For a new install, take AdGuard Home: it's a single Go binary with encrypted upstream DNS (DoH/DoT/DoQ), per-client filtering rules, and enforced safe search all built in — things Pi-hole needs companions or group gymnastics for. If you already run Pi-hole, v6 closed most of the gap and switching buys you little. Blocking effectiveness is a tie: both are DNS sinkholes, and with identical blocklists they block identically. The comparison is about operations and features, not filter strength.
Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home in one table
| Pi-hole v6 | AdGuard Home | |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | FTL (dnsmasq-derived) + web UI | Single Go binary |
| Encrypted upstream (DoH/DoT) | Via unbound or cloudflared sidecar | Native, plus DoQ |
| Serve DoH/DoT to clients | HTTPS UI yes; DoT/DoH serving no | Native |
| Per-client rules | Groups (capable, clunkier) | First-class, per device |
| Safe search enforcement | Manual regex/CNAME work | Checkbox, per client |
| Service blocking (TikTok, etc.) | Blocklists you assemble | Bundled toggles, schedulable |
| DHCP server | Yes | Yes |
| Install | Bare metal script or Docker | Binary or Docker |
| Idle RAM | ~50MB | ~60MB |
Encrypted upstream DNS without sidecars
Out of the box, both forward your queries in plaintext to whatever upstream you pick, readable by your ISP. AdGuard Home fixes this in its settings page — paste tls://dns.quad9.net or an https:// upstream and you're done, with DoQ available for the lowest overhead. Pi-hole delegates the job: you run cloudflared or unbound alongside and point FTL at 127.0.0.1#5335. The unbound pairing has a genuine advantage — full recursion means you trust no upstream at all — and it works identically behind AdGuard Home. That's the honest summary: AGH makes the easy path easy; Pi-hole makes you assemble it, and the assembled version can be better. Expect blocked-query latency near zero (the sinkhole answers locally) and cached-answer latency of 1–5ms either way; upstream choice dominates the cache-miss numbers.
Family filtering is where AdGuard Home runs away
Per-client control is AGH's clearest win. Each device (identified by MAC, IP, or client ID) gets its own filtering profile: the kids' tablets get enforced SafeSearch on Google and YouTube, a bedtime schedule for the service blocks, and a stricter blocklist; your work laptop gets a minimal profile that never breaks a video call. The blocked-services list — one checkbox each for TikTok, Instagram, Fortnite, and ~70 others, with schedules — replaces what would be an evening of regex on Pi-hole. Pi-hole's groups system can express most of this, but you assemble it from lists and group assignments by hand, and nothing in it does SafeSearch enforcement without CNAME records you maintain yourself.
What Pi-hole v6 changed
The v6 release (February 2025) retired the old lighttpd-and-PHP stack for an embedded web server and REST API, added native HTTPS for the admin UI, in-UI upstream configuration, and made multi-list management less painful. It's a real modernisation, and the ecosystem around Pi-hole — a decade of guides, the Teleporter backup format, tooling like nebula-sync for keeping two instances aligned — remains the largest in the niche. If that ecosystem is where you already live, staying is entirely defensible. What v6 did not add: native encrypted upstreams or per-client SafeSearch, which is why the new-install verdict stands.
Blocklists matter more than the app
Both projects' default lists are deliberately conservative. The practical upgrade is the hagezi list collection — the "Multi Pro" tier (~300k domains) blocks ads, tracking, and telemetry with a false-positive rate low enough for family use. Add it in either UI, and expect a 20–35% blocked share of total queries in a typical household (a normal home does 20–60k DNS queries a day; the number is a fun dashboard stat, not a performance concern — either tool handles it on a Pi Zero). Resist stacking twelve overlapping lists: every extra list adds false-positive surface, and debugging "why does this shopping site break" is the actual maintenance cost of DNS blocking.
Operational notes that outlast the choice
Run the resolver on a static IP and hand it out via DHCP — either tool can be the DHCP server if your router's is inflexible. The failure mode to design for: your DNS box goes down and the internet is "broken" for the whole house. Two instances (a second Pi, or a container on another box) listed as primary and secondary DNS solves it; keep them aligned with adguardhome-sync or Pi-hole's Teleporter export. Remember that "secondary" is a load-shared peer, not a failover — clients query both freely, so an unfiltered public resolver in slot two quietly leaks a third of your traffic around the filter. And expect some devices to bypass you — modern TVs and IoT gear ship hardcoded DNS or DoH; the counter-move is a router firewall rule redirecting outbound port 53 to your resolver, which catches the hardcoded offenders. Deeper resolver plumbing, split-horizon setups included, is covered in DNS for self-hosters.
What I'd do
New network: AdGuard Home in Docker with host networking, quad9 over TLS upstream (or unbound if you want full recursion), hagezi Multi Pro, per- client profiles for the kids' devices, and a second instance on another box synced nightly. Existing Pi-hole v6 users: add unbound if you haven't, adopt hagezi, and stay put — the switching cost buys features you've evidently lived without. Either way, the port-53 redirect rule on the router is what turns a DNS filter from advisory into enforced.