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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Sinkzone DNS – Forwarder that blocks everything except your allowlist

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…

Sinkzone DNS is a local DNS forwarder that uses allowlist-only browsing to reduce distractions. It offers two modes: Monitor mode logs all domain traffic for review, and Focus mode blocks everything except explicitly… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    The Internet’s fastest, privacy-first DNS resolver

    2018 · one.one.one.one · 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

    Faster, more private internet by Cloudflare, now on mobile

    2018 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    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 →

  5. 5

    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 →

  6. 6

    Hey all, wanted to share my recent weekend hack project. I wanted to improve upon the existing space for looking up information about IP addresses and ASNs. The backend is written in Rust and pulls BGP data every 8 hours from the RIPE RIS project to build up a routing table and also adds geolocation information. The frontend is using React and Tailwind. Would love any feedback or suggestions on what to improve.

    2023 · ip.guide · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    WireHole offers a unified docker-compose project that integrates WireGuard, PiHole, and Unbound, complete with a user interface. This solution is designed to empower users to swiftly set up and manage either a full or split-tunnel WireGuard VPN. It features ad-blocking capabilities through PiHole and enhanced DNS caching and privacy options via Unbound. The intuitive UI makes deployment and ongoing management straightforward, providing a comprehensive VPN solution with added privacy features.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8RT

    Every privacy-focused DNS service requires an account: NextDNS, Cloudflare for Families, Apple's iCloud Private Relay (paid, iOS-only). The protocol that doesn’t require one - ODoH - had basically one well-known public relay operator (Frank Denis on Fastly Compute, default in dnscrypt-proxy). I built a second one and the client to talk to it.

    May 2026 · numa.rs · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    I created Firezone to make it easier to host and manage your own WireGuard VPN server. While working at Cisco as a security automation engineer I experienced a lot of unnecessary pain managing secure network-level access into our cloud VPCs. I tried OpenVPN Access Server but I personally feel that security software should be open source to be validated (and improved) by the community. I discovered WireGuard and quickly fell in love with it, but soon found managing the peer configs to be a bit tedious and error-prone. So I built some convenience functionality on top, added a simple Web UI,…

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hi HN! I've been fed up with search results so much that I decided to make a giant blocklist to remove garbage links by using uBlacklist. I browsed other blocklists and wasn't very satisfied from what exists now; the goal of this one is to be super organized and transparent, explaining why each site was blocked via issues. Contributions welcome! Even though around 100 domains are blocked so far, I already noticed a big improvement in casual searches. You'd be surprised how some AI generated websites can dominate the #1 page on DuckDuckGo.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    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 →

  12. 12

    DNS based ad blocker with DNS over HTTPS support. Contribute to Subash/adburner-dns development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13ZI
  14. 14

    Your own privacy protection center

    2022 · adguard-dns.io · its alternatives →

  15. 15DD

    2013 · samarudge.github.io · its alternatives →

  16. 16
    Routepath▲108

    Simple HTTPS, routing, and custom domains for your sites

    2020 · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Sink is A Simple / Speedy / Secure Link Shortener with Analytics run on Cloudflare.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18SA
  19. 19FF

    I'm working at Sauce Labs on a fast MITM proxy. If you are using mitmproxy, Fiddler or Charles proxy in your job I believe you'll find it invaluable. Forwarder 1.1 is now available, complete with a Grafana Dashboard for effortless monitoring. We are committed to making it great. I welcome your feedback. Cheers Michał

    2023 · forwarder-proxy.io · its alternatives →

  20. 20KE

    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 →

  21. 21

    Fast, private networks for your team in minutes

    2022 · firezone.dev · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    To power the firewalling for our agents so that they couldn't contact arbitrary services, I build netfence. It's like Envoy but for eBPF filters. It allows you to define different DNS-based rules that are resolved in a local daemon to IPs, then pushed to the eBPF filter to allow traffic. By doing it this way, we can still allow DNS-defined rules, but prevent contacting random IPs. There's also no network performance penalty, since it's just DNS lookups and eBPF filters referencing memory. It also means you don't have to tamper with the base image, which the agent could potentially manipulate…

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    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 →

  24. 24NS

    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 →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →