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blocky

Fast and lightweight DNS proxy as ad-blocker for local network with many features (alternative to Pi-hole).

Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Still maintained? Yes: 92 commits in the last 90 days, latest release v0.35.0 (Sep 2026).

Also an alternative to Pi-hole Cloud, Cloudflare DNS and Pi-hole.

Docker #4 of 6 in DNS

At a glance

blocky quick facts

Health score
95/100 GOOD
Stars
7,077
Last commit
2 days ago (Oct 2026)
Latest release
v0.35.0, Sep 2026
Licence
Apache-2.0
View 0xERR0R/blocky on GitHub ↗ Website ↗

Top alternatives to blocky

Full rankings: Pi-hole Cloud alternatives, Cloudflare DNS alternatives, Pi-hole alternatives

In its own words

The project's README opens: "- Customizable caching of DNS answers for queries -> improves DNS resolution speed and reduces amount of external DNS queries - Prefetching and caching of often used queries - Using multiple external resolver simultaneously - Low memory footprint."

Why it ranks here

Health score explained

blocky scores 95/100, #4 of 6 in DNS: 92 commits in the last 90 days earn 35.0 of 35 points, the latest release (v0.35.0, 2 months ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 7,077 stars add 15.4 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and Docker support adds the final 10. That places it in the good band (70 and above). The biggest shortfall is star count, worth 4.6 more points.

Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.

  • Commit activity 35.0 / 35

    92 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)

  • Release recency 25.0 / 25

    v0.35.0 released 2 months ago

  • Stars biggest shortfall 15.4 / 20

    7.1k stars on GitHub (logarithmic)

  • Not archived 10.0 / 10

    Repository is active

  • Docker support 10.0 / 10

    Docker image or Compose file available

Commit activity

324 commits over the last 12 months
92
Last 90 days
324
Last 12 months
2 days ago
Last push

Ranked #4 of 6 tools in DNS by health , between Technitium DNS Server (#3) and Numa (#5) .

Details

LicenceApache-2.0
PlatformsGo, Docker
Latest releasev0.35.0 · 2 months ago
Stars7,077
Open issues51
DockerYes
Repository0xERR0R/blocky ↗
Visit website ↗ Source code ↗

blocky vs its top 5 alternatives

Active tools that share a comparison page or a category with blocky (DNS), scored on the same five terms.

Tool Health Stars Licence Last commit
Pi-hole 99 62k EUPL-1.2 3 days ago
AdGuard Home 98 38k GPL-3.0 3 days ago
Technitium DNS Server 96 10k GPL-3.0 6 days ago
blocky (this tool) 95 7.1k Apache-2.0 2 days ago
Numa 93 2k MIT yesterday
Maza ad blocking 25 1.9k Apache-2.0 3 months ago

blocky: common questions

What does blocky replace?

Repoly lists blocky as an open-source alternative to Pi-hole Cloud, Cloudflare DNS and Pi-hole. Each comparison page ranks every alternative by the same health score, so you can see where blocky stands against the others.

Is blocky still maintained?

blocky had 92 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 2 days ago; the latest tagged release, v0.35.0, is from 2 months ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.