Color: Blue team.
What Is This Category?
Mix (11 tools)
- License: 6 open source · 5 proprietary
- Hosting: 6 self-hosted · 5 SaaS · 0 both
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
About this data & disclaimer
The information on these pages was researched by a combination of human review and large language models. This catalogue serves as a reference for the resources, applications, devices, deployment payloads, and other components that the ResorsIT platform integrates, deploys, and manages. 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. This information is compiled on a best-effort basis: it may be incomplete, contain errors, and become out of date as tools, vendors, licences, and features change. Use this catalogue only as a starting point for your own research, and independently verify and review any tool carefully against your own requirements before relying on it.
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, direct, package · SSO: OIDC
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on
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, direct, package · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Deployment Payload
Access & Identity: Vaulted credential · Local host account · Key-based access
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
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Directory / LDAP · Provisioned account
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
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Provisioned account
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, direct, docker, package · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Deployment Payload
Access & Identity: Vaulted credential · Local host account · Key-based access
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
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Provisioned account
NextDNS
Commercial protective-DNS SaaS; consumer + small-business tiers; analyst-friendly dashboards; freemium.
License: Proprietary (proprietary) · Kind: web · Deploy: saas · SSO: OIDC, SAML
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on · Provisioned account
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, direct, package · SSO: OIDC
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on
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
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Vaulted credential
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, direct, package · SSO: OIDC
ResorsIT usage: Web App with SSO
Access & Identity: Single sign-on
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: direct, docker, package · SSO: none
ResorsIT usage: Deployment Payload
Access & Identity: Vaulted credential · Local host account · Key-based access
