https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/28b802ca-ccae-48dd-b2f4-3b285bed1028/nextdns.png

Finally! I'm happy to report that I found a DNS service that perfectly suits my needs.

My requirements are as follows:

Pi-Hole: sorry, I do leave home sometimes

We all know Pi-hole, which is an awesome software. Sadly, it does not fit my requirements.

First of all, it's only available at home, which is a total deal-breaker for me since I only work on mobile devices (laptop, smartphone) that come and go out of my house every day. Which means I can't set my system resolver to PiHole because it wouldn't work when I leave home and if I let DHCP managing my DNS settings, I'll be using random DNS servers outside home.

I have successfully set up a WireGuard server with Pi-hole set as a resolver, on a VM in the cloud. That... works, but I don't want to be connected to a VPN all the time.

To put it simply, Pi-hole does not tick essential boxes here, so it's disqualified for my use-case.

Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 and others

Despite how much I like Cloudflare and this specific service, I want to block trackers at the DNS level. 1.1.1.1 is probably the most reliable and fastest resolver there is on earth, but that does not fit my use case either. 😕

Adguard: good enough, but not perfect

For the past year and a half, I have been using AdGuard DNS (not their software). I have been using the DoT endpoint from my Android phone and the DoH endpoint from my Mac trough dnscrypt-proxy, and it's been working perfectly.

They have been super reliable for me. They seem to have an Anycast network, although limited.