Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home: Choosing a DNS Filter in 2026

Both Pi-hole and AdGuard Home sit on your network and answer DNS queries for every device, dropping the ones that resolve to ad and tracker domains. Both are free, both block equally well when fed the same lists, and neither is a bad choice. The decision is not about blocking quality — it is about whether you want features built in or assembled by hand, and whether you care that your DNS queries leave the house encrypted. Here is how to choose, plus the one design mistake that takes the whole network down.

What They Share

• Network-wide blocking, including IoT devices that cannot run an ad blocker themselves.
• Blocklist-driven filtering with regular updates and a query dashboard.
• A single point of control: point your router's DHCP DNS at the box and you are done.
• An optional built-in DHCP server and local DNS records.
• A REST API and a full query log.

Where They Differ

Encrypted DNS: The One Difference That Matters

AdGuard Home speaks DoH, DoT and DoQ natively in both directions. Point an Android phone's Private DNS setting at it and it answers over TLS; outbound queries are encrypted with no extra service. Pi-hole speaks plain DNS on port 53, so encryption is an add-on: Pi-hole → cloudflared for DoH, or Pi-hole → Unbound for a local recursive resolver.

The Pi-hole plus Unbound combination is arguably more private than any third-party upstream because you stop trusting a resolver entirely. It is also a second service to install, monitor and update.

# Pi-hole + Docker Compose
services:
  pihole:
    image: pihole/pihole:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "53:53/tcp"
      - "53:53/udp"
      - "8080:80/tcp"
    environment:
      TZ: Asia/Shanghai
      WEBPASSWORD: change-me
      FTLCONF_LOCAL_IPV4: 192.168.1.50
      PIHOLE_DNS_: "1.1.1.1;9.9.9.9"
    volumes:
      - ./etc-pihole:/etc/pihole
      - ./etc-dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN

# AdGuard Home + Docker Compose
services:
  adguardhome:
    image: adguard/adguardhome:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "53:53/tcp"
      - "53:53/udp"
      - "3000:3000/tcp"   # setup wizard
      - "853:853/tcp"     # DNS-over-TLS
    volumes:
      - ./work:/opt/adguardhome/work
      - ./conf:/opt/adguardhome/conf

The Trap: Making DNS a Single Point of Failure

If you run one blocker and hand its address out over DHCP, the day that container fails to start is the day “the internet is broken” for everyone in the house. Run two instances — a second container or a second Raspberry Pi — and hand both addresses out over DHCP. Clients will try the second when the first times out. This is the difference between an annoyance and a family incident.

Bypasses You Must Close

# Block common DoH endpoints so browsers fall back to your resolver
# On your firewall / router: block by IP and SNI:
#   dns.google, cloudflare-dns.com, dns.quad9.net, mozilla.cloudflare-dns.com

Modern browsers will happily use their own DoH resolver and bypass your filter entirely. Either block those endpoints so browsers fall back to system DNS, or disable DoH in browser settings on devices you control. On managed laptops you may not win — that is a policy problem, not a DNS problem.

Verdict

For a new install in 2026, AdGuard Home is the better default: native encrypted DNS, real per-client configuration, and built-in parental controls without writing regex. Choose Pi-hole if you already run it, want the largest blocklist ecosystem and community, or intend to pair it with Unbound for a fully recursive resolver. Both are vastly better than no filtering at all — and whichever you pick, run two.

Related Reading

Deeper dives on the same topics from our archive:

• AdGuard Home: Self-Hosted DNS Filtering and Ad Blocking
• Anycast DNS: Design, Routing and Failure Modes
• step-ca Tutorial: An Internal ACME CA for Network Devices

原文链接：https://homelabcompass.com/compare/pihole-vs-adguard-home