Best AdGuard Home Alternative: Pi-hole, Technitium, Blocky

The best AdGuard Home alternative for most home networks is Pi-hole v6: same DNS-sinkhole model, same blocklists, built-in DHCP, and native HTTPS since its February 2025 release. Pick Technitium DNS Server if you want local recursion, DoH/DoT/DoQ and clustering in one service, Blocky for stateless containers, or NextDNS if you’d rather not run a server at all.

None of them blocks more than AdGuard Home; they read the same public blocklists. What changes is how queries get resolved, how policy maps to VLANs, and what you keep patched.

Which AdGuard Home alternative fits your network?

Pi-hole fits a single-resolver home network that wants the widest documentation. Technitium fits a network with VLANs, internal zones or a second resolver that should share configuration. Blocky fits a Docker Compose or Kubernetes stack managed from Git. Router-integrated blocklists fit an OPNsense or pfSense shop that wants one fewer box.

All four are free and open source. AdGuard Home and Technitium are GPLv3; Blocky is Apache-2.0.

Why replace AdGuard Home at all?

Usually for one of three reasons: you want local recursion instead of forwarding, you want two resolvers that share configuration without a third-party sync tool, or you want per-VLAN policy expressed as subnets. AdGuard Home’s own configuration docs describe it as “basically a DNS proxy that sends your DNS queries to upstream servers.”

That model works, with DoH, DoT, DoQ and DNSCrypt upstreams, but every uncached lookup still ends at somebody else’s recursive resolver.

A bad reason to switch is ads that survive filtering. YouTube pre-rolls and devices with hardcoded resolvers defeat every DNS filter equally, as covered in what a Pi-hole DNS sinkhole can and cannot block. For the head-to-head, read Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home.

Pi-hole v6: the closest swap

Pi-hole is the lowest-friction move because the model is identical: a filtering forwarder with a web UI, per-client groups and an optional DHCP server. The v6 release moved the web server and a new REST API into the pihole-FTL binary, dropped lighttpd and PHP, consolidated settings into /etc/pihole/pihole.toml, added subscribed allowlists and shipped native HTTPS. The comparison table in AdGuard’s README still says Pi-hole HTTPS means configuring lighttpd; that row describes v5.

What you give up coming from AdGuard Home:

• Encrypted DNS for clients. Pi-hole does not serve DoH or DoT to clients without additional software.
• Built-in encrypted upstream. The documented route is dnscrypt-proxy on 127.0.0.1 port 5053: a second service to patch and monitor.
• Forced safe search and parental categories. On Pi-hole these become blocklist choices.
• Running unprivileged, which AdGuard Home documents and Pi-hole does not.

What you gain is the documented Unbound pairing, with Unbound listening on 127.0.0.1#5335 as Pi-hole’s only upstream, so the box does its own recursion with DNSSEC validation. You also get group management for lists and rules. Watch group 0: the Default group applies to every client not assigned elsewhere, and new clients are added to it automatically, so an IoT device can inherit the household’s looser policy until you move it.

Check Pi-hole hardware requirements before reusing the AdGuard Home box, then follow how to set up Pi-hole on Raspberry Pi. If Pi-hole will also hand out leases, the Pi-hole DHCP server setup guide covers the router-side change.

Technitium DNS Server: when you want the resolver itself

Choose Technitium when the goal is owning resolution, not just filtering in front of someone else’s resolver. Its README lists recursive resolution with DNSSEC validation and QNAME minimisation per RFC 9156, “DNS Query Name Minimisation to Improve Privacy.” It also serves authoritative zones, self-hosts DoH, DoT and DoQ, and runs a DHCP server that can cover multiple networks. One box answers for your internal zone, resolves everything else and hands out leases.

Per-VLAN filtering comes from the Advanced Blocking app. Its networkGroupMap maps client IPs or subnets to groups, and each group gets its own blocklists, regex lists and a subset of AdBlock syntax. Map 192.168.30.0/24 to a strict IoT group and 192.168.10.0/24 to a lighter trusted group. One trap: the app “does NOT use the block lists configured in the DNS server’s Settings > Blocking page,” so moving to per-group policy means re-entering your lists in the app config.

Clustering arrived in v14 in November 2025. One primary node holds the configuration and secondaries sync from it, so “config changes can be made only when the primary node is online,” and the dashboard can show aggregate stats for the whole cluster. That is the native answer to two resolvers sharing one policy.

The costs: the portable build needs the .NET 10 runtime (or use the official Docker image), and the release train moves fast. The releases page runs from v15.0.0 on 25 April 2026 to v15.6.0 on 3 October 2026, and several of those notes cite security fixes. Budget time for updates.

Blocky: the stateless container option

Blocky is a Go DNS proxy configured entirely in YAML and, per its documentation, “Stateless (no database, no temporary files).” That makes it the cleanest fit for a Compose file or Kubernetes manifest in Git: redeploy the container and the config is the state.

It matches AdGuard Home on allow and deny lists per client group, scheduled list reloads, a DoH endpoint, caching with prefetching and conditional forwarding. It goes further with Redis synchronization of “cache and blocking state between multiple instances,” Prometheus metrics with prepared Grafana dashboards, and query logging to MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB, SQLite or daily CSV files.

Two defaults to know. The parallel_best upstream strategy sends each query to two weighted resolvers and returns the faster answer; use strict for fixed ordering. Blocked A and AAAA queries get zeroIp (0.0.0.0 or ::) unless you set nxDomain.

What it lacks is a web admin UI and a DHCP server. Its documented interfaces are a REST API and a CLI, which is a real cost if someone else in the house manages the allowlist.

Router-integrated: OPNsense Unbound or pfBlockerNG

If OPNsense already routes your VLANs, its Unbound DNS blocklists may make a separate box unnecessary. Choose predefined feeds (hagezi, OISD, EasyList, EasyPrivacy and abuse.ch ThreatFox among them) or custom plain-text URLs, then attach each policy to Source Net(s). Where subnets overlap, “the algorithm selects the most specific subnet,” and the docs warn to keep networks within one address family and equal prefix sizes. Tick Return NXDOMAIN if Apple devices misbehave with 0.0.0.0, and add the “Update Unbound DNSBLs” cron task about once a day.

The trade is coupling. Filtering stops whenever the firewall reboots for an update, and changing routers means rebuilding the policy. The pfSense version of this decision is laid out in Pi-hole vs pfSense pfBlockerNG.

Hosted: NextDNS

NextDNS removes the server and keeps filtering on phones and laptops away from your LAN. The free tier covers 300,000 queries per month; past that, NextDNS “will continue to answer DNS queries like a classic non-blocking DNS service,” so filtering quietly stops. Pro is $1.99 per month or $19.90 per year with unlimited queries. The trade is that a third party resolves every query your household makes.

How do you switch without breaking DNS for the house?

Run the new resolver on a new IP alongside AdGuard Home, prove it from one client, then change what DHCP and router advertisements hand out. Never list the old and new resolvers as primary and secondary: clients pick either, and blocking looks intermittent.

With the new resolver at 192.168.10.53:

# Normal resolution
dig @192.168.10.53 example.com +short

# A domain on your blocklist: expect 0.0.0.0, :: or NXDOMAIN
dig @192.168.10.53 doubleclick.net +short

# With DNSSEC validation (Technitium, or Pi-hole + Unbound): expect SERVFAIL
dig @192.168.10.53 dnssec-failed.org

# TCP 53 must work too, for large responses
dig @192.168.10.53 example.com +tcp +short

Then the cutover checklist:

1. If the new box takes over DHCP, disable AdGuard Home’s DHCP server first. Two DHCP servers on one segment hand out conflicting leases.
2. Change DHCP option 6 on every scope, including the IoT VLAN.
3. Check IPv6. If the router advertises its own address as RDNSS in router advertisements, or DHCPv6 hands out another resolver, IPv6 clients bypass the filter.
4. Run the dig tests from a host in each VLAN. Inter-VLAN rules must allow UDP and TCP 53 to the resolver, plus TCP 853 or 443 if clients use DoT or DoH.
5. Stop AdGuard Home but leave it installed for a week as your rollback.

FAQ

is pi-hole better than adguard home

Neither blocks more, because both are DNS sinkholes reading the same public blocklists. Pi-hole v6 is better if you want Unbound recursion, a scriptable CLI and the larger body of homelab guides. AdGuard Home is better if you want built-in DoH and DoT for clients, forced safe search and running without root.

does adguard home do recursive dns

No. AdGuard Home forwards uncached queries to the upstream servers you configure; its own documentation calls it “basically a DNS proxy.” For local recursion, point it or Pi-hole at an Unbound instance on the same host, or switch to Technitium DNS Server, which resolves recursively and validates DNSSEC itself.

what is the best adguard home alternative for docker

Blocky is the best fit for Docker if you manage configuration as code, because it is stateless and configured entirely in YAML. Pi-hole and Technitium both publish official container images too, but each keeps state on disk, so you need persistent volumes and a backup plan for them.

is nextdns free

Yes, up to 300,000 queries per month. After that, NextDNS keeps resolving but stops filtering, acting as a plain non-blocking resolver until the limit resets. Pro costs $1.99 per month or $19.90 per year for unlimited queries, which a household with several always-on IoT devices may need.