Open-source alternatives to Docker Pi Hole

Pi-hole is a self-hosted network utility that functions as a DNS sinkhole server to provide network-wide ad blocking. By acting as a dedicated network gateway, it intercepts and discards requests for known advertising, tracking, and malicious domains across an entire local network, preventing unwanted content from loading on any connected device. The software operates through a lightweight background daemon that handles high volumes of concurrent DNS queries with minimal resource overhead. It utilizes a host-file injection mechanism to redirect traffic toward its local filtering engine and ap

Blocky is a stateless DNS proxy that functions as a network-wide ad-blocker and content filter. It operates as a single binary or Docker container with no database or persistent state, accepting DNS queries over UDP, TCP, HTTPS, TLS, QUIC, and HTTP/3 through a unified plugin-based query pipeline. The core of the system is a client-group policy engine that assigns devices to named groups and applies per-group blocklists, allowlists, and upstream resolvers, with all configuration changes applied through hot-reloading without requiring a restart. The project distinguishes itself through its modu

This project is an ad-blocking filter list and DNS blocklist collection designed to prevent advertisement and tracking servers from loading content across devices. It functions as a network-layer ad filter by providing a curated set of domain patterns and URLs that network components use to block known advertising and big data statistics domains. The collection focuses on privacy-focused domain filtering to stop the unauthorized collection of personal information and user tracking. It identifies and blocks domains associated with telemetry, analytics, and log collection to prevent the upload

This project is a comprehensive repository of curated domain blocklists designed for network-wide DNS filtering. It functions as a DNS sinkhole feed, providing the necessary data to intercept and block unwanted network requests at the resolution layer before they reach their destination. By returning null or loopback addresses for identified domains, it prevents connections to malicious infrastructure, advertising servers, and tracking endpoints across all devices on a network. The repository distinguishes itself through a tiered categorization logic that allows users to select protection lev

AdGuardHome is a network-wide software solution that provides centralized control over domain name resolution, content filtering, and local network management. It functions as a recursive DNS server and DHCP address server, intercepting network traffic to enforce security policies and block unwanted content across all connected devices. By acting as a central gateway, it ensures that every device on a home or office network benefits from consistent protection and private, authenticated name resolution. The software distinguishes itself through granular client management and robust security fe

AdguardFilters is a collection of curated adblock filter lists, content blocking rulesets, and DNS blocklists. Its primary purpose is to provide the rules necessary to identify and remove advertisements, tracking scripts, and intrusive elements across web browsers and applications. The project includes specialized rules for cosmetic filtering to hide layout gaps and a malware domain database to block phishing and spyware destinations. It provides distinct filtering sets for different regions and purposes, such as social media blocking. The repository covers broad capability areas including m

This project is a comprehensive security hardening and privacy management guide for macOS. It provides a set of instructions and checklists for reducing the system attack surface through manual configuration, policy enforcement, and a layered defense strategy. The guide emphasizes a system auditing framework, using binary analysis, system logs, and packet inspection to verify that security controls and application sandboxing are functioning as intended. It offers tool-agnostic recommendations, defining security goals while allowing users to select their own third-party software for implementa

CoreDNS is a modular domain name system server designed for cloud-native environments. It functions as a flexible DNS resolver and forwarder that manages network traffic by routing queries based on zone-based rules and authoritative data. The server is built to integrate with service discovery systems, enabling it to map service names to network addresses within containerized infrastructure. The project is defined by a plugin-based request pipeline that allows for the extension of server functionality through custom modules. These plugins can intercept, modify, or log network requests in real

Nuclei is a modular security scanning framework designed for automated vulnerability detection and infrastructure reconnaissance. It functions as a template-driven engine that executes security checks across diverse network protocols, allowing users to define custom detection logic to identify vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and exposed assets. The platform distinguishes itself through its highly extensible architecture, which supports distributed scanning, headless browser automation for dynamic web content, and out-of-band interaction monitoring to detect blind vulnerabilities. It integ

AdRules is a collection of ad-blocking rule sets and DNS filter lists designed to identify and block malicious domains, trackers, and PCDN services. It functions as a DNS sinkhole filter and a malware domain blocklist used by DNS servers and network proxies to stop advertisements and harmful content from loading. The project provides regional network optimization, utilizing rule sets tailored to specific geographic regions, languages, and mobile device conditions to target local advertising networks. The system covers DNS traffic filtering and malware domain blocking through suffix-based dom

dnsmasq-china-list is a configuration generator and a set of DNS filter and routing lists. It converts curated domain lists into configuration files for dnsmasq to optimize regional name resolution and direct specific domain requests to regional servers. The project focuses on reducing latency and avoiding DNS hijacking for users in China by routing traffic through regional servers and directing requests to the nearest content delivery network nodes. It also provides rules to block malicious domains and advertisements by returning failure responses to prevent network injection. The system ma

Wirehole is a containerized network stack that integrates a WireGuard VPN server with recursive DNS resolution and sinkhole-based advertisement filtering. It bundles these interdependent services into a single managed environment using a compose-based deployment. The system enables network-wide ad blocking and tracker filtering by intercepting DNS queries via a sinkhole. It implements recursive DNS resolution to resolve domain names independently of external upstream providers and provides a web-based interface for managing VPN client peers and keys. Additional capabilities include split-tun

Glider is a multi-protocol forward proxy, transparent proxy gateway, and network service provider. It functions as a DNS and DHCP server, a Linux IP set manager, and a network traffic load balancer. The project distinguishes itself through a protocol-translation bridge that translates traffic between different proxy schemes and a chain-based routing system that sequences multiple remote proxy servers. It supports transparent traffic interception at the system level and utilizes build-time protocol stripping to minimize the binary size of the executable. The system covers a broad range of net

uBlock is a browser content blocker and web privacy tool designed to prevent advertisements and tracking scripts from loading. It functions as a network request filter, a DOM element hider, and a script execution controller to manage how web pages load and render. The project distinguishes itself through a combination of network-level request interception and cosmetic filtering. It uses declarative filter lists and pattern-based matching to block trackers and pop-ups, while employing CSS selectors and wildcard entity matching to remove visual components across multiple regional domain variant

Opensnitch is a host-based application firewall for Linux that monitors and intercepts outbound network connections in real time. By hooking into kernel-level interfaces, it tracks system-wide network activity and maps connection attempts to specific local processes, allowing users to explicitly permit or deny traffic on a per-application basis. The project distinguishes itself through its ability to manage security policies across multiple distributed nodes from a single, unified dashboard. This centralized management is secured via encrypted socket communication, enabling consistent rule en

Simplewall is an application firewall manager and network traffic filter that provides a graphical interface for the Windows Filtering Platform. It controls inbound and outbound network access for individual programs and services by intercepting and filtering traffic at the kernel level. The project identifies specific binaries using file hashes to prevent spoofing and allows users to define custom firewall rules based on IP addresses, CIDR ranges, and port numbers. It includes a system for blocking operating system telemetry and managing blocklists of known malicious IP addresses. The tool

NekoBoxForAndroid is a network utility for Android that functions as a system-wide VPN tunneling client. It leverages the Sing-Box engine to capture and redirect device traffic through a virtual network interface, providing a centralized platform for managing proxy connections and network routing. The application distinguishes itself through its advanced configuration management, allowing users to define granular traffic rules based on domains, IP addresses, or specific applications. It supports complex network requirements by enabling multi-hop proxy chaining, custom DNS resolution strategie

dnsproxy is an encrypted DNS proxy and traffic router that translates and forwards DNS requests between clients and upstream resolvers. It functions as a server for multiple secure protocols, including DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS, DNS-over-QUIC, and DNSCrypt, to protect queries from eavesdropping and tampering. The project differentiates itself through advanced routing and optimization capabilities. It utilizes a domain-based routing engine to direct queries to specific upstream servers via wildcard rules and employs parallel querying to return responses from the fastest responding network a

Boto3 is the AWS SDK for Python, providing a programmatic interface for managing and automating AWS cloud infrastructure and services. It serves as a cloud management API client and resource manager for provisioning, configuring, and scaling virtual servers, databases, and storage. The library enables the implementation of infrastructure-as-code through declarative templates and scripts, allowing for the deployment of identical resource stacks across multiple accounts and geographic regions. It also provides a framework for coordinating distributed workflows, serverless functions, and contain

This project is a security hardening guide and privacy configuration manual for macOS. It provides a comprehensive set of instructions for configuring system settings to improve privacy, reduce the attack surface, and implement a malware defense framework. The guide covers technical methods for validating software notarization, verifying application sandboxing, and auditing system activity. It distinguishes itself by providing detailed workflows for restricting high-risk features and applying advanced security configurations to protect the operating system. The documentation covers several k

ProxySQL is a database proxy designed to route and balance traffic between applications and MySQL or PostgreSQL servers. It provides database high availability by monitoring backend server health and automatically rerouting traffic to healthy nodes during failover events to prevent downtime. The system integrates with generative AI models by proxying requests through a protocol handler, creating a bridge that allows large language models to access structured data. The project includes capabilities for traffic management through automatic failover routing and cluster topology discovery. It op

doggo is a multi-protocol DNS lookup client, performance analyzer, and diagnostic troubleshooting tool. It functions as a command-line utility for performing DNS queries across various transport protocols, including UDP, TCP, HTTPS, TLS, and QUIC. The project distinguishes itself through a focus on secure and distributed resolution. It implements encrypted DNS standards such as DNS over HTTPS, DNS over QUIC, and DNSCrypt, and provides DNSSEC validation to verify chains of trust for signed domains. Additionally, it can execute queries from global geographic locations via an external API to ana

This project is a multi-protocol proxy server and network tunneling tool designed to manage traffic across heterogeneous infrastructure. It functions as a traffic management gateway, providing the core infrastructure to route, filter, and secure network connections through a unified interface. The software distinguishes itself through its support for cascading proxy chaining and dynamic upstream load balancing, which allow for the creation of complex, multi-hop network paths. It provides granular control over traffic flow by normalizing diverse protocols, enabling transparent port forwarding,

Pangolin is a zero-trust remote access platform designed to provide secure, identity-aware connectivity to private network resources. It functions as a cloud-native network controller that orchestrates encrypted tunnels, traffic routing, and access policies across distributed environments. By leveraging WireGuard for secure data transport, the platform enables authenticated access to internal web applications, terminal sessions, and remote desktops without exposing services to the public internet. The platform distinguishes itself through a declarative infrastructure model that synchronizes n

The AWS Cloud Development Kit is an infrastructure-as-code framework that enables developers to define and provision cloud resources using familiar programming languages. By utilizing construct-based synthesis, it translates high-level, object-oriented code into declarative templates, allowing for the automated management of complex cloud environments through a centralized, code-driven control plane. The framework distinguishes itself through its ability to model infrastructure as a dependency-aware resource graph, ensuring that components are provisioned and updated in the correct order. It

CrowdSec is a collaborative, distributed security engine designed for threat detection and infrastructure protection. It functions as an intrusion detection system that parses logs and network traffic to identify malicious patterns, utilizing a bucket-based threshold detection model to aggregate events and trigger alerts. The platform is built on a modular architecture that includes a centralized local API server for managing security signals and a relational database for persistent storage of remediation decisions. What distinguishes the project is its decoupled enforcement model, which offl

This project is a network security tool providing an application network firewall, a DNS blocklist manager, and a VPN client with multi-hop capabilities. It functions as a traffic controller that allows or blocks internet access for specific applications on a device. The system distinguishes itself through a DNS-over-HTTPS firewall and traffic obfuscation tools that inject random packets to mask communication patterns and bypass regional internet censorship. It utilizes multi-hop routing to hide the origin of network traffic by chaining connections through multiple remote servers. The softwa