License & Deployment Mix: 11 tools – 6 OSS, 1 free public service, 4 commercial.
Color: Blue team.
What Is This Category?
Protective DNS (PDNS) is a recursive resolver that consults a threat-intelligence feed at lookup time and refuses to return answers for known-malicious domains. The user experience is “site won’t load”; the defender experience is one chokepoint that neutralises ~30% of phishing, malware C2, and ransomware delivery before any other control kicks in.
Distinct from neighbouring categories
- DNS Management & DDI – DNS management is the server side (PowerDNS, BIND, authoritative DNS infra); protective DNS is the recursive resolver with blocking rules
- Email Security – Email security blocks the phish at the mail layer; PDNS blocks the lure domain if the user clicks anyway
- Web Application Firewalls – WAF inspects inbound HTTP; PDNS stops the outbound DNS lookup
The information on these pages was researched by a combination of human review and large language models. To suggest an addition or correction, please contact us. Prepared by Rhodium Systems Inc., author of the ResorsIT platform — a unified IT operations management platform for IT teams and MSPs that integrates a curated suite of open-source, commercial, and SaaS applications into a single system with shared identity, single sign-on, access control, and a common audit trail. Use this catalogue only as a starting point for your own research, and review any tool carefully against your own requirements before relying on it. Catalogue data version 2026.197.
Comparison
Capability Matrix
| Tool | Self-Host | Recursive | Authoritative | DoH/DoT | RPZ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pi-hole | yes | yes (via dnsmasq) | – | yes | – |
| AdGuard Home | yes | yes | – | yes | – |
| Blocky | yes | yes | – | yes | – |
| Technitium DNS | yes | yes | yes | yes | – |
| Unbound (with RPZ) | yes | yes | – | yes | yes |
| CoreDNS | yes | yes | yes | yes | partial |
| Quad9 | – | yes (public) | – | yes | – |
| NextDNS | – | yes | – | yes | – |
| Cisco Umbrella | – | yes | – | yes | – |
| DNSFilter | – | yes | – | yes | – |
| Cloudflare Gateway | – | yes | – | yes | – |
License Comparison
| Tool | License | OSI | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pi-hole | EUPL-1.2 | yes | OSS web |
| AdGuard Home | GPL-3.0-only | yes | OSS web |
| Blocky | Apache-2.0 | yes | OSS service |
| Technitium DNS | GPL-3.0-only | yes | OSS web (full DNS platform) |
| Unbound | BSD-3-Clause | yes | OSS recursive resolver |
| CoreDNS | Apache-2.0 | yes | OSS plugin-based |
| Quad9 | Proprietary | – | Free public non-profit |
| NextDNS | Proprietary | – | Commercial SaaS (freemium) |
| Cisco Umbrella | Proprietary | – | Commercial enterprise SaaS |
| DNSFilter | Proprietary | – | Commercial MSP-focused SaaS |
| Cloudflare Gateway | Proprietary | – | Commercial SaaS (free 50-seat tier) |
SSO / OIDC
| Tool | OIDC | SAML | SCIM | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OSS self-hosted (Pi-hole, AdGuard, Blocky, Technitium, Unbound, CoreDNS) | plugin / n/a | varies | none | Reverse-proxy auth (Authentik forward-auth) |
| Quad9 | none | none | none | Free public service |
| NextDNS | paid | paid | paid | Business tier |
| Cisco Umbrella | paid | paid | paid | Enterprise tier |
| DNSFilter | paid | paid | paid | Pro tier |
| Cloudflare Gateway | paid | paid | paid | Business / Enterprise tier |
Deployment Comparison
| Tool | Deployment | Resources | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pi-hole | Docker / native | Trivial (RPi-capable) | LAMP + dnsmasq + FTL |
| AdGuard Home | Single Go binary | Trivial | Cross-platform |
| Blocky | Single Go binary | Trivial | No web UI; Prometheus-first |
| Technitium DNS | .NET cross-platform | Modest | Full DNS platform |
| Unbound (RPZ) | Native package | Modest-to-substantial | Production scale |
| CoreDNS | K8s Helm / native | Trivial | Default K8s DNS |
| Quad9 | SaaS | – | Free public |
| NextDNS / Umbrella / DNSFilter / CF Gateway | SaaS | – | Commercial managed |
Composition Patterns
1. Self-hosted home / small-customer
Pi-hole (or AdGuard Home) -- LAN-side resolver + blocklist + analytics
+ Quad9 as upstream -- additional protective filtering layerOutput: visibility (Pi-hole) + extra filtering (Quad9) at near-zero cost.
2. Enterprise self-hosted at scale
Unbound + RPZ (recursive resolver, carrier-scale)
+ Spamhaus / abuse.ch URLhaus RPZ feeds
+ Pi-hole / AdGuard for per-segment analytics layerOutput: production-scale protective-DNS without commercial SaaS dependency.
3. Commercial managed SaaS
NextDNS / DNSFilter / Cisco Umbrella / Cloudflare Gateway
Output: managed delivery; trade per-seat cost for no operational burden.
Cost Tier
Annual cost for a 500-user mid-size customer.
| Tier | Tooling | Approx Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Pi-hole / AdGuard / Quad9 / Cloudflare Gateway free | $0 + operator time |
| Mid | NextDNS / DNSFilter | $5,000-15,000 / year |
| High | Cisco Umbrella | $20,000-50,000 / year |
Tools
11 tools.
AdGuard Home
AdGuard Home is an open-source, network-wide DNS sinkhole and Pi-hole alternative built as a single Go binary, with configurable blocklists, per-client policies, DoH/DoT, and query logging.
License: GPL-3.0-only (OSS) · Kind: web · Deploy: docker, native, package · SSO: OIDC
Blocky
Lightweight Go-based DNS proxy / blocker; designed for self-hosted use with first-class Prometheus observability.
License: Apache-2.0 (OSS) · Kind: service · Deploy: docker, native, package · SSO: none
Cisco Umbrella
Cisco’s enterprise protective-DNS platform (formerly OpenDNS); long- standing category leader for managed enterprise DNS security.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: OIDC, SAML
Cloudflare Gateway
Cloudflare One’s DNS-filtering tier; free 50-seat tier + paid Business / Enterprise; part of the broader Cloudflare One SASE.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: OIDC, SAML
CoreDNS
CNCF-graduated plugin-based DNS server; default DNS for Kubernetes; the hosts plugin + template plugin make it a programmable protective-DNS resolver.
License: Apache-2.0 (OSS) · Kind: service · Deploy: k8s, native, docker, package · SSO: none
DNSFilter
Commercial protective-DNS SaaS; MSP-focused; AI-driven domain categorisation; alternative to Cisco Umbrella.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: OIDC, SAML
NextDNS
Commercial protective-DNS SaaS; consumer + small-business tiers; analyst-friendly dashboards; freemium.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: OIDC, SAML
Pi-hole
The canonical open-source DNS sinkhole; network-wide ad / tracker / malware blocking with a Lua / dnsmasq core and a PHP admin UI.
License: EUPL-1.2 (OSS) · Kind: web · Deploy: docker, native, package · SSO: OIDC
Quad9
Free public protective-DNS from the Quad9 Foundation (Swiss non- profit); IBM X-Force + 18 other threat-intel partners.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: none
Technitium DNS
Open-source authoritative + recursive DNS server with blocking; the most feature-complete OSS DNS platform in this category.
License: GPL-3.0-only (OSS) · Kind: web · Deploy: docker, native, package · SSO: OIDC
Unbound (with RPZ)
NLnet Labs’ production-grade validating recursive DNS resolver; Response Policy Zones (RPZ) provide DNS filtering at carrier scale.
License: BSD-3-Clause (OSS) · Kind: service · Deploy: native, docker, package · SSO: none
