Pi-hole vs YARP
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
YARP
Reverse proxy toolkit for building proxies in .NET
| Feature | Pi-hole | YARP |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | EUPL-1.2 | MIT |
| Language | Shell | C# |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 60,247 | ★ 9,587 |
| First released | 2026 | 2021 |
| Replaces | — | Nginx |
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
Choose YARP if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 9.6k GitHub stars
- Written in C#
Frequently asked questions
Is Pi-hole or YARP better?
Neither is universally better. Pi-hole has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Pi-hole and YARP free and open-source?
Yes. Pi-hole is licensed under EUPL-1.2 and YARP under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Pi-hole and YARP with Docker?
Pi-hole: yes. YARP: yes.