Pi-hole
Pi-hole is a network-wide ad blocker that protects every device on your home or office network from advertisements, trackers, and malware domains. By acting as a DNS sinkhole, it intercepts requests to known advertising and tracking domains and returns a null response, effectively blocking them at the network level before they reach any device. No client-side software installation needed — set it up once on a Raspberry Pi, server, or Docker container and every device on your network benefits automatically.
Key Features
- Network-wide blocking — Covers every device on your network: computers, phones, tablets, smart TVs, and IoT gadgets, without installing anything on them
- DNS sinkhole — Returns null (0.0.0.0) for known ad and tracking domains, preventing connections before they start
- Real-time statistics dashboard — Web-based admin interface showing queries per second, top blocked domains, top clients, and query history over time
- Whitelist/blacklist domain control — Easily allow or block specific domains from the web dashboard or command line
- Ad list management — Supports multiple blocklist sources (StevenBlack, Firebog, custom lists) that update automatically
- DHCP server integration — Can act as a DHCP server to automatically configure itself as the DNS resolver for all network clients
- Conditional forwarding — Forwards local domain queries to your existing DNS server while blocking ad domains globally
- Low resource footprint — Runs comfortably on a Raspberry Pi Zero with minimal power consumption (< 50MB RAM idle)
Why Use Pi-hole?
Pi-hole is a set-and-forget solution that improves privacy, reduces bandwidth usage, speeds up page loading by eliminating ad scripts, and protects against malware-serving domains — all without configuring each device individually. It’s the single most effective privacy tool you can deploy on a home network.
Use Cases
- Home network ad blocking — Block ads on every device in your household, including smart TVs and game consoles that can’t run ad blockers
- Malware domain blocking — Use curated blocklists to prevent devices from reaching known malware, phishing, and ransomware distribution domains
- IoT monitoring and filtering — See what your smart devices are phoning home to, and block unwanted telemetry at the DNS level
Platform
Linux · Docker · Raspberry Pi · Any Unix-like system
Licence
EUPL 1.2 (European Union Public Licence)