AdGuard Home

AdGuard Home is a network-wide DNS ad blocker that you run on your home server or VPS — every device on your network gets ad-free browsing without installing anything on each device. Think Pi-hole but with a modern UI, built-in encrypted DNS (DoH/DoT), and per-client filtering rules out of the box.

If you're setting up a homelab or want network-wide ad blocking, start here instead of Pi-hole. The setup is simpler, the dashboard is cleaner, and encrypted DNS works without extra tools. Pi-hole has a larger community and more blocklists but a dated UI and no native DNS encryption. NextDNS is the cloud-hosted alternative if you don't want to self-host.

The catch: It's GPL v3, so modifications must stay open source. The blocking is DNS-level only — it won't catch ads served from the same domain as content (YouTube ads, for example). And if your DNS server goes down, your entire network loses internet. Run it on reliable hardware with a fallback DNS configured.