Choosing a Public DNS Resolver

denkmoon

9.9.9.9 is all you need

_def

quad9 seems fine. Glad there are a bunch of alternatives though. We should never stop practicing decentralization in the net.

Bender

I use Unbound locally as a DoH server. The Alpine Linux Unbound package is compiled with libnghttp2, required for the built in DoH listener . That's more than enough to enable ECH [1]. I pre-cache all the domains I use hourly via cron. My ISP is not going to dork with my DNS requests and their employees are bigger deviants than I. If I ever started browsing the web from a phone I would just set up my own public DoH server. It only takes a few minutes and gives me my own query logs for debugging weird issues. [1] - https://tls-ech.dev/

degenerate

9.9.9.9 with 1.1.1.1 as secondary

kingo55

It would be nice if a site like this could offer a basic speed comparison test to your local network. Imagine seeing response times at P90 for a series of random lookups and comparing the median response times.

JdeBP

Every time that this comes up, be it a general list like this or someone announcing a new service, my reaction, and that that I see of surprisingly many other people on Hacker News, is fairly unmoved. I've run my own proxy DNS service for about a quarter of a century at this point, using three different sets of softwares on six different operating systems, and every single point on the filter tab is something that I can (and do) just do for myself. The list is not so much interesting for the options that it presents, as far as I am concerned, but for the things that it reveals. Every single entry that is explicitly marked 'China' also has 'operates under Chinese regulations'; which is, in 2026, something that is of concern for more than just the Chinese entries on the list, to people on my continent for starters. 'Run by one individual in Denmark.' is an interesting statement of bus factor, but I don't think that all of the other entries should be assumed to be better just because they are mute on the point. There's far less information about who is behind DNS.Watch than there is about Thomas Steen Rasmussen. And it appears that DNS.Watch went off the air at least once in recent years, so it is a legitimate concern. Then there are all sorts of things not on this list that might matter to people, such as Quad101 looking like it has geographic restrictions on whom it is available to and Gcore being an AI company.

adithyassekhar

Should add one more filter: EDNS client subnets. Some like cloudflare doesn’t support that in the name of privacy. EDNS lets the dns server of the site you are visiting know from where you are connecting and can give you the closest server. 1.1.1.1 does not do that. This breaks all sorts of ISP cache and peering arrangements. Here’s an example: My ISP’s google global cache is broken every time I use cloudflare. With google dns, opendns, isp’s own dns I get my ISP’s own ip address for the domain “googlevideo.com” which is where youtube videos load from. With cloudflare dns I get an ip address of an actual google server which may or may not be in my country. Result: my downloads from google drive/youtube/play store all are faster with a dns server with proper EDNS support. Now imagine this on a global scale for smaller websites, your request might go to a different continent. I understand the product decision for cloudflare and I don’t want them to change but this is something people should know about. There are numerous reports on their forums which are always locked with no activity. I am not saying it’s a conspiracy but this doesn’t affect sites on cloudflare btw due to their global anycast routing/infra setup which I don’t know enough to explain.

vzaliva

unfortunately many DNS resolvers are integrated with CDNs. I do want privacy of an independent non-tracking DNS but I also want my video streaming work fast. :(

kev009

I always just set up root recursors at my home and other locations. I've never noticed any downside.

exiguus

Most important and super privacy/security related topic: DNS. Instead of choosing a public one. Host your own infrastructure. You don't need public instances. Just run ADGUARD or unbound/dnsmasq/dnsdist in recursive mode on your router or machine. And you can set limits and block-lists to your needs.

Shitty-kitty

DNScryptProxy maintains a extensive list of public DNS servers. It also lists if if they do Dnssec, filetering, logging. https://download.dnscrypt.info/dnscrypt-resolvers/v3/public-...

sevg

Happy NextDNS user. Lots of configurability, including which filterlists to enable, configurable logging etc. Plus it’s reliable and fast from basically anywhere (which is harder to achieve if I ran my own resolvers in the cloud, and anyway I don’t want to have to maintain that).

itake

Does anyone have advice on how to use public wifi alongside DNS resolver? Many public wifi network works need you to use their DNS, so they can redirect you to a gated "accept ToS" screen (and may even require re-approval every 30-60 minutes). To resolve the issue is so frustrating: 1. realize the internet stopped working 2. ping google.com, wait for timeouts to show up. 3. try to guess if its a ISP issue, but then realize the wifi probably timed out. 4. Switch the dns. Flush DNS. 5. try to access a non-TLS domain 6. approve the gate 7. switch the DNS back There has to be something that manages this

flyingzucchini

Interesting puzzle on the top level url… what’s that all about ?