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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Shiddns a DNS learning experience in Python

Hi HN, as a learning experience, I created a small DNS resolver with blocking capabilities and resolution of local host names. There are already tons of good ad-blocking DNS implementations out there. And they do this much better than my implementation. Great examples are Blocky or pihole. So when I set out to "play around", I looked at these projects and tried to modify them. Fortunately for them, but unfortunately for beginners, these are already quite far developed and complex projects. So impatient me set out to "quickly write something in Python". Almost two weekends later, I put in so…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Shiddns a DNS learning experience in Python launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1

    Tired of companies snooping through your DNS traffic? Don't you wish you could get advertisements with your DNS records? Today we're introducing the innovative, privacy-focused, ad-supported DNS resolver - DN$! Traditional DNS resolvers provided by your internet service provider, cloudflare, or google could be tracking your internet activity and selling it to third-party data vendors. We at DN$ want to fix that and cut out these nefarious actors (until we've amassed a critical number of users to exploit). In order to support such a radically new business model, our service needs to serve…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    NextDNS protects you from all kinds of security threats, blocks ads and trackers on websites and in apps and provides a safe and supervised Internet for kids — on all devices and on all networks.

    2019 · nextdns.io · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    Hey everyone. It's Sherub here, author of the Build your own DNS Server challenge on CodeCrafters. Currently it’s available in Rust, Go, and Python and is free while in beta. https://codecrafters.io/dns-server I've kept the challenge accessible but still challenging for an intermediate developer. This challenge, like others from CodeCrafters, is self-paced. You can use any tools you prefer (terminal, editor, etc.) to build the project. At the end of the challenge, you will have created a DNS forwarding server. The server can create and read DNS packets and respond to DNS…

    2023 · app.codecrafters.io · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hey HN, I saw a thread a while ago (linked in README) discussing how Wikipedia does a good job keeping track of the domains of websites like Sci-Hub or The Pirate Bay. Someone mentioned checking Wikipedia to find links to these sites, so I thought this would be a fun thing to automate! To try it out, install an extension or modify your hosts file, then type in the name of a website with the TLD `.idk`. For example: scihub.idk -> sci-hub.tw Cheers!

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5KE

    My goal was to create a DNS server as simple as the LDAP server I've been contributing to (glauth) and here it is: https://github.com/fusion/kittendns A few things to know about it: - It is easy to configure using a Toml file - I am using it to bail my coredns/etcd instances when under attack - (yes, it also works as a service location server) - It comes with a simple, plain English, rule engine that doesn't do much at this point - It can be used with LetsEncrypt. I use it to retrieve certificates for my home servers. - RFC: all the nice ones :) Anyway, feedback is…

    2022 · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    I built a DNS resolver that lets me use https://frontend.numa instead of localhost:5173 — auto-generated TLS certs, WebSocket passthrough, path routing. No mkcert, no nginx, no /etc/hosts.

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    I was fascinated reading through another recent HN submission about a highly efficient implementation of A* in Lisp, which got me thinking about how I could do something similar in Python. However, these kinds of pathfinding algorithms really need complex terrain/mazes with interesting obstructions to showcase what they can do and how they work. So, I started thinking about how I could generate cool and diverse random "mazes" (they aren't really mazes, but I'm not sure what the best term is). I got a bit carried away thinking of lots of different cool ways to generate these mazes, such…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    A tiny command line DNS client with support for UDP, TCP, DoT, DoH, DoQ and ODoH. - natesales/q

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9NS

    Hey everyone, I was always tired of setting up PowerDNS, Bind and PiHole and I am trying to do more projects in Rust, so here is Nomina. It has: * Split Horizon DNS (return a different IP/record if remote IP is in a certain network etc) * DynDNS Support * Blocklist Integration * DHCP4+6 Server * AXFR/IXFR support * Rewriting of records It can replace most of the common Home Lab setups incl. PiHole AdBlocking etc. https://github.com/DatanoiseTV/Nomina

    Jun 2026 · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    A high-performance DNS stub resolver for bulk lookups and reconnaissance (subdomain enumeration) - blechschmidt/massdns

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Most site blockers work by blacklisting distractions. That never worked for me, the internet is too big, and there’s always something new to waste time on. I wanted the opposite: allowlist‑only browsing. Block everything by default, and explicitly allow only what I need. So I built Sinkzone: a local DNS forwarder with two modes: Monitor mode: lets all traffic through, but logs every domain so you can decide what to allow. Focus mode: only allowlisted domains resolve; everything else is blocked (NXDOMAIN). It’s open source, written in Go, and runs locally on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Works a…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    How to "encourage" your children to use the internet more for learning using Pi-hole 5.0 - 1stOctet/YouWillUnderstandWhenYouAreOlder

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    An experimental high-performance DNS query bruteforce tool built with AF_XDP for extremely fast and accurate bulk DNS lookups. - c3l3si4n/pugdns

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14PP

    Hey Hacker News, My friend and I are building a network level adblocker based on pihole. We wanted to invite you to try it here - https://datajoy.us/try/ 1. Click "Try Now" 2. The results page will show you the IP of our DNS server (139.162.177.133). Put that IP first in your router or device's DNS settings. Don't remove the other DNS entries! Just put us first. 3. ?? 4. Ad free browsing on a single device or on all devices on your network. If you want to join out mailing list for future updates, just drop the /try and signup. If you like the performance of this…

    2017 · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    I built a CLI to benchmark DNS resolvers after discovering DNS was adding 300ms to my API requests. v0.3.0 just released with new features: compare: Test single domain across all resolvers top: Rank resolvers by latency/reliability/balanced monitor: Continuous tracking with threshold alerts 1,400+ downloads in first week. Quick start: pip install dns-benchmark-tool dns-benchmark compare --domain google.com CLI stays free forever. Hosted version (multi-region, historical tracking, alerts) coming Q1 2026. GitHub: https://github.com/frankovo/dns-benchmark-tool…

    Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Hi, I just saw this tweet[^1] by @QuinnyPig that mentions accessing your Pi-hole while traveling thanks to TailScale and wondered how to deploy Pi-hole at the edge, instead of a home lab, for improved latency. My simple solution involves running it on Fly.io to make it easy to relocate anywhere, and embedding tailscale into the same firecracker VM (né docker container) to keep the infra dead simple and cheap. Naively deploying a publicly accessible DNS resolver is not ideal[^2] so the main constraint was to secure the VM by 1) keeping all public ports closed and 2) having Pi-hole listen only…

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17
  18. 18

    Hi HN — solo developer here. I built this tool ~4 years ago purely to solve my own frustration with CORS and repeated proxy setup. The idea was intentionally boring: just prefix a URL and get control over the request and response. Somehow it grew to serving billions of requests per day, including usage by companies and universities. I’m sharing it here mainly to: - get technical feedback - learn what people would actually use a proxy like this for - understand what I should simplify or remove

    Feb 2026 · corsproxy.io · its alternatives →

  19. 19DB

    We’ve just launched NUM [1] in the UK, it’s an alternative to the semantic web [2] but based in DNS. We’ve published 23 million data points about 4.8m UK businesses. We had some really interesting HN feedback when we previously posted about one of our example apps [3] so keen to hear what the community has to say this time round. 1. https://www.num.uk 2. https://num.uk/blog/we-crawled-5m-uk-websites-and-published-23m-data-points-to-dns 3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27598164

    2021 · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    do weird DNS experiments

    2021 · messwithdns.net · its alternatives →

  21. 21PT

    Hi there HN! I wanted to show you a weekend project I put together. Pingquick (https://www.pingquick.dev/) is a way to create APIs from your python functions. Just write/paste the function in, and it'll give you an endpoint to POST to. I made Pingquick because I just couldn't stand having to deal with deployment for some simple python functions. So, now I just put my code there and I can ping it as needed without needing to worry about any setup. Any and all feedback is very much welcome! Ian

    2023 · pingquick.dev · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    I spent a long time working in the payments industry, specifically on a rather niche reporting/aggregation platform with spiky workloads that were not easily parallelized. To pump as much data through our pipeline as possible, we had to rely on complex locking schemes across half a dozen or so not-so-micro services - keeping a clear mental picture of how the services interacted for a given data source was a major headache. This problem always intrigued me, even after I no longer worked at the company, and lead to the development of Wool. If you've worked with frameworks like Ray or…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23AO

    If my experience is any indicator, the DNS issue seems to be getting worse as the hours go by, not better. However, I have found that adding OpenDNS servers (208.67.222.222, 208.67.222.222) to my list of DNS servers has completely eliminated the issue, at least for the time being. So, under my IPv4 configuration, in the "DNS Servers" field, I have "208.67.222.222, 208.67.222.222, 8.8.8.8" - the last one is the Google DNS server. I'm able to resolve Twitter, Github, etc.

    2016 · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Block ads, trackers, and malicious websites. Out of beta now

    2020 · nextdns.io · its alternatives →

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