Blocky

Blocky is a DNS proxy and ad-blocker for the local network written in Go with following features:

Features

• Blocking - Blocking of DNS queries with external lists (Ad-block, malware) and allowlisting

• Definition of allow/denylists per client group (Kids, Smart home devices, etc.)

• Periodical reload of external allow/denylists
• Regex support

• Blocking of request domain, response CNAME (deep CNAME inspection) and response IP addresses (against IP lists)

• Advanced DNS configuration - not just an ad-blocker

• Custom DNS resolution for certain domain names

• Conditional forwarding to external DNS server

• Upstream resolvers can be defined per client group

• Performance - Improves speed and performance in your network

• 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

• Various Protocols - Supports modern DNS protocols

• DNS over UDP and TCP

• DNS over HTTPS (aka DoH)
• DNS over TLS (aka DoT)
• DNS over QUIC (aka DoQ, RFC 9250)

• DNS over HTTPS/3 (aka DoH3, RFC 9114)

• Security and Privacy - Secure communication

• Supports modern DNS extensions: DNSSEC, eDNS, ...

• DNSSEC validation of upstream resolvers
• Free configurable blocking lists - no hidden filtering etc.
• Provides DoH Endpoint
• Uses random upstream resolvers from the configuration - increases your privacy through the distribution of your DNS traffic over multiple provider

• Blocky does NOT collect any user data, telemetry, statistics etc.

• Integration - various integration

• Prometheus metrics

• Prepared Grafana dashboards (Prometheus and database)
• Logging of DNS queries per day / per client in CSV format or MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/Timescale database - easy to analyze
• Various REST API endpoints

• CLI tool

• Simple configuration - single or multiple configuration files in YAML format

• Simple to maintain

• Simple to backup

• Simple installation/configuration - blocky was designed for simple installation

• Stateless (no database, no temporary files)

• Docker image with Multi-arch support
• Single binary
• Supports x86-64, ARM, and MIPS architectures -> runs fine on Raspberry PI and OpenWrt routers
• Community supported Helm chart for k8s deployment

❤️ Support Blocky

Blocky is free, open source, and built entirely in my spare time — with no telemetry, no data collection, and no hidden filtering. It keeps the DNS for thousands of home networks, homelabs, and businesses clean and private, and it always will.

Maintaining a project this size — fixing bugs, reviewing pull requests, shipping new features, and keeping up with security — takes a lot of time. Thousands of people run Blocky; only a handful support it. If Blocky is useful to you, please consider chipping in. Your support directly funds ongoing development and helps keep Blocky independent and ad-free, forever.

Even a small recurring contribution makes a real difference and is hugely appreciated. 🙏

Thank you to everyone who supports Blocky! ❤️

Quick start

You can jump to Installation chapter in the documentation.

Full documentation

You can find full documentation and configuration examples at: https://0xERR0R.github.io/blocky/

Contribution

Issues, feature suggestions and pull requests are welcome!