Browser extensions block ads on the device they’re installed on. A phone that isn’t running one, a smart TV, a game console, a guest’s laptop on your Wi-Fi, none of that gets covered. Network-level DNS blocking fixes that by sitting between every device on your network and the internet, and refusing to resolve requests to known ad and tracker domains before they ever load. It’s one of the easiest wins in self-hosting: low resource cost, immediate and visible results, and it protects every device on the network without touching a single one of them individually. Pi-hole and AdGuard Home are the two dominant tools for doing this yourself, and picking between them comes down to a handful of real differences, not just branding.
How DNS-level blocking actually works
Every device that wants to reach a website first asks a DNS server “what IP address is this domain name?” A DNS ad blocker sits in that path as the DNS server your devices are configured to use, either by DHCP option pushed from your router, or set manually on each device. When a request comes in for a domain on its blocklist, it returns nothing (or a non-routable address) instead of the real IP, so the ad, tracker, or telemetry call simply fails to connect. The page still loads, just without whatever was hosted on that blocked domain, no separate content-parsing or ad-detection logic needed the way a browser extension does it.
This has real limits worth knowing up front. It blocks by domain, not by content, so an ad served from the same domain as legitimate content (increasingly common as ad networks try to dodge exactly this kind of blocking) won’t be caught. It also doesn’t do anything for ads inside an app that hardcodes its own DNS resolver or uses DNS-over-HTTPS to a resolver you don’t control, some apps (a growing number of Android apps, for instance) do this specifically to route around network-level blocking. And it’s blocking at the network layer, so a device using cellular data instead of your Wi-Fi gets none of it. It’s a strong first layer, not a complete solution, and it stacks fine with per-device browser blocking rather than replacing it.
Pi-hole: the original, still the reference point
Pi-hole has been the default answer to “self-hosted DNS ad blocker” for years, and for good reason. It’s lightweight (comfortably runs on a Raspberry Pi, hence the name, though a small VM or LXC works just as well), the web dashboard is clean and fast, and the underlying blocklist/whitelist model is simple to understand: it pulls from one or more blocklists you subscribe to, checks incoming queries against them, and serves a straightforward query log so you can see exactly what’s being blocked and why.
Where it’s a little dated: its own DNS resolution historically leaned on dnsmasq under the hood (Pi-hole 6 moved to its own built-in FTL-based resolver, dropping the external dnsmasq dependency, which cleaned this up considerably), and DNS-over-HTTPS/DNS-over-TLS support for upstream queries requires pairing it with a separate tool (cloudflared or similar) rather than having it built in natively. The community and documentation are enormous, which matters more than it sounds like the first time you’re debugging a weird blocklist conflict at 11pm.
AdGuard Home: the newer, more batteries-included option
AdGuard Home is the newer entrant and it shows in the feature list: built-in DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS support for both incoming and upstream queries with no separate helper tool needed, built-in parental controls and per-client (per-device) rule sets out of the box, and a setup wizard that’s noticeably friendlier for a first-time deploy. Its dashboard covers the same ground as Pi-hole’s (query log, blocklist management, whitelist/blacklist rules) with a slightly more modern UI, and per-client configuration (different blocklists or rules for the kids’ devices versus your own) is a first-class feature rather than something you’re bolting on.
The tradeoff is a smaller, younger community than Pi-hole’s, so when something breaks in an unusual way, there’s less prior art to search for. It’s also a single Go binary with everything built in, which some people prefer (fewer moving parts) and others find less transparent than Pi-hole’s more modular, mix-and-match approach.
The real differences that matter for picking one
Encrypted upstream DNS, natively. If you want your homelab’s DNS queries themselves encrypted going out to your upstream resolver (Cloudflare, Quad9, your ISP, whoever), AdGuard Home does this natively. Pi-hole needs a companion tool bolted on. If this matters to you and you don’t want to manage a second piece of software, that’s a real point in AdGuard Home’s favor.
Per-client rules. If you’re blocking more aggressively for some devices than others, kids’ devices getting parental-control-style filtering, guest network getting a lighter touch, your own devices getting the full aggressive blocklist, AdGuard Home’s per-client configuration is built for this from the start. Pi-hole can do per-client blocking via groups, but it’s less immediately obvious in the UI.
Ecosystem and troubleshooting. Pi-hole has years more community content, Reddit threads, and pre-built blocklist recommendations. When something’s misbehaving in a way you don’t recognize, there’s a better chance someone’s already documented the fix. This matters more than feature checklists once you’re actually running the thing.
Resource footprint. Both are light. Pi-hole is marginally lighter still, which mattered a lot when “run this on a Raspberry Pi” was the whole pitch, and matters much less now that most homelabs are running it in a small LXC or VM with resources to spare either way.
Where to actually run it
Whichever you pick, the same deployment advice applies. Run it in its own lightweight LXC or VM rather than bare-metal on a Raspberry Pi if you already have a Proxmox host, it’s easier to snapshot, back up, and migrate. Give it a static IP, this is the one service on your network where a DHCP lease change breaks every device’s DNS at once. Set it as the DNS server pushed by your router’s DHCP settings so every device picks it up automatically rather than configuring each device by hand, and set a secondary DNS entry (your ISP’s resolver, or a public one like 1.1.1.1) as a fallback so the network doesn’t go dark if the ad blocker’s LXC ever goes down for maintenance.
Redundancy is worth thinking about early rather than after the first outage. A single ad-blocking DNS server is also a single point of failure for your entire network’s internet access, not just ad blocking, if it’s down and there’s no fallback, nothing resolves. Either run two instances (Pi-hole and AdGuard Home both support this, and you can even run one of each as primary/secondary) with DNS sync between them, or at minimum configure that secondary upstream fallback so a crashed container degrades to “no ad blocking” instead of “no internet.”
Blocklists: don’t just default to maximum aggression
Both tools ship pointed at a small default blocklist and let you add more. Resist the urge to subscribe to every list you can find. Overlapping aggressive lists slow query resolution slightly, and more importantly increase the odds of false positives, a blocked domain that turns out to be something legitimate, a payment processor, a CDN a real site depends on, a login provider. Start with a well-maintained general list (StevenBlack’s hosts list is a common, solid default for either tool), run it for a week, and only add more if you’re specifically chasing something it’s missing. When something breaks that shouldn’t, the query log is the first place to check, both tools make it easy to see exactly which blocked domain broke a page and whitelist it in a couple clicks.
Bottom line
Pi-hole is the safer default if you want the deepest community support and don’t need encrypted upstream DNS or granular per-client rules out of the box. AdGuard Home is the better pick if you specifically want DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS without a second tool, or per-device rule sets are something you’ll actually use, parental controls, a looser guest network policy, a stricter one for your own devices. Neither is a wrong choice, both do the core job well, and either one is a bigger jump in blocked ads and tracked telemetry than any browser extension will get you, because it covers every device on the network, not just the one you installed it on.