Compare the Top Free DNS Filtering Platforms as of October 2025

What are Free DNS Filtering Platforms?

DNS filtering platforms are security solutions that block access to malicious, inappropriate, or unwanted websites by controlling domain name system (DNS) queries. They work by intercepting and analyzing DNS requests, preventing connections to harmful domains based on predefined policies or threat intelligence. These platforms help organizations enforce internet usage policies, protect against malware, phishing, and ransomware, and improve network performance by reducing unnecessary traffic. Many DNS filtering services offer cloud-based deployment, real-time threat detection, and customizable filtering categories for businesses, schools, and individuals. By leveraging DNS filtering, organizations can enhance cybersecurity, reduce risks, and maintain compliance with industry regulations. Compare and read user reviews of the best Free DNS Filtering platforms currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

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    Control D

    Control D

    Control D

    Control D is a customizable DNS filtering and traffic redirection platform that leverages Secure DNS protocols like DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-QUIC, with support for Legacy DNS. - Block malicious threats - Block unwanted types of content network wide (ads & trackers, IoT telemetry, adult content, socials, and more) - Deploy in minutes on fleets of devices using RMM - Manage clients using sub-organizations - Gain visibility on network events and usage patterns, with client level granularity - Re-route traffic via proxies (through DNS) for improved privacy and security - Enjoy superior UX and simplicity Think of it as your personal Authoritative DNS resolver for the entire Internet that gives you granular control over what domains get resolved, redirected or blocked.
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    Starting Price: $2/month
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  • 2
    SafeDNS

    SafeDNS

    SafeDNS

    At SafeDNS, we are committed to creating a safer and more secure online environment for SMBs, enterprises, ISPs, MSPs, OEMs, and Education. We have a global footprint, making the internet safer for millions of users in over 60 countries. With years of experience in the field of cybersecurity and DNS filtering, we offer cutting-edge solutions to safeguard your digital life. At present, SafeDNS serves more than 4000 businesses and institutions, and tens of thousands of home users worldwide. We do: -Web content filtering. We help you block all dangerous or unwanted websites such as pornography, violence, child sexual abuse and similar categories. -Malware protection. We also have your back against malicious sites trying to breach user devices either with viruses or information theft intent. -Cloud service. Additionally, we provide you with a cloud filtering service that requires no additional hardware purchase or software installation.
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    Starting Price: $0.9/user/month
  • 3
    Cloudflare

    Cloudflare

    Cloudflare

    Cloudflare is the foundation for your infrastructure, applications, and teams. Cloudflare secures and ensures the reliability of your external-facing resources such as websites, APIs, and applications. It protects your internal resources such as behind-the-firewall applications, teams, and devices. And it is your platform for developing globally scalable applications. Your website, APIs, and applications are your key channels for doing business with your customers and suppliers. As more and more shift online, ensuring these resources are secure, performant and reliable is a business imperative. Cloudflare for Infrastructure is a complete solution to enable this for anything connected to the Internet. Behind-the-firewall applications and devices are foundational to the work of your internal teams. The recent surge in remote work is testing the limits of many organizations’ VPN and other hardware solutions.
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    Starting Price: $20 per website
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    FlashStart

    FlashStart

    FlashStart Group Srl

    FlashStart is a global, cloud-based cyber security platform that specializes in DNS filtering with the support of artificial intelligence. It protects against malware and unwanted contents by classifying domains into eighty-five categories, using machine learning with high predictive capability and incorporating government blacklists and warnings for high-risk sites. It offers global coverage, thanks to Anycast Network, which is among the fastest and most stable in the world. It presents advanced and exclusive features, like geographically based protection. Easy installation, centralized multi-tenant management, filter customization, and maximum cost-effectiveness make FlashStart the optimal cloud solution for businesses, PAs, schools, households, etc.
    Starting Price: $0.90/month
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    NextDNS

    NextDNS

    NextDNS

    NextDNS protects you from all kinds of security threats, blocks ads and trackers on websites and in apps and provides a safe and supervised Internet for kids, on all devices and on all networks. Determine your threat model and fine-tune your security strategy by enabling 10+ different types of protections. Use the most trusted threat intelligence feeds containing millions of malicious domains, all updated in real-time. Go beyond the domain, we analyze DNS questions and answers on-the-fly (in a matter of nanoseconds) in order to detect and block malicious behavior. With usually only a few hours between domain registration and the start of an attack, our threat intelligence system is built to catch malicious domains earlier than classic security solutions. Block ads and trackers on websites and in apps, including the most devious ones. Use the most popular ads & trackers blocklists, millions of domains all updated in real-time.
    Starting Price: $39 per month
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    NxFilter

    NxFilter

    NxFilter

    NxFilter is a free, lightweight DNS filtering solution designed to deliver excellent performance without causing latency issues in your network. It offers advanced features such as Active Directory integration, DNS over HTTPS support, screen time management, data caps, user-level reporting, remote user filtering, and clustering. NxFilter is suitable for various environments, including commercial enterprises, nonprofits, schools, hospitals, and family protection, providing multiple filtering policies based on users and groups. The software caches DNS responses from upstream servers, reducing DNS traffic and enhancing efficiency. It supports user authentication methods, including Active Directory integration, and offers URL keyword filtering to block specific search terms in search engines. NxFilter is known for its stability, often running for months without requiring restarts, and is scalable to accommodate several thousand users.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 7
    AdGuard DNS

    AdGuard DNS

    AdGuard Software Ltd

    Advanced, reliable, and secure DNS service designed to protect all devices on your network from threats, trackers and ads. With its unlimited scalability, AdGuard DNS offers an easy-to-deploy solution to safeguard your entire network, no matter if you have a small office or a huge enterprise. It helps block access to known phishing sites and malicious content, ensuring a safer online environment for everyone. By preventing the leakage of your browsing data, AdGuard DNS safeguards your business from unauthorized tracking and profiling. Fine-tune your DNS filtering based on your needs, whether it's ensuring specific sites are blocked or allowing access to certain categories. The solution is simple to implement, with no need for new hardware, complex software or device configurations. It works seamlessly with your existing IT infrastructure, offering a hassle-free way to secure and optimize your network. Free 30-day trial is available to test the domain name service from AdGuard.
    Starting Price: $0.20 per user per month
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    OpenDNS

    OpenDNS

    Cisco Umbrella

    Cisco Umbrella provides protection against threats on the internet such as malware, phishing, and ransomware. OpenDNS is a suite of consumer products aimed at making your internet faster, safer, and more reliable. Thanks to our global data centers and peering partnerships, we shorten the routes between every network and our data centers, making your internet access even faster. With filtering or pre-configured protection, you can safeguard your family against adult content and more. It’s the easiest way to add parental and content filtering controls to every device in your home. Get OpenDNS up and running in your home quickly and easy. PhD in Computer Science not required. Thanks to our helpful guides and knowledge base, set up is a breeze. Blocks more than 7 million malicious domains and IPs while delivering high performance. Identifies more than 60 thousand new malicious destinations (domains, IPs, and URLs) daily. Our global network sustains over 620 billion DNS queries daily.
    Starting Price: $19.95 per year
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    Pi-hole

    Pi-hole

    Pi-hole

    You can run Pi-hole in a container, or deploy it directly to a supported operating system via our automated installer. Our intelligent, automated installer asks you a few questions and then sets everything up for you. Once complete, move on to step 3. Configure your router’s DHCP options to force clients to use Pi-hole as their DNS server, or manually configure each device​ to use the Pi-hole as their DNS server. By pairing your Pi-hole with a VPN, you can have ad-blocking on your cellular devices, helping with limited bandwidth data plans. Instead of browser plugins or other software on each computer, install Pi-hole in one place and your entire network is protected. Network-level blocking allows you to block ads in non-traditional places such as mobile apps and smart TVs, regardless of hardware or OS. Since advertisements are blocked before they are downloaded, network performance is improved and will feel faster.
    Starting Price: Free
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    Quad9

    Quad9

    Quad9

    Quad9 is a free service that replaces your default ISP or enterprise Domain Name Server (DNS) configuration. When your computer performs any Internet transaction that uses the DNS (and most transactions do), Quad9 blocks lookups of malicious host names from an up-to-the-minute list of threats. This blocking action protects your computer, mobile device, or IoT systems against a wide range of threats such as malware, phishing, spyware, and botnets, and it can improve performance in addition to guaranteeing privacy. The Quad9 DNS service is operated by the Swiss-based Quad9 Foundation, whose mission is to provide a safer and more robust Internet for everyone. When your devices use Quad9 normally, no data containing your IP address is ever logged in any Quad9 system.
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    Artica Proxy

    Artica Proxy

    Artica Tech

    Artica project began in 2004 and stemmed from ideas about how to improve the Open Source security solutions available at the time, which were difficult and often expensive to implement and maintain. Artica provides a Powerful user-friendly Web interface and it’s designed to allow every IT administrator, with or without Linux knowledges, to install and maintain network service, like Proxy service, Reverse-Proxy service, DNS service, DNS Filter service, Firewall service, IDS service, SMTP service and more. Today, with around 110.000 servers installed worldwide, Artica solutions are used from small to large enterprises and in Public Government Services
    Starting Price: €100
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    DeCloudUs

    DeCloudUs

    DeCloudUs

    DeCloudUs is a privacy-focused, customizable DNS service designed to enhance online security by blocking ads, trackers, malware, phishing attempts, and malicious sites. It offers users the ability to create multiple custom DNS profiles, allowing for tailored filtering rules and parental controls. The service supports encrypted DNS protocols, including DNSCrypt, DNS over TLS (DoT), and DNS over HTTPS (DoH), ensuring secure and private DNS queries. DeCloudUs operates on self-hosted infrastructure without reliance on third-party cloud services, adhering to a strict zero-logs policy to maintain user privacy. Subscription plans provide access to various DNS servers with different filtering capabilities, catering to diverse user needs. With DeCloudUs, you get access to multiple DNS servers that offer different types and levels of filtering capabilities to suit any use case you have for all of your devices or even the entire home network.
    Starting Price: $0.49 per month
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    Rethink DNS

    Rethink DNS

    Rethink DNS

    RethinkDNS is a free and open source application designed to enhance online privacy and security for Android users. It combines a DNS resolver, firewall, and VPN client into a single tool, allowing users to block ads, trackers, malware, and spyware across all apps. The app supports over 190 blocklists, including those used by popular ad blockers like uBlock Origin. By encrypting DNS queries using DNS over HTTPS (DoH) or DNS over TLS (DoT), RethinkDNS ensures secure and private internet connections. Additionally, it offers a customizable firewall to control internet access on a per-app basis and includes a built-in WireGuard VPN client for encrypting outgoing connections. RethinkDNS is available for download on the Google Play Store and F-Droid. RethinkDNS' goal is to turn Android devices into user agents, something that users can truly control to match their needs and expectations.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 14
    personalDNSfilter

    personalDNSfilter

    Zenz Solutions

    personalDNSfilter is a DNS filter proxy written in Java that intercepts domain name resolutions and returns the loopback address for filtered hosts. It supports secure DNS via DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT) and is available for Java-enabled devices. The application operates with minimal memory usage, allowing filtering with millions of hosts while consuming only a few megabytes of RAM. On Android devices (version 4.2 and newer), personalDNSfilter functions as an effective ad, malware, and tracking server filter without requiring root access. It works with any upstream DNS server, ensuring that filtering is entirely local without any external communication. The software comes preconfigured with ad host filter lists, and users can add additional host filter lists as desired. personalDNSfilter can be run locally on a device or centrally as a DNS server within a network.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 15
    CleanBrowsing

    CleanBrowsing

    CleanBrowsing

    A modernized approach to DNS-based content filtering and security. Easily decide what should, and should not, be allowed on your internet. Effective for our kids, powerful for our business. CleanBrowsing is a DNS-based content filtering service that offers a safe way to browse the web without surprises. It intercepts domain requests and filter sites that should be blocked, based on your filtering needs. Our, free, family filter, for example, blocks porn, obscene, and adult content, while still allowing Google, Youtube, Bing, DuckDuckGo and the rest of the web to load safely. Our free filters are comprised of three predefined filters for global consumption (Security, Adult, and Family). The Family filter blocks adult / obscene content and applies Safe Search filters to Google, Bing, Yandex, etc. The security filter, however, only focuses on restricting access to malicious activity.
    Starting Price: $59.99
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