AdGuard Home
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 7 network ad blockers by recommenders
Network-wide DNS ad blocker people run at home so every device goes ad-free; the common caveat is that allow lists take a while to tune.
Network-wide DNS ad blocker people run at home so every device goes ad-free; the common caveat is that allow lists take a while to tune.
51 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 48
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 94%
Recommended in 13 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 48 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 16 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 13 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Blocks ads on every home device
“it works wonderfully. Any device that is on my local network, ads blocked.”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Whoisinspace.com/” “I'm also using AdGuard as my home WiFi DNS server and I'm seeing zero ads”
Comment from 7 Mar 2026 in “Tinnitus Is Connected to Sleep” “never see ads on any machines you own again even on cellular”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Whoisinspace.com/” - Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “9 Ads per Minute: FIFA Cup 26 – "the price of the beautiful game"”
- Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Quad9 DOH HTTP/1.1 Retirement, December 15, 2025”
- Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “I Now Assume That All Ads on Apple News Are Scams”
Easy to set up and maintain
“Finally, fast and one-click adguard home, what's not to like.”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “OpenWrt One – Open Hardware Router” “I’ve found AdGuard Home very easy to maintain”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Edge, Opera to follow” “This was all pretty simple to setup given hardware that supports VPN, DDNS, etc.”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “System-level ad-blocking in Android” - Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “Shutting down our public encrypted DNS”
Reliable, runs without fuss
“It's probably the software I trust the most on my network to 'just work'”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “Shutting down our public encrypted DNS” “the redundancy at home has saved my skin during several Proxmox reboots”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “I run three AdGuard Home instances (two local, one on a VPS)” “It's been rock-solid for me, and improves on pi-hole in various ways”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “Shutting down our public encrypted DNS” Fast internet on modest hardware
“a tiny little AdGuardHome process and a port-forward in the router isn't using anymore power/effort”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “How I block all online ads” “Combined with the adguard + unbound dns setup, my internet connection is amazingly fast”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “You Can Run a DNS Server” “This setup absolutely crushes the performance versus top spec consumer-grade routers”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “IPv6 is not insecure because it lacks a NAT”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Tuning allow lists takes time
“It took me a long time to get the allow lists dialed in, but I think it was still worth it.”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?” “it would give you more benefit for the amount of time/effort required”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Why Nextcloud feels slow to use”
Other network ad blockers people recommend
The four most recommended other network ad blockers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pi-hole | 136 | 26 | 84% | 12 | 5 yrs7 owners | Approved |
| NextDNS | 81 | 14 | 85% | 12 | 3 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| AdGuard HomeThis page | 48 | 3 | 94% | 13 | — | Approved |
| AdGuard DNS | 26 | 3 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
| RethinkDNS | 16 | 3 | 84% | 9 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 64 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“block DNS requests for telemetry endpoints”
“You can do this with a DNS gateway in your home running on something like a Raspberry Pi. Check out AdGuard”
“This was all pretty simple to setup given hardware that supports VPN, DDNS, etc.”
“get rid of all (most) ads on any site or app”
“it works wonderfully. Any device that is on my local network, ads blocked.”
“never see ads on any machines you own again even on cellular”
“given everything goes through AdGuard it’s much simpler to sift through it’s logs”
“There are good solutions like PiHole or AdGuard”
“having it be local is better in my opinion”
“It's probably the software I trust the most on my network to 'just work'”
“Trivial to self-host, and gives you full control of blocking.”
“It's been rock-solid for me, and improves on pi-hole in various ways”
“Browser agnostic, you get an admin dashboard to manage the white/blacklists”
“You might have a better luck with network level ad blocker like pi-hole or adguard for eg”
“Finally, fast and one-click adguard home, what's not to like.”
“And you can set limits and block-lists to your needs.”
“I’ve found AdGuard Home very easy to maintain”
“This has helped keep ads undercontrol in our hoursehold”
“the redundancy at home has saved my skin during several Proxmox reboots”
“AdGuard Home helps you with hosting your own DNS infrastructure”
“Combined with the adguard + unbound dns setup, my internet connection is amazingly fast”
“Unbound could do ad-blocking itself as well, but it's more cumbersome than in AGH.”
“I would also suggest to use two instances of adguards”
“Setup AdGuard-Home for both blocking ads and internal/split DNS”
“I'm also using AdGuard as my home WiFi DNS server and I'm seeing zero ads”
“Adguard is much more active in maintaining its lists.”
“it means I don't have the family complain various sites are broken”
“I'm using AdGuard running in Home Assistant and I don't see any ads in Apple News.”
“It blocks 15 or 20 percent of all my traffic.”
“AdGuard Home is a wonderful alternative to Pi-hole”
“This setup absolutely crushes the performance versus top spec consumer-grade routers”
“It took me a long time to get the allow lists dialed in, but I think it was still worth it.”
“a tiny little AdGuardHome process and a port-forward in the router isn't using anymore power/effort”
“I don't need the hassle of an always-on VPN, I just have an always-on AdGuardHome.”
“Adguard Home does all of this perfectly in my opinion.”
“runs AdGuardHome and removes any ad or malicious”
“Home Adguard Home works regardless of if I'm at home or not, without a VPN.”
“Pihole/adguard are great, and while their function overlaps with uBo, they are still different.”
“it will happily run on a reasonable OpenWRT system”
“it would give you more benefit for the amount of time/effort required”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.