head to head · open source
AdGuardHome vs sdns
AdGuardHome has 38,471 GitHub stars, 2,613 forks, 1,253 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sdns has 1,089 stars, 75 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. AdGuardHome leads on adoption by 3,433% (38,471 vs 1,089 stars). AdGuardHome is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; sdns is written in Go under MIT. AdGuardHome has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, sdns 7%. sdns was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (dns, dns-over-https, dns-over-quic, dns-over-tls), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| AdGuardHome | sdns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-13 | 2026-11-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 75 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick AdGuardHome if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sdns if
- You want the sdns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sdns fits your workflow better
About AdGuardHome
Privacy protection center for you and your devices Free and open source, powerful network wide ads & trackers blocking DNS server. AdGuard.com Wiki Reddit Twitter Telegram AdGuard Home is a network wide software for blocking ads and tracking. After you set it up, it'll cover ALL your home devices, and you don't need any client side software for that. It operates as a DNS server that re routes tracking domains to a “black hole”, thus preventing your devices from connecting to those servers. It's based on software we use for our public [AdGuard DNS] servers, and both share a lot of code. [AdGuard DNS]: Getting…
read the full AdGuardHome overview →
About sdns
SDNS A recursive DNS resolver with DNSSEC validation, written in Go. Documentation · Install · Configuration · Benchmarks SDNS resolves from the root, validates answers against the DNSSEC trust anchors, and caches them. It serves DNS over TLS, HTTPS and QUIC alongside plain UDP and TCP, and answers warm cache hits from the bytes it already holds. Full documentation lives at sdns.dev . This file covers installing it and getting a first answer out of it. Install Pre built binaries for Linux, macOS, Windows and the BSDs, plus .deb and .rpm packages, are on the releases page. The full architecture matrix is in the…
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Frequently asked questions
Is AdGuardHome or sdns more popular?
AdGuardHome has 38,471 GitHub stars and sdns has 1,089. AdGuardHome has the larger community by that measure.
Are AdGuardHome and sdns free?
Both are open source. AdGuardHome is licensed under GPL-3.0 and sdns under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between AdGuardHome and sdns?
AdGuardHome is written in TypeScript and sdns in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, AdGuardHome or sdns?
Choose AdGuardHome if you want the larger community (38,471 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sdns if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.