Networking & DNS

AdGuard Home33.3k★

If you want to block ads, trackers, and malware for every device on your network — phones, smart TVs, laptops, IoT devices — without installing anything on each device, AdGuard Home does that by running as your network's DNS server. Every DNS request goes through it, and it blocks the ones that resolve to ad servers or trackers. Think of it as a bouncer for your network's internet traffic. Everything is free under GPL-3.0. No paid tier for AdGuard Home itself. (AdGuard the company sells a separate VPN/ad-blocking app — that's a different product.) The Home DNS server is fully featured: custom blocklists, per-client settings, encrypted DNS (DoH/DoT/DoQ), DHCP server, query logging, and a clean web dashboard. Self-hosting is the only option. Run it on a Raspberry Pi ($35-60), a spare computer, a Docker container, or a VPS. Initial setup takes 15-30 minutes: install the binary, point your router's DNS to it, pick your blocklists. Ongoing maintenance is minimal — update the binary occasionally, review your logs if you're curious. Solo: install it at home. The quality-of-life improvement is immediate — YouTube ads on smart TVs, tracking on every device, gone. Small teams: run it on your office network. Growing teams: it's a home/small-office tool, not enterprise DNS. The catch: DNS-level blocking can't stop everything. Ads served from the same domain as content (like some YouTube ads) slip through. And occasionally a legitimate service breaks because its domain is on a blocklist — you'll be the family IT person debugging why a website doesn't load.