Pi-hole vs Pound
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted reverse proxy & gateways options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Pi-hole
Blackhole for Internet advertisements with a GUI for management and
VS
Pound
Lightweight reverse proxy and HTTPS load balancer
| Feature | Pi-hole | Pound |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | EUPL-1.2 | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | Shell | C |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 60,247 | ★ 70 |
| First released | 2026 | 2002 |
| Replaces | — | NGINX, HAProxy |
Why pick each one
Choose Pi-hole if…
- Released under the EUPL-1.2 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 60.2k GitHub stars
- Written in Shell
Frequently asked questions
Is Pi-hole or Pound better?
Neither is universally better. Pi-hole has the larger community, while Pound is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Pi-hole and Pound free and open-source?
Yes. Pi-hole is licensed under EUPL-1.2 and Pound under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Pi-hole and Pound with Docker?
Pi-hole: yes. Pound: check the project docs for container support.