Blocky

Blocky is a DNS proxy and ad-blocker for the local network written in Go with following features:

Features

Blocking - Blocking of DNS queries with external lists (Ad-block, malware) and allowlisting

- Definition of allow/denylists per client group (Kids, Smart home devices, etc.) - Periodical reload of external allow/denylists - Regex support - Blocking of request domain, response CNAME (deep CNAME inspection) and response IP addresses (against IP lists)

Advanced DNS configuration - not just an ad-blocker

- Custom DNS resolution for certain domain names - Conditional forwarding to external DNS server - Upstream resolvers can be defined per client group

Performance - Improves speed and performance in your network

- Customizable caching of DNS answers for queries -> improves DNS resolution speed and reduces amount of external DNS queries - Prefetching and caching of often used queries - Using multiple external resolver simultaneously - Low memory footprint

Various Protocols - Supports modern DNS protocols

- DNS over UDP and TCP - DNS over HTTPS (aka DoH) - DNS over TLS (aka DoT) - DNS over QUIC (aka DoQ, RFC 9250) - DNS over HTTPS/3 (aka DoH3, RFC 9114)

Security and Privacy - Secure communication

- Supports modern DNS extensions: DNSSEC, eDNS, ... - DNSSEC validation of upstream resolvers - Free configurable blocking lists - no hidden filtering etc. - Provides DoH Endpoint - Uses random upstream resolvers from the configuration - increases your privacy through the distribution of your DNS traffic over multiple provider - Blocky does NOT collect any user data, telemetry, statistics etc.

Integration - various integration

- Prometheus metrics - Prepared Grafana dashboards (Prometheus and database) - Logging of DNS queries per day / per client in CSV format or MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/Timescale database - easy to analyze - Various REST API endpoints - CLI tool

Simple configuration - single or multiple configuration files in YAML format

- Simple to maintain - Simple to backup

Simple installation/configuration - blocky was designed for simple installation

- Stateless (no database, no temporary files) - Docker image with Multi-arch support - Single binary - Supports x86-64, ARM, and MIPS architectures -> runs fine on Raspberry PI and OpenWrt routers - Community supported Helm chart for k8s deployment

❤️ Support Blocky

Blocky is free, open source, and built entirely in my spare time — with no telemetry, no data collection, and no hidden filtering. It keeps the DNS for thousands of home networks, homelabs, and businesses clean and private, and it always will.

Maintaining a project this size — fixing bugs, reviewing pull requests, shipping new features, and keeping up with security — takes a lot of time. **Thousands of people run Blocky; only a handful support it.** If Blocky is useful to you, please consider chipping in. Your support directly funds ongoing development and helps keep Blocky independent and ad-free, forever.

Even a small recurring contribution makes a real difference and is hugely appreciated. 🙏