Pi-hole
DNS
Blackhole for Internet advertisements with a GUI for management and monitoring.
Actively maintained
Real momentum
EUPL-1.2
Fast and lightweight DNS proxy as ad-blocker for local network with many features (alternative to Pi-hole).
blocky is an open-source dns project, with 6.9k GitHub stars and a health score of 83/100. It committed 301 times in the last twelve months across 12 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: Apache-2.0. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.
| Status | Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days. |
|---|---|
| Last commit | 2026-08-14 |
| Days since last commit | 3 |
| Commits, last 3 months | 114 |
| Commits, last 12 months | 301 |
| Months with activity | 12 of 12 |
| Last release | 2026-07-27 |
| Archived | No |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 |
| Category | DNS |
Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.
Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.
This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.
blocky is shipping code consistently, so a buyer comparing your product will find a maintained free option. Price and position against the total cost of self-hosting it, not against the paid incumbent's list price.
Winnable, but differentiation is not optional. Pick one underserved segment and be visibly better for it rather than competing feature-for-feature with a free tool.
Actively maintained. blocky recorded 301 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 12 of those months and 114 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-08-14. Last release: 2026-07-27. Committed within the last 45 days.
blocky is published under Apache-2.0. Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.
6 open-source implementations, 5 of them actively maintained, led by Pi-hole at 60k stars. Saturation score 42/100 — Contested. Several maintained alternatives exist, but no one owns the category.
DNS
Blackhole for Internet advertisements with a GUI for management and monitoring.
DNS
User-friendly ads & trackers blocking DNS server.
Authoritative/recursive DNS server with ad blocking functionality.
DNS
Local ad blocker. Like Pi-hole but local and using your operating system.
DNS
Ad-blocking DNS resolver with DNSSEC-validating recursive resolution, DoH/DoT/Oblivious DoH, ephemeral overrides, and local service domains, in a single Rust binary (alternative to Pi-hole, AdGuard Ho
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