1. 👋 Introduction

I’ve used NextDNS for a few years now, and it’s one of those tools I recommend to friends over and over again.

It doesn’t solve every privacy problem on the Internet, but it gives you a noticeable day-to-day improvement with relatively little effort. Once you’ve used it for a while, going back to plain old DNS feels a bit grim 😅

For me, it sits in a sweet spot:

  • Fewer ads and trackers across more devices
  • Less weird background noise from apps, TVs, and other smart rubbish
  • A useful extra layer against malicious or obviously dodgy domains
  • Better DNS privacy on networks you don’t especially trust

It’s not perfect, and if you configure it too aggressively it absolutely can break things. But it gives you a lot of benefit for the effort, which is why I keep recommending it.

2. 🧭 What NextDNS Does and Why It Helps

NextDNS is a managed DNS resolver with filtering, logging, and policy controls.

When your phone, laptop, TV, or browser asks “where is this domain?”, NextDNS can answer normally, block it, record it in logs if logging is enabled, or apply another rule before the device tries to connect.

That makes DNS a useful control point. If you block a noisy or malicious domain at the DNS level, you often stop the request before the app, browser, or device gets anywhere near it. That benefit applies across far more of your devices than a browser extension alone can cover, which is exactly why it’s useful on phones, TVs, and shared devices that are harder to protect another way.

It gives you a few practical powers:

  • Ad and tracker blocking
  • Malware and phishing protection
  • Allowlists and denylists
  • Per-device visibility
  • Encrypted DNS support
  • Policy controls for families and shared household devices
  • Local rewrites for friendly names on your network

It’s not a VPN, and it’s not a replacement for endpoint security, but it’s a solid first layer.

I’ve found it especially helpful for:

  • Phones with lots of chatty apps
  • Smart TVs and streaming devices
  • Laptops that move between home, mobile hotspots, work, and public Wi-Fi
  • Home networks where you want one sensible baseline for everything

A smart TV can generate a slightly absurd amount of advertising and telemetry traffic. Mobile apps often contact analytics, tracking, and ad infrastructure even when they look harmless on the surface. Browser extensions are brilliant, but you can’t install uBlock Origin on everything in your house.

This makes the privacy angle more concrete. Traditional DNS is usually sent in the clear, which means networks, ISPs, or intermediaries can often see your lookups and sometimes interfere with them. Using encrypted DNS through NextDNS doesn’t make you anonymous, but it does improve this part of your traffic.

3. 🔐 Encrypted DNS in Practice

You don’t need to become a DNS protocol enthusiast to get value from this.

The short version:

  • Plain DNS is the unencrypted default
  • Encrypted DNS is what you should prefer where possible

Most people will end up using one of the mainstream encrypted options, usually DoH (DNS-over-HTTPS) or DoT (DNS-over-TLS), either through the router, the OS, or a per-device setup. NextDNS also supports DNSCrypt and DoQ, but the goal is not to memorise every protocol. The goal is to use an encrypted setup that stays working.

If you have to fall back to old-fashioned DNS with linked IP for compatibility reasons, fine, that’s still usable. Just remember that it is not encrypted, and it needs your current public IP to stay linked to your NextDNS configuration.

4. 🔒 Privacy, Logs, and Trust

The privacy tradeoff is straightforward:

If you use encrypted DNS with NextDNS, you’re choosing to trust a DNS provider with your DNS queries instead of exposing those lookups to your ISP or the random network you happen to be sitting on. That’s still a trust decision.

The upside is that NextDNS gives you direct controls for this:

  • You can reduce or disable logging
  • You can set how long logs are retained
  • You can choose the jurisdiction where logs and analytics are stored
  • You can tune the service towards convenience, troubleshooting, or privacy

I like that because it makes the tradeoff visible. If I want logs while I’m debugging, I can have them. If I want to be more minimal, I can dial them back later. That level of control is a real part of the appeal 🔒

NextDNS sees DNS queries, not the full content of everything you do online. That’s still important data, but it’s not the same thing as “this provider now sees all my traffic”.

5. 💸 Free vs Paid

At the time of writing, NextDNS’s free tier includes 300,000 queries per month, and after that it keeps answering DNS requests as a standard non-blocking resolver. The paid personal tier is inexpensive, but check the pricing page for the current price in your region.

That’s cheap enough that I barely think about it.

The free tier is useful because it lets you try the full product properly. For a single person with a handful of devices, it may even be enough. For a busier household with phones, laptops, TVs, tablets, consoles, and assorted smart nonsense, you can get through DNS queries faster than you might expect.

My take:

  • Free is excellent for testing and light use
  • Paid is cheap enough that I’m comfortable recommending it for real use

If you do decide to pay for it and want to support the site, you can use my affiliate link. I may receive a commission if you subscribe through that link, at no extra cost to you. This isn’t a sponsored post; it’s just a tool I use and recommend.

6. ⚖️ What NextDNS Can and Can’t Do

NextDNS is good at blocking a lot of third-party noise:

  • Ad networks
  • Trackers
  • Telemetry endpoints
  • Known malicious domains
  • A lot of app and device noise

But DNS filtering has limits.

It works at the domain level, not at the “this exact element on this exact page” level. So if the thing you want to block comes from the same domains as the real content, DNS is the wrong tool for the job.

That’s why one of the most common questions has a simple answer:

Will it block YouTube ads?

Usually no, not reliably.

That’s not because NextDNS is bad. It’s because YouTube ads are generally served from the same infrastructure as the video content itself, so DNS-level blocking can’t cleanly separate the two.

If YouTube ads are your main problem, browser-level tools are still the better answer on desktop. Brave can sometimes do a better job there than DNS ever will, but I would treat that as part of the browser setup rather than something NextDNS can provide. There may also be terms-of-service or breakage risk over time, so use it at your own risk.

For the same reason, NextDNS doesn’t replace a good browser blocker. I use DNS filtering and browser-based blocking as complementary tools:

  • DNS for network-wide coverage
  • Browser tools for the stuff DNS can’t see or can’t block cleanly

With those limits in mind, NextDNS is excellent. If you expect it to be a universal ad remover for every app and site on earth, DNS filtering is the wrong tool for that job.

7. ⚙️ Customisation Without Going Overboard

One of the best things about NextDNS is that it’s highly configurable, but configuration is also where a useful setup can become brittle.

You can customise:

  • Blocklists
  • Allowlists
  • Denylists
  • Security features
  • Logging and retention
  • Per-device identification
  • Separate configurations for different use cases
  • Local rewrites for friendly names on your network, like making myrouter.local resolve to 192.168.1.1

At that point, the product becomes more than “DNS that blocks ads”. But it also creates a temptation to enable absolutely everything at once.

My advice is to resist that.

Start with a balanced setup and tighten it over time. More lists don’t automatically mean a better result. Often they just mean more overlap, more noise, and more odd breakage.

In the table below, Light, Normal, and Pro refer to HaGeZi DNS blocklist tiers, not NextDNS plans. In short, Light is the conservative option, Normal is the middle ground, and Pro blocks more but is more likely to need tuning.

A sensible starting point would be:

Where Starting point Why
Router or shared home profile HaGeZi Light or HaGeZi Normal Keeps shared devices usable while still cutting a lot of unwanted traffic
Personal phones and laptops HaGeZi Normal, then maybe HaGeZi Pro Easier to troubleshoot because you control the device
Logs Keep them briefly while tuning, then reduce retention Logs are useful for debugging, but you may not want to keep them forever
Blocklists Pick one sensible list family Stacking lots of overlapping lists usually creates more noise than value

That’s much better than turning every dial to maximum and then spending a weekend wondering why some random login flow, payment widget, or half-broken app has stopped working.

Gob Bluth saying “I’ve made a huge mistake”

The exact face you make after enabling every aggressive list at once. Source: Tenor.

Choosing a Blocklist: HaGeZi Is a Good Place to Start

If you want one recommendation here, use one of the HaGeZi lists and don’t stack every variant on top of each other.

The three most useful tiers for this kind of setup are:

  • Light: the conservative option. Good for shared devices, homes where nobody wants to debug anything, and router-level profiles where reliability matters more than strictness.
  • Normal: a good middle ground. More capable than Light, but still aimed at staying mostly low-friction.
  • Pro: the stricter option. HaGeZi positions it as a balanced list for people who want stronger privacy protection with only occasional restrictions, but it’s the point where you should be more willing to fix occasional breakage.

One detail I like here is that HaGeZi is fairly explicit about tradeoffs. For example, the lighter tiers don’t block error-reporting services like Bugsnag, Crashlytics, Firebase, Instabug, and Sentry; those only start getting blocked from Pro onwards.

That’s why the starter split above works well: smart TVs, streaming boxes, consoles, and IoT devices are usually the most annoying to debug, while your own phone and laptop are much easier to fix if something breaks 🛠️

8. 📱 Setup: What I’d Recommend

There are lots of ways to set up NextDNS. The best one depends on how much control you have over the network, and whether you care more about simplicity, coverage, or per-device visibility.

My default advice would be simple:

  1. Set it up on the home router if you can
  2. Definitely set it up on phones
  3. On desktops and laptops, use the simplest reliable encrypted option

That gets most of the value without turning it into a hobby project 😄

Router-level setup is usually the best home baseline. It covers devices that don’t support browser extensions, helps with TVs and other shared devices, and gives less technical people in the house some protection automatically. If your router supports encrypted DNS upstreams cleanly, great, use that. If it doesn’t, NextDNS’s linked-IP setup is a workable fallback for legacy IPv4 DNS, but it is unencrypted and depends on your public IP staying linked.

For phones, I think per-device setup is worth doing even if you already configured the router. Phones constantly jump between networks, and many of those networks are not especially trustworthy. Encrypted DNS is useful there. Apple configuration profiles and Android Private DNS both make this fairly painless.

On desktops and laptops, I would keep the setup simple: pick the option that gives you encrypted DNS consistently. That might be native OS support, an Apple configuration profile, or a local client/CLI if you want more control.

One warning here: browsers sometimes do their own thing. Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave and friends may use their own secure DNS settings, which can override or bypass what you thought you had configured at the OS or router level. Work VPNs, corporate security software, or endpoint agents can also interfere. If something looks wrong, check the browser as well as the system.

In practice, the best setup for many people is router-level at home for broad coverage, plus per-device setup on phones and laptops for roaming.

Anakin saying “This is where the fun begins”

Setting it up on phones is where the benefit becomes much more obvious. Source: Tenor.

9. 🧰 Common Issues, Whitelisting, and How to Fix Them

Every filtering system occasionally breaks something, so this is one of the most important parts of the setup.

DNS breakage is often fixable if you work through it methodically.

Some common examples:

  • A site login flow stops working
  • Embedded video or comments don’t load
  • An app partially works but some feature silently fails
  • A payment flow, anti-bot check, or weird third-party dependency gets blocked
  • Public Wi-Fi captive portals behave badly
  • A browser bypasses your OS or router DNS settings

My general troubleshooting flow is:

  1. Check the NextDNS logs
  2. Confirm that DNS is actually the problem
  3. Identify the specific domain involved
  4. Allowlist narrowly
  5. Only relax broader filtering if you really need to

That last point matters. The right fix is usually “allow this one domain”, not “disable half my privacy setup forever”.

On stricter lists, some common casualties are:

  • Error-reporting services like Sentry, Crashlytics, Firebase, Bugsnag, and Instabug
  • Bits of Meta or Microsoft telemetry that some apps or services quietly assume will be reachable
  • Analytics, anti-bot, video, or payment domains that badly designed sites have made part of the critical path

That doesn’t mean you should blindly allowlist all of those. Sometimes you may be perfectly happy blocking them. The point is just that these are common places to look when something is mysteriously half-working, especially once you move beyond conservative lists.

Captive portals are another classic annoyance. Hotels, airports, and cafes can get weird when you use strict encrypted DNS. If that happens, temporarily relaxing DNS settings while you sign in is often the fastest fix.

10. 🧩 Using It With Pi-hole or AdGuard Home

If you already run Pi-hole or AdGuard Home, you don’t have to choose between local tooling and NextDNS. You can use NextDNS as an upstream resolver and keep local control at home while still getting encrypted upstream DNS and cloud-backed policy features.

The downside is obvious: more moving parts. If something breaks, you now have more places to look, and you need to avoid enabling aggressive overlapping filtering everywhere. My take: this could be useful for power users, but unnecessary for most home setups. NextDNS on its own is enough for a lot of people.

11. 🔄 Alternatives

NextDNS isn’t the only good option.

For alternatives, I’d start with these:

  • AdGuard DNS: A familiar hosted DNS service with a similar managed feel.
  • Control D: Powerful policy and traffic-steering controls, but more complexity.
  • Pi-hole or AdGuard Home: Great if you want local ownership and already have something to run them on.
  • Quad9: A good security-focused resolver if you want minimal fuss and much less customisation.

So why do I still recommend NextDNS?

Because it sits in a good middle ground:

  • Hosted and easy
  • Properly configurable
  • Useful on home networks and roaming devices
  • Strong enough to be interesting, but easy enough to recommend

12. ❓ FAQ

Is this a VPN?

No. It only handles DNS lookups. It doesn’t route all your traffic, hide your IP address from websites, or make you anonymous.

Does it replace uBlock Origin?

No. It complements browser-level blocking; it doesn’t replace it.

Will it break some sites or apps?

Sometimes, yes. Usually in a fixable way if you check the logs and allowlist only the specific domains you need.

Is the free tier enough?

Maybe. The free tier includes 300,000 queries per month, which is enough for testing and lighter use. A busier household can burn through that faster than you might think, especially once phones, TVs, tablets, consoles, and smart devices are all in the mix.

13. ✅ Conclusion

I like NextDNS because it helps with everyday browsing problems across more than just the browser.

It won’t block every ad, it won’t make you anonymous, and if you get overexcited with blocklists, it absolutely can annoy you.

But even with those caveats, I still think it’s one of the best low-effort upgrades you can make to your home network and devices.

Start simple. Use encrypted DNS where you can. Pick one sensible blocklist family. Expect to allowlist the occasional broken domain. Pair it with a browser blocker where it makes sense.

Do that, and there’s a good chance you’ll end up keeping it 🙂

14. 📚 Further Reading

  1. NextDNS
  2. Privacy - NextDNS
  3. Pricing - NextDNS
  4. Which setup type to use? - NextDNS Help Center
  5. What is Linked IP - NextDNS Help Center
  6. What is DNS over TLS, DNS over QUIC, and DNS over HTTPS? - NextDNS Help Center
  7. Set up NextDNS natively on Apple devices
  8. NextDNS test page
  9. HaGeZi DNS Blocklists
  10. AdGuard DNS
  11. Control D
  12. Pi-hole Documentation
  13. AdGuard Home Overview
  14. Quad9