Updated August 2026
    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    60k

    Pi-hole: Maintenance, Licence and Alternatives

    Blackhole for Internet advertisements with a GUI for management and monitoring.

    TL;DR • Pi-hole • as of August 2026

    Pi-hole is an open-source dns project, with 60k GitHub stars and a health score of 72/100. It committed 256 times in the last twelve months across 11 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: EUPL-1.2. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.

    60k
    GitHub stars
    72/100
    Health score
    256
    Commits (12 mo)
    11/12
    Active months

    Maintenance health

    Status Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days.
    Last commit 2026-07-06
    Days since last commit 42
    Commits, last 3 months 29
    Commits, last 12 months 256
    Months with activity 11 of 12
    Last release 2026-07-06
    Archived No
    Licence EUPL-1.2
    Category DNS

    Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.

    What the licence lets you do

    EUPL-1.2

    Non-standard or mixed licensing. Check the repository before commercial use.

    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.

    What Pi-hole means for your idea

    Contested · 42/100
    DNS category →

    Pi-hole 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.

    Pi-hole: common questions

    Is Pi-hole still maintained in 2026?

    Actively maintained. Pi-hole recorded 256 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 11 of those months and 29 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-07-06. Last release: 2026-07-06. Committed within the last 45 days.

    Can I use Pi-hole commercially?

    Pi-hole is published under EUPL-1.2. Non-standard or mixed licensing. Check the repository before commercial use.

    How crowded is the DNS category?

    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.

    Pi-hole alternatives in DNS

    blocky

    DNS

    6.9k

    Fast and lightweight DNS proxy as ad-blocker for local network with many features (alternative to Pi-hole).

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    Apache-2.0

    Numa

    DNS

    1.4k

    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

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    MIT

    Competing with free? Check the market first.

    IdeaProof scores your idea against live competitors, market size and 1,000+ documented startup failures in about two minutes.