrors can give four times the write performance of a single mirror of similar capacity.

Can I move from Unraid to TrueNAS?

There’s no in-place conversion. You’d copy your data off, build a ZFS pool in TrueNAS, and copy it back.

Which is better for Plex or Jellyfin?

Both run Jellyfin and Plex as apps. Unraid’s mixed-drive array suits a growing media library. TrueNAS suits you if you already have matching drives.

Sources

• Unraid pricing (Starter, Unleashed, Lifetime, trial), Lime Technology, checked September 26, 2026
• Licensing FAQ, Unraid Docs
• Arrays, Unraid Docs
• File systems, Unraid Docs
• Cache pools (ZFS expansion), Unraid Docs
• What is Unraid?, Unraid Docs
• Create an Unraid USB drive, Unraid Docs
• Version 7.3.2 release notes, Unraid Docs
• Meet TrueNAS Community Edition, TrueNAS blog, May 15, 2025
• TrueNAS Hardware Guide, TrueNAS Documentation Hub
• TrueNAS Software Status, TrueNAS Documentation Hub
• zpoolconcepts(7) (mirror and raidz capacity), OpenZFS documentation
• Immich requirements and install options, Immich docs