Unbound DNS resolver

What hackers pick instead

• Cloudflare DNSPeople recommend it as a fast, free, simple resolver that works reliably and is easy to set up. Critics distrust the company over US legal exposure and past blocking.52recommend
• Google Public DNSRecommended as a fast DNS resolver that never blocks domains and rarely goes down. Critics' main caveat is privacy, as Google can build profiles of activity.18recommend
• systemd-resolvedRecommended for being integrated with systemd, well documented and useful; critics say it invents DNS records and breaks standard behavior.10recommend
• Numa DNS resolverFree local DNS resolver that people run as their system DNS for privacy, ad filtering and split DNS with Tailscale, with encrypted ODoH upstream support.10recommend
• DNS4EUFree DNS resolver with an adblocking and malware-protection profile for quick setup. Critics question whether it follows only the law, and one says it has no visible configuration options.5recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 81 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Running Unbound locally with intelligent upstream selection and caching definitely reduces blast radius from edge resolver outages.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Recovering from DNS Outages in Distributed Systems”

2. now your unbound serves records faster than the round trip out to anything off your own network in most cases

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “An open DNS recursive service for free security and high privacy”

3. I just spent the better half of an hour to debug unbound and the pihole because I thought it's a me problem

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “.de TLD offline due to DNSSEC?”

4. I am fairly sure that just unbound by itself can do almost any dns party trick you care to throw at it

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “OpenBSD has a use-after-free allowing local privilege escalation to root”

5. Shouldn't we just encourage everyone to run their own resolvers (it's turnkey for the most part!)?

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Quad9 to exit France”

6. you can't easily bind Unbound on a WireGuard interface because of services dependency order

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “A Caddy Cert Expired Because Systemd-Resolved Was Selectively Broken”

7. unbound supports wildcards to blacklist domains and that's what I care the most about

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Deutsche Telekom is violating Net Neutrality”

8. Pihole + Unbound as recursive DNS to avoid DNS poisoning and personal data tracking.

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Fuck the Cloud (2009)”

9. Why not run your own recursive resolver like unbound if you're looking for privacy

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “An open DNS recursive service for free security and high privacy”

10. If you are on Linux, install unbound and set your DNS server to localhost, done.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “List of domains censored by German ISPs”

11. I run the unbound DNS (on a little Pi so it's on 24/7) with gigantic killfiles

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “It's Always TCP_NODELAY”

12. I run Unbound locally on my Windows laptops for years and never had a problem

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “A Caddy Cert Expired Because Systemd-Resolved Was Selectively Broken”

13. Local DNS server with a script that updates the bllacklist is enough for me.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Ask HN: Which DNS based ad blocker do you suggest?”

14. we can take away the logging of DNS queries away from the big providers

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Encrypted Client Hello Doesn't Help With Privacy”

15. I also use DNS based filtering since I run my own Unbound instance

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “How I block all online ads”

16. The upside is there's no single entity receiving all your queries.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Cloudflare flags archive.today as "C&C/Botnet"; no longer resolves via 1.1.1.2”

17. Easy setup, network-wide ad blocking on every device / browser.

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Microsoft Edge is about to lock out older ad blockers, just like Chrome did”

18. It took perhaps a couple of hours to set up in the pre-AI age.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Shutting down our public encrypted DNS”

19. Took some time to set up but after that it's smooth sailing.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Choosing a Public DNS Resolver”

20. It would be best if unbound does ZONEMD checking

    Mixed · Jun 2026 · in “Choosing a Public DNS Resolver”

21. Clunky but it would sortof work.

    Mixed · Oct 2026 · in “Quad9 to exit France”

22. Unbound does not have native Geo support and will not let one set custom per-zone EDE text

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Quad9 to exit France”

23. it’s what ensures courts have to actually go after the parties responsible for the domain, and not just random DNS resolvers

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Quad9 to exit France”

24. The root Anycast clusters are absolutely designed to handle the entire internet querying them which I do from Unbound.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “DNS Provider Quad9 Sees Piracy Blocking Orders as "Existential Threat"”

25. someone running their own recursive DNS server (like Bind9 or Unbound) can trivially bypass these restrictions

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “List of domains censored by German ISPs”

26. This is the best of both worlds, the simplicity of unencrypted DNS while encrypting traffic where it matters.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Shutting down our public encrypted DNS”

27. This gets rid of the upstream DNS service such as the ISP's completely, and prevents tampering or censorship.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “ChatGPT now knows what you do on other websites via ad collector”

28. I have always preferred a plain Unbound instance and a Samba server over fancier alternatives.

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “2026 is the Year of Self-hosting”

29. I can warm up cache on entirely unrelated nodes and then transfer the cache export to any node

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Show HN: Running the second public ODoH relay”

30. I have always preferred a plain Unbound instance and a Samba server over fancier alternatives

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “2026 is the Year of Self-hosting”

31. Just run ADGUARD or unbound/dnsmasq/dnsdist in recursive mode on your router or machine.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Choosing a Public DNS Resolver”

32. It only takes a few minutes. Install Unbound and see if it was compiled with libnghttp2.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “EU-Backed DNS Resolver Collects Pirate Site Blocklist, Which It Doesn't Use”

33. The complexity of this is roughly a millionth of a percent of that of your web browser.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Choosing a Public DNS Resolver”

34. retrying edge resolvers intelligently, preferring the fastest responding edge resolvers

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Recovering from DNS Outages in Distributed Systems”

35. This setup absolutely crushes the performance versus top spec consumer-grade routers

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “IPv6 is not insecure because it lacks a NAT”

36. Install Unbound DNS on the squid proxy and enable the DoH (DNS over HTTPS) listener

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Grok uploaded my user directory to xAI's servers”

37. set up a forwarder such as unbound(8) in your LAN and use that as DNS server

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “List of domains censored by German ISPs”

38. Unbound is a great resolver for overriding the minimum TTL on PTR records.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Tcpdump Is the Network Debugging Tool You Should Have Learned Years Ago”

39. Point your adguard home server to your unbound server as upstream.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “You Can Run a DNS Server”

40. Unbound DNS if compiled with --with-libnghttp2 can listen for DoH

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash”