Technitium DNS vs Pi-hole for a Home Network: A Full DNS Server or an Ad Blocker

Pi-hole is usually the first thing people self-host, and for good reason: point your router’s DNS at it and ads and trackers disappear from every device in the house. But as a home network grows, with VLANs, a homelab domain, internal services with their own names, and a wish for encrypted DNS, Pi-hole starts to need companions. Technitium DNS Server comes up more and more as the alternative that does it all in one place.

The two overlap on ad blocking but are different kinds of software. Pi-hole is an ad-blocking DNS filter that forwards everything else to another resolver. Technitium is a complete DNS server, authoritative and recursive, that also blocks ads. This comparison looks at what that means for a household and a homelab.

An ad blocker with DNS, or a DNS server with ad blocking

Pi-hole answers DNS queries from your devices, blocks domains on its blocklists, and forwards everything else to an upstream resolver, such as a public DNS provider or a local recursive resolver like Unbound. It shows a detailed query log, lets you group devices with different blocklists, can serve local DNS records and optionally DHCP. It is famously light and has a very large community.

Technitium DNS Server is an open-source DNS server with a web interface. It can resolve names recursively by itself, host your own zones as an authoritative server, forward to upstream servers over encrypted protocols, and block ads with blocklists. It supports DNS over HTTPS, TLS and QUIC both as a client and as a server, conditional forwarding per domain, DHCP, and an app system for features such as split-horizon answers and advanced blocking.

Blocking ads for the household

For the job most families install it for, both work well. Add blocklists, point devices at the server, and ads and trackers are blocked across phones, laptops, TVs and smart devices. Both let you allow a domain when a site breaks, and both show which domains each device asks for.

Pi-hole’s interface is built around this job and is the easiest to live with: a dashboard of queries and blocked percentages, a query log you can filter and act on with one click, and groups that let you give children’s devices stricter lists than the adults’. Its large community means that any site broken by blocking has usually already been discussed somewhere.

Technitium’s blocking is equally effective, and its advanced blocking app supports different blocklists per network or client group. The interface is more of an administrator’s console than a family dashboard. For pure ad blocking in a household, Pi-hole is a little friendlier; the differences between Pi-hole and other filters are covered in Pi-hole vs AdGuard Home vs router DNS.

Your homelab domain and internal names

This is where Technitium pulls ahead. A homelab quickly accumulates names: nas.home.example.com, photos.home.example.com, a reverse proxy, a hypervisor, printers. Technitium hosts real DNS zones, with any record types you need, wildcard records pointing everything at a reverse proxy, reverse lookup zones so IP addresses resolve back to names, and conditional forwarders that send queries for specific domains to other servers, such as a work VPN’s DNS.

Pi-hole supports local DNS records and CNAMEs, which covers simple cases, and you can add custom configuration for more. But full zones, split-horizon answers and complex forwarding are not what it was designed for, and they become fiddly as the network grows.

If you use split DNS, where the same name resolves to an internal address at home and a public one outside, Technitium’s split-horizon support handles it directly.

Recursion and privacy

A forwarding DNS filter sends every non-blocked query to an upstream provider, which therefore sees your household’s browsing domains. Many Pi-hole users add Unbound, a recursive resolver, so that queries go directly to the authoritative servers on the internet instead of to one provider. That works well but means running and maintaining two components.

Technitium resolves recursively by itself, so that privacy setup is built in. Alternatively, it can forward to a provider over encrypted DNS, hiding queries from your internet provider. It can also serve encrypted DNS to your own devices, so phones away from home can use your server privately over DNS over HTTPS through a VPN or reverse proxy.

VLANs, multiple networks and per-network rules

Households with separate networks for trusted devices, guests and smart-home gadgets often want different DNS behaviour on each: strict blocking for IoT devices, lighter blocking for guests, internal names only for trusted devices. Both can do some of this. Pi-hole’s groups assign blocklists by client address or subnet. Technitium’s advanced blocking app maps networks to different lists, and its zones and apps can answer differently depending on which network asked.

If you are separating networks this way, the common pitfalls with casting and discovery across them are covered in guest VLAN vs IoT VLAN on one router.

Running it, and running two

DNS is the one service that takes the whole household offline when it fails. Whichever you choose, run two instances on different hardware, and give both addresses to devices through DHCP.

Pi-hole is extremely light and runs happily on a Raspberry Pi or a small container. Keeping two Pi-holes in sync traditionally relies on community sync tools or careful manual changes; the current version’s configuration file makes copying settings easier.

Technitium runs on Linux, Windows or in Docker, uses a little more memory than Pi-hole, and supports primary and secondary zones, so internal zones replicate between servers automatically. Recent versions have added clustering features to keep settings in sync across instances; check the current documentation for what your version supports.

When things break

The everyday failure with any blocking DNS is a site or app that silently stops working. Pi-hole’s query log makes the cause easy to find: filter by device, see the blocked domain, allow it. Technitium’s logs show the same information, though finding it takes a few more clicks.

The other failure is the DNS server being down. Avoid pointing the router’s only DNS at a single server, set short timeouts, and monitor both instances with an uptime check that does real DNS lookups, not just a ping.

Devices that ignore your DNS

Whichever server you run, some devices try to bypass it. Knowing this saves a lot of confused troubleshooting.

• Hard-coded DNS. Some smart TVs, streaming sticks and apps send queries straight to a public resolver, ignoring the server DHCP hands out. A firewall rule on the router that redirects or blocks outbound DNS on port 53 to anything but your servers brings them back in line.
• Encrypted DNS in browsers and phones. Browsers can use DNS over HTTPS to a provider, and phones can use private DNS settings, both bypassing local filtering. Browsers usually respect a “canary” domain that local DNS servers can use to signal that encrypted DNS should be off, and blocklists of public DoH endpoints help. On managed devices, set the browser policy directly.
• Apple’s iCloud Private Relay and similar services route browsing through their own resolvers by design. Users can turn them off per network if they want local filtering.

Technitium’s ability to act as an encrypted DNS server helps here: you can give your own phones a DNS over HTTPS address pointing at your server, so they keep encrypted DNS and your filtering at the same time.

Migrating from Pi-hole to Technitium

If you already run Pi-hole and want Technitium’s zones and recursion, the switch is straightforward:

1. Install Technitium alongside Pi-hole and add the same blocklists.
2. Recreate local DNS records as a zone, using wildcards where a reverse proxy serves many names.
3. Point one test device at Technitium for a few days and check the query log for broken apps.
4. Switch DHCP to hand out Technitium’s address, keeping Pi-hole as the second server for a while.
5. Replace the second Pi-hole with a second Technitium instance once you are confident.

Some people keep Pi-hole in front for its family-friendly dashboard and forward to Technitium for internal zones and recursion. That works, but it is more moving parts than either alone.

Which fits your network

Choose Pi-hole if your goal is ad and tracker blocking for a household, with a friendly dashboard, easy per-device groups and a vast community. Add Unbound if you want recursive resolution, and local records for a handful of internal names.

Choose Technitium if your network has outgrown simple local records: a homelab domain with many services, split DNS, conditional forwarding, encrypted DNS in both directions, and zones replicated between two servers. It replaces Pi-hole plus Unbound plus custom configuration with one server, at the cost of a more technical interface.

Either way, run two, monitor them, and keep a note of how to point devices at a public resolver if both ever fail.