AdGuard Home Network Ad Blocker

AdGuard Home is a free and open-source network-wide ad blocking and tracking protection software that acts as a DNS sinkhole, filtering advertisements, trackers, and malicious domains at the DNS level for all devices on a network. Developed by AdGuard Software Limited (headquartered in Nicosia, Cyprus, founded by Andrey Meshkov in 2009), AdGuard Home was first released as open source in 2018 as a self-hosted alternative to the Pi-hole DNS sinkhole. Key features: DNS-level ad blocking: AdGuard Home intercepts DNS queries from all devices on the network (phones, tablets, computers, IoT devices, smart TVs) and blocks requests to known advertising, tracking, and malware domains, without requiring any client-side software installation. All devices on the network benefit from ad blocking simply by using AdGuard Home as their DNS server. Blocklists: supports multiple DNS blocklist formats including AdGuard filters, EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's list, Dan Pollock's list, OISD, HaGeFi, and any hosts-file format blocklists. Over 50 built-in filter lists with millions of domains. Custom allowlists and blocklists for fine-grained control. DNS server: functions as a full recursive DNS server with support for DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), DNS-over-TLS (DoT), DNS-over-QUIC (DoQ), and DNSCrypt, encrypting DNS queries for privacy. Upstream DNS: forwards queries to upstream resolvers (Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, Google 8.8.8.8, Quad9, or custom) with support for DNSSEC validation. Per-client settings: apply different filtering rules, upstream DNS servers, and blocklists to specific clients (devices) based on IP or MAC address. Parental control: block adult content, gambling, and social media sites. Safe browsing: block known malware and fraud domains. Web interface: dashboard showing real-time DNS query statistics, top blocked domains, top clients, query logs, and DNS query type distribution. Cross-platform: Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD. GPL-2.0.