Selfhosted

pihole is mature and very functional. i jumped in last summer, no regrets.

AdGuard Home and blocky are other popular options. I switched over to AdGuard Home a while back because it supported DNS over HTTPS although I'm not sure if that's still a relevant reason. I run AGH as a docker container but it is easy to run in a LXC or VM. There's also a tool to sync configs if you need multiple instances. Notice: AGH block lists are formatted like uBlock Origin lists so you will not be able to use PiHole style lists.

DNS based ad blockers won't work when ads are served from the same place as the content. Which is why DNS based ad blockers don't work against Twitch or YouTube. So YMMV.

If you're looking to block interface ads and select streaming service ads there are block lists available like this one. The game with smart TVs is blocking the ads breaks the TV a little because sometimes it calls back to the same servers for updates and misc info like weather.

Pi-hole is great, but unfortunately ads in YouTube or other streaming services is not one of the things it blocks.

Adguard-home is way better than pi-hole imo

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

7 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.

[Thread #431 for this sub, first seen 15th Jan 2024, 23:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

I use both. Pi-hole running in a docker container on one of my home servers which my gateway is configured to assign as the default DNS for all clients, and uBlock Origin on all my browsers to catch everything else.

Pihole is pretty good at catching ads on platforms that are not suited to browser based blockers (IoT devices, streaming boxes etc) but it isn't perfect and is best used in conjunction with another solution.

Pi-Hole’s great. Got my primary instance on a Pi 4 and three secondaries (one per vlan) on LXCs. Works so well it feels weird seeing ads when I’m not at home, I’m actually considering using Tailscale to route all my queries through my home connection.

Adguard home is like pihole, but has built in encrypted DNS options. For easy mode NextDNS.

They pretty much all have the same block lists to choose from.

If you are more into a full DNS solution that can also block Technitium DNS is a reasonable choice. It is fairly userfriendly, can be run in an LXC easily (I am doing exactly that), able to use multiple block lists in any combination you want, can be controlled by an API, is regularly updated,etc.

I couldn't be happier with it, even though the learning curve is somewhat steep, when you are new to DNS. It is a fully fledged DNS server after all.

I ran Pi-hole for years. Switched to adguardhome running on 2 servers (primary and secondary) with AGH sync keeping the two instances identical. I like the UI better, dns rewrites, and the ability to simply block services entirely with a single click.

I went with a pi running pi-hole. I got it as a project where the tool is the project. But, it's essential infrastructure now and I don't want to mess with it incase I break it. I'm an idiot with a poor history with pi guides so far, so I will break it. It's running the adblock fine, I assume it's doing the tracking and malware blocking fine too.

Sadly, that's where I leave the project for now, I had intended to give it a HDD and some... other... software but I really don't want to break it. I tried convincing the better half that I obviously need to N+1 but she wisely did not see reason.

DNS based ad blocking does not block video ads served by streaming services. You'll need a modified client specific to the service you want to block ads for to achieve that.

I set up pihole a few months ago. I added a few dozen of the highest recommended block lists, but I wasn't impressed at all. It didn't seem very effective at blocking ads in both real world tests and tests that I found online specifically for testing your adblocker.

There’s nothing really bad with PiHole but I moved from it to AdGuard, both on proxmox. The UI brought me in, makes management a bit easier. It also supports DoH right out of the box.

Try em both. See what you think.

I am very happy with Blocky https://github.com/0xERR0R/blocky

No UI, just a simply config file if that is your thing.

NextDNS is awesome if you want the simple solution, and don't have any hardware to install services on. Thee free version is somehwta limited to queries(300k per month), but personally didn't hit those when I was using the free tier.

NextDNS has a lot of nice customization and can easily had custom block lists. The pro version is 2euros a month I believe. I personally stick with NextDNS due to never having to worry about updating the service and it always just works. I also have it hooked to my Tailnet, that way all my devices use it by default.

But ofc, Pihole, Adguard and the rest are also awesome. Best to just pick one that looks good for you. The end goal here is to just have something running in the background rather than nothing.

Pinhole is still a thing. If you want other options there is also adguard.

Safing.io Portmaster

Pfblockerng on pfsense is very powerful.

One thing I've found is it's good at blocking ads via mobile gaming. The downside is if those ads return rewards in-game.

I've used https://controld.com/