Feature Comparison

Here is how they stack up on the features that actually matter:

Where Pi-hole Wins

Community and ecosystem

Pi-hole has been around since 2014. It has a massive community, an enormous library of curated blocklists, countless guides and tutorials, and a subreddit with over 150,000 members. If you hit a problem, someone has already solved it and posted the answer. This matters more than any individual feature because DNS filtering involves a lot of “this specific thing broke and I need to fix it.”

The blocklist ecosystem is where this advantage is most tangible. Lists like Steven Black, OISD, Hagezi, and dozens of others are primarily maintained and tested against Pi-hole. They work with AdGuard Home too, but the testing and community feedback loop centres on Pi-hole.

Query logging and diagnostics

Pi-hole’s query log is genuinely excellent. You can filter by client, domain, status, time range, and type. When something breaks (and something always breaks), Pi-hole’s logs make it relatively quick to find the blocked domain causing the issue. I have found AdGuard Home’s logging to be good but slightly less detailed in practice.

Gravity database

Pi-hole stores its blocklist data in a SQLite database (called Gravity), which handles millions of entries efficiently. The gravity update process is well-tested and reliable. You can query the database directly for advanced analysis if you are comfortable with SQL. It is a solid, proven architecture.

Maturity and stability

Pi-hole has been running production DNS for home networks since 2014. The failure modes are well documented, the edge cases are known, and the project has a long track record of stability. It is not exciting, but for something that sits between your entire network and the internet, boring reliability is exactly what you want.

Where AdGuard Home Wins

Encrypted DNS out of the box

This is AdGuard Home’s most significant technical advantage. DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS, and DNS-over-QUIC all work natively. With Pi-hole, you need to deploy Unbound or cloudflared alongside it and configure them to work together. It is not difficult, but it is additional complexity that AdGuard Home simply does not require.

Encrypted DNS matters because traditional DNS queries are sent in plaintext. Your ISP can see every domain you look up. With DoH or DoT between your clients and your DNS server, that visibility disappears. If you care about DNS privacy (and if you are running a DNS filter, you probably do), AdGuard Home makes encrypted DNS trivially easy.

User interface

AdGuard Home has a better UI. There is no diplomatic way to say this. Pi-hole’s interface is functional and gets the job done, but it looks like it was designed in 2015 because it was. AdGuard Home’s dashboard is modern, responsive, and genuinely pleasant to use. If you are the kind of person who checks their DNS dashboard regularly (and I am), the interface matters.

Pi-hole v6 is working on a complete UI overhaul, which may close this gap. But as of early 2026, AdGuard Home has the better-looking and more intuitive interface.

Per-client configuration

AdGuard Home handles per-client settings natively and cleanly. You can set different upstream DNS servers, different filtering rules, and different safe search settings for each client. Pi-hole added group management in v5, which achieves similar results, but the implementation is less intuitive. AdGuard Home’s approach feels designed-in rather than bolted-on.

AdBlock-style rule support

AdGuard Home supports AdBlock-style filter syntax in addition to standard hosts files and domain lists. This means you can use rules that match URL patterns, not just domain names. In practice this gives you more granular control over what gets blocked, though the difference is marginal for most users because DNS-level blocking is inherently domain-based.

Safe search and parental controls

AdGuard Home has built-in safe search enforcement and parental control categories. You can force safe search on Google, YouTube, and other search engines, and you can block entire categories like gambling or adult content without needing to find and add specific blocklists. Pi-hole can achieve similar results through blocklists, but AdGuard Home makes it a checkbox.

If you have children on your network and want category-based filtering with minimal configuration, AdGuard Home is the clear winner here.

Performance Comparison

Both are fast. DNS queries take microseconds to process on either platform, and the difference between them is not perceptible in real-world use. I ran both simultaneously on identical hardware (Raspberry Pi 4) for a month and could not measure a meaningful difference in query response times.

Resource usage is similarly close. AdGuard Home is slightly lighter on RAM in my testing (around 30-50 MB vs Pi-hole’s 50-80 MB under similar load), but neither will stress any hardware made in the last decade. If you are running either on a Raspberry Pi, a mini PC, or a server, resource usage is a non-issue.

The one area where performance differs is the initial blocklist load. Pi-hole’s Gravity update on a large blocklist (several million entries) can take 30-60 seconds. AdGuard Home’s filter update is faster in my experience, though both are one-time operations that run in the background and do not affect query performance.

Setup Complexity

AdGuard Home is easier to set up. It is a single binary (or Docker container) with a web-based setup wizard. The entire configuration lives in a single YAML file. There is no separate web server, no database, no additional services to manage.

Pi-hole’s native installation is also straightforward (one curl command), but it installs lighttpd, PHP, and SQLite alongside the core service. The Docker deployment simplifies this, but you still have more moving parts. If you want encrypted DNS, you are deploying additional services.

For someone who has never run a DNS filter before, AdGuard Home will have them up and running faster with less room for error.

Docker Compose: Both Deployments Side by Side

Here are both deployments as Docker Compose files so you can try either (or both) with minimal effort.

Pi-hole Docker Compose

# docker-compose.yml (Pi-hole)
services:
  pihole:
    container_name: pihole
    image: pihole/pihole:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "53:53/tcp"
      - "53:53/udp"
      - "8080:80/tcp"
    environment:
      TZ: Europe/London
      WEBPASSWORD: your-secure-password
      FTLCONF_LOCAL_IPV4: 192.168.1.50
      PIHOLE_DNS_: "1.1.1.1;9.9.9.9"
    volumes:
      - ./etc-pihole:/etc/pihole
      - ./etc-dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN

AdGuard Home Docker Compose

# docker-compose.yml (AdGuard Home)
services:
  adguardhome:
    container_name: adguardhome
    image: adguard/adguardhome:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "53:53/tcp"
      - "53:53/udp"
      - "3000:3000/tcp"   # Initial setup wizard
      - "8080:80/tcp"     # Web interface (after setup)
      - "443:443/tcp"     # HTTPS (optional, for DoH)
      - "853:853/tcp"     # DNS-over-TLS (optional)
    volumes:
      - ./work:/opt/adguardhome/work
      - ./conf:/opt/adguardhome/conf

Note that AdGuard Home uses port 3000 for the initial setup wizard. After configuration, the web interface runs on port 80 (mapped to 8080 above). The DoH (443) and DoT (853) ports are optional but recommended if you want encrypted DNS.

Both require the same systemd-resolved fix on Ubuntu. See the Pi-hole Docker guide for the exact steps.

Migration: Switching Between Them

If you are already running one and want to switch, the process is simple in concept but fiddly in practice. Neither has a native import/export that works with the other. You will need to:

1. Export your custom whitelist and blacklist entries (manually or via API)
2. Note your blocklist URLs (these are just URLs, they work in both)
3. Stop the old service
4. Deploy the new one
5. Re-add your blocklist URLs
6. Re-add your whitelist and custom DNS entries

Blocklist URLs are interchangeable — the same URLs work in both. Custom DNS records and whitelist entries need manual recreation. If you have extensive group management rules in Pi-hole, recreating the equivalent per-client configuration in AdGuard Home is the most time-consuming part.

My Recommendation

I use Pi-hole. I chose it because of the community size, the ecosystem of blocklists and tools, and the detailed query logging that makes troubleshooting straightforward. I also chose it because when I started, AdGuard Home was less mature, and inertia is a powerful force in infrastructure decisions.

But if I were starting from scratch today, I would seriously consider AdGuard Home. The built-in encrypted DNS alone is a significant advantage. The per-client configuration is cleaner. The UI is better. And the setup is simpler.

Here is my honest recommendation:

• Choose Pi-hole if: You want maximum customisation, you enjoy managing blocklists and groups, you want the largest community for troubleshooting, or you plan to pair it with Unbound for recursive DNS. Pi-hole rewards tinkering.
• Choose AdGuard Home if: You want encrypted DNS without additional services, you want per-client filtering with a clean interface, you have children and want built-in parental controls, or you want something that works well with minimal ongoing management. AdGuard Home rewards simplicity.
• Either way: You are making the right decision by running a DNS filter at all. Both are open source, both are actively maintained, both will dramatically improve your network’s privacy and reduce your exposure to tracking. The difference between them is much smaller than the difference between either of them and having no DNS filtering at all.

Related Guides

If you found this useful, these guides continue the journey:

• Pi-hole Docker Setup — Run Pi-hole in Docker for network-wide ad blocking.
• Pi-hole on Ubuntu 24.04 — Install Pi-hole directly on Ubuntu 24.04 for a dedicated DNS server.
• Docker Compose Beginner’s Guide — Learn how to define and manage multi-container applications.
• How to Build Your First Homelab in 2026 — Start your self-hosting journey with a practical homelab build.
• Grafana and Prometheus Homelab Monitoring — Monitor your homelab services with dashboards and alerting.

ReadTheManualTech

ReadTheManual is run, written and curated by Eric Lonsdale.

Eric has over 20 years of professional experience in IT infrastructure, cloud architecture, and  cybersecurity, but started with PCs long before that.

He built his first machine from parts bought off tables at the local college campus, hoping they worked. He learned on BBC Micros and Atari units in the early 90s, and has built almost every PC he’s used between 1995 and now.

From helpdesk to infrastructure architect, Eric has worked across enterprise datacentres, Azure environments, and security operations. He’s managed teams, trained engineers, and spent two decades solving the problems this site teaches you to solve.

ReadTheManual exists because Eric believes the best way to learn IT is to build things, break things, and actually read the manual. Every guide on this site runs on infrastructure he owns and maintains.

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