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SmartDNS

Local DNS server that picks the fastest results

Reverse Proxy & Gateways ★ 11.3k stars Medium setup GPL-3.0

SmartDNS is an open-source local DNS server that queries multiple upstream servers and returns the fastest responding result. It supports ad-blocking and encrypted DNS for self-hosted networks.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Fastest-result resolution
  • Ad-blocking support
  • DoH and DoT upstreams
  • Runs on routers

Strengths

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Mature project with 11.3k GitHub stars
  • Written in C
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM

Is SmartDNS secure?

No known vulnerabilities affect SmartDNS's latest release (Release48.4). OSV.dev lists 4 past advisories for the project; none of them applies to this release. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

  • Most recent fixed advisory CVE-2026-1425, published 2026-01-26 (261 days ago)

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

SmartDNS replaces

Self-hosted Pi-hole alternativesSelf-hosted dnsmasq alternatives

Health badge

Maintain SmartDNS? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 93 · excellent

Markdown
[![SelfHostIndex health score for SmartDNS](https://selfhostindex.com/badge/smartdns.svg)](https://selfhostindex.com/app/smartdns/)
HTML
<a href="https://selfhostindex.com/app/smartdns/"><img src="https://selfhostindex.com/badge/smartdns.svg" alt="SelfHostIndex health score for SmartDNS"></a>
reStructuredText
.. image:: https://selfhostindex.com/badge/smartdns.svg
   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for SmartDNS
   :target: https://selfhostindex.com/app/smartdns/

The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

Compare SmartDNS

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