What is Blocky used for?

Blocky is a Go-based DNS proxy and ad blocker for local networks, with per-client rules, caching and modern DNS protocol support. It is a good fit for blocking ads across a home network, and applying different filtering rules to kids and IoT devices.

Is Blocky open source?

Yes. Blocky is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at 0xERR0R/blocky and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Blocky is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Blocky?

Yes. Blocky can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What is Blocky an alternative to?

Blocky is an open-source alternative to Cisco Umbrella, NextDNS and Control D. Other open-source alternatives to Cisco Umbrella include Pi-hole, AdGuard Home and Technitium DNS Server.

Is Blocky actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Blocky was on 29 September 2026, and the latest release is v0.35.0, published on 5 September 2026. The project has 7k stars on GitHub.

Blocky: open-source alternative to Cisco Umbrella, NextDNS

About Blocky

Blocky is a Go program that acts as a DNS proxy and ad blocker for local networks. It answers DNS queries for devices on the network and blocks unwanted domains using external lists for ads and malware, along with allowlists. It is a self-hosted alternative in the same space as Pi-hole.

Blocking rules can differ per client group, such as kids or smart home devices, and lists reload periodically. Blocky can inspect CNAME responses and IP addresses as well as request domains, and supports regular expressions. Beyond blocking it offers custom DNS resolution for chosen names, conditional forwarding, per-group upstream resolvers, caching with prefetching of frequent queries, DNS over HTTPS, TLS, QUIC and HTTP/3, DNSSEC validation, Prometheus metrics and Grafana dashboards.

Blocky is licensed under Apache-2.0. According to its README it collects no user data, telemetry or statistics, and it uses a low memory footprint, which makes it practical to run on small home servers.

Key features

DNS blocking with external lists
Allow and deny lists per client group
Custom DNS and conditional forwarding
Caching with prefetching
DNS over HTTPS, TLS and QUIC
DNSSEC validation
Prometheus metrics and Grafana dashboards

Good fit for

→Blocking ads across a home network
→Applying different filtering rules to kids and IoT devices

Built with: Go
Tags: dns; ad-blocker; dns-proxy; pihole-alternative; self-hosted; go; privacy; parental-control

Blocky: questions and answers

What is Blocky used for?: Blocky is a Go-based DNS proxy and ad blocker for local networks, with per-client rules, caching and modern DNS protocol support. It is a good fit for blocking ads across a home network, and applying different filtering rules to kids and IoT devices.
Is Blocky open source?: Yes. Blocky is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at 0xERR0R/blocky and is written mainly in Go.
Is Blocky free?: Yes. Blocky is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Blocky?: Yes. Blocky can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What is Blocky an alternative to?: Blocky is an open-source alternative to Cisco Umbrella, NextDNS and Control D. Other open-source alternatives to Cisco Umbrella include Pi-hole, AdGuard Home and Technitium DNS Server.
Is Blocky actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Blocky was on 29 September 2026, and the latest release is v0.35.0, published on 5 September 2026. The project has 7k stars on GitHub.