# OpenNIC

5 Hacker News commenters recommended OpenNIC and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend OpenNIC as a free alternative DNS root for domains that ICANN's system does not offer, such as .geek and .name-style alternatives. The most common caveat is that its TLDs remain exposed to ICANN registering the same names.

## Why people recommend it

- Free alternative to ICANN domains (2 comments): "projects like OpenNIC that take on DNS alone if you prefer" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47786665)) "why can't all 22k .name owners move on to OpenNIC?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49553462))
- Already established, independent alternative (1 comments): "Already exists: Opennic.org" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48364606))

## What people warn about

- ICANN can register same TLD (1 comments): "ICANN can take away your OpenNIC TLD by registering the same one" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634071))
- Toxic internal community dynamics (1 comments): "the ingroup dynamics are quite toxic" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49137746))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Cloudflare DNS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cloudflare-dns.md): 52 recommend
- [Unbound DNS resolver](https://hackerapproved.com/p/unbound.md): 45 recommend
- [Google Public DNS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/google-public-dns.md): 18 recommend
- [systemd-resolved](https://hackerapproved.com/p/systemd-resolved.md): 10 recommend
- [Numa DNS resolver](https://hackerapproved.com/p/numa-dns-resolver.md): 10 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://opennic.org/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "OpenNIC", https://hackerapproved.com/p/opennic/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).