Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home vs Blocky 2026: Self-Hosted DNS Blockers

TL;DR

All three are network-wide ad blockers — point your router's DNS at them and every device on the LAN is filtered. Pi-hole is the elder statesman: huge community, Lua-based engine, group-based per-client policies. AdGuard Home is the polished, batteries-included option with the best out-of-the-box UI and native DoH/DoT/DoQ. Blocky is the small, fast, YAML-configured Go binary that homelabbers reach for when they want something they can run alongside Prometheus and call from a config repo.

Key Takeaways

Pi-hole v6 unified the API and UI, dropped lighttpd, and shipped first-party encrypted DNS in 2024–2025
AdGuard Home has the easiest setup and the broadest protocol support — DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS, DNS-over-QUIC, plus DNSCrypt
Blocky is single-binary, ~25 MB, exposes Prometheus metrics natively, and is the only one designed config-file-first
All three support upstream DoH/DoT, custom blocklists, per-client overrides, and conditional forwarding for split-DNS
Best fit: AdGuard Home for "just works on a Pi"; Pi-hole for "I want the established ecosystem"; Blocky for "I run everything in Kubernetes/compose with monitoring"

Decision Table

Capability	Pi-hole v6	AdGuard Home	Blocky
License	EUPL-1.2	GPL-3.0	Apache-2.0
Single-binary install	❌ (multi-component)	✅	✅
Native DoH server	✅ (v6)	✅	✅
Native DoT server	⚠️ (via cloudflared/unbound)	✅	✅
Native DoQ server	❌	✅	❌
Encrypted upstreams	✅	✅	✅
Web admin UI	✅ (rewritten in v6)	✅ (best in class)	❌ (community UIs only)
Prometheus metrics	⚠️ (exporter)	⚠️ (exporter)	✅ (built-in)
YAML / file-based config	❌ (DB + UI)	⚠️ (YAML, but UI editable)	✅ (file-first)
Per-client groups	✅	✅	✅
Conditional forwarding	✅	✅	✅
DHCP server	✅	✅	❌
Memory footprint	~80 MB	~60 MB	~25 MB
Mobile-friendly UI	✅ (v6)	✅	n/a

Pi-hole: The Established Standard

Pi-hole has defined "DNS-level ad blocker" for over a decade. Version 6 was the largest rewrite in the project's history — the FTL engine now embeds its own HTTP server (replacing lighttpd), the API is REST-first, and the UI was modernized end-to-end. Setup on Raspberry Pi OS is still a one-line installer; Docker users get an official image.

Strengths

The most documented self-hosted tool in the entire DNS-blocker space
Community-curated blocklists (StevenBlack, oisd, etc.) treat Pi-hole as the reference target
Group management — assign clients to groups, apply different blocklists per group — is mature
Built-in DHCP server for the "I want one box to do everything" homelab
Long-term-support track record makes it the safest bet for non-technical households

Weaknesses

Multi-component (FTL + dnsmasq fork + web UI) means the upgrade story is heavier than single-binary alternatives
Older docs and community posts still reference v5 layouts; verify when troubleshooting
DoT support traditionally required cloudflared or unbound sidecars; v6 simplified this but the ecosystem hasn't caught up

The AdGuard Home self-hosting walkthrough shows how the AdGuard install compares step-by-step.

AdGuard Home: The Polished Default

AdGuard Home is the open-source project from AdGuard, separate from their commercial product. It is, by a clear margin, the best-looking and easiest-to-onboard of the three.

Strengths

Web wizard handles initial configuration including LAN binding, encrypted DNS, and admin password
Native support for every modern DNS transport — DoH, DoT, DoQ, DNSCrypt — both upstream and downstream
Built-in client identification by MAC, IP range, or ClientID
Excellent default blocklists, including AdGuard's own well-maintained list
"Safe Search" and "Safe Browsing" toggles ship out of the box
Single binary, single config file, trivial to back up

Weaknesses

Slightly less customizable than Pi-hole at the edges (regex rules, custom DNS records work but feel less native)
DHCP server exists but is less battle-tested than Pi-hole's (which is dnsmasq-based)
AdGuard the company is Russia-incorporated; some compliance-conscious orgs prefer to avoid this. The codebase is open and Go, so a fork is technically straightforward but socially heavy

For most new self-hosters, AdGuard Home is the lowest-friction starting point.

Blocky: The Programmer's Choice

Blocky is a Go DNS proxy by 0xERR0R designed from day one for the kind of homelab where everything is a docker-compose.yml, every service exports Prometheus metrics, and configuration is checked into Git.

Strengths

Single ~25 MB binary, single YAML config, no database
Prometheus metrics endpoint built in — no separate exporter
Designed to play nicely with monitoring stacks like Grafana + Loki
Caching, conditional upstreams, and bootstrap DNS are all first-class
Excellent for Kubernetes — runs as a Deployment with Prometheus scraping out of the box

Weaknesses

No first-party web UI — community options exist (e.g. blocky-frontend) but they're not at parity with Pi-hole or AdGuard
No DHCP server
The "no UI" stance is a feature for some operators and a non-starter for others
Smaller community; expect to read source code occasionally

If you're a homelab operator who already runs a metrics stack, Blocky integrates so cleanly that the lack of a UI rarely matters.

Performance and Footprint

Throughput differences are mostly noise on a household network. On a single-CPU Raspberry Pi 4 handling ~50 devices and ~150K queries/day:

Tool	Idle RAM	Median query latency	Notable
Pi-hole v6	~80 MB	~3 ms	Multi-process, slightly higher idle CPU
AdGuard Home	~60 MB	~2 ms	Best UI; DoQ available
Blocky	~25 MB	~2 ms	Smallest by far; metrics out of the box

For the vast majority of homes, the differences disappear into normal browser variance. They become meaningful at thousands of devices or in cellular-grade latency budgets — neither of which is a typical home use case.

Who Should Choose What

Choose AdGuard Home if:

You want the easiest setup and the most modern UI
You care about DoH/DoT/DoQ both directions without sidecars
You're setting this up for a household and need it to "just work"

Choose Pi-hole if:

You want the most-documented, most-supported option with the largest community
You need group-based per-client policies and a battle-tested DHCP server
You're integrating with Home Assistant or a homelab dashboard that expects Pi-hole

Choose Blocky if:

You operate the rest of your infra as code and want DNS to follow the same pattern
You already run Prometheus + Grafana and want native metrics
You prefer a single small binary and don't need a UI

Migration Notes

Pi-hole → AdGuard Home: Export blocklists and custom rules; AdGuard's import accepts hosts-format lists directly. Per-client groups must be recreated by hand.
AdGuard Home → Blocky: The YAML mapping is straightforward — upstreams, blacklists, allowlists all translate. Plan a few hours of testing.
Blocky → Pi-hole or AdGuard Home: The hardest direction because you'll be moving from declarative config to UI-managed state. Document blocklist URLs first.

A common pattern is to pair any of these with a CrowdSec install — DNS blocking handles ads and trackers, CrowdSec handles brute-force and scanning attempts.

Verdict

There is no wrong answer; all three are excellent. For most readers in 2026, AdGuard Home is the right default — it's the easiest path from "router DNS pointed wrong" to "no ads on the TV." Reach for Pi-hole if you want the deepest community and DHCP integration, and reach for Blocky if your homelab already speaks YAML and Prometheus.

The SaaS-to-Self-Hosted Migration Guide (Free PDF)