Pi-hole and AdGuard Home solve the same problem with the same mechanism. Both are DNS servers that refuse to resolve hostnames on a blocklist, both let you edit those lists, both show you a query log. AdGuard’s own documentation concedes the point: “At this point, AdGuard Home has a lot in common with Pi-Hole. Both block ads and trackers using the so-called ‘DNS sinkholing’ method and both allow customizing what’s blocked.”
That shared foundation means the comparison is not about which one blocks more. It is about what each project has chosen to build into the box, how each is packaged, and what you are signing up to maintain. Everything below is drawn from the two projects’ own documentation.
Where the two are genuinely equivalent
Because the blocking decision happens on a hostname in both products, both inherit exactly the same limits. Neither can separate advertising from content served off the same hostname. Neither sees a request made to a literal IP address. Neither has any effect on a device that ignores the network’s DNS settings. If a switch between them is motivated by ads that survive DNS filtering, it will not help; the reasons are set out in what a Pi-hole DNS sinkhole can and cannot block.
Both also carry an optional DHCP server, both support per-client configuration, and both are free and open source. For a Pi-hole deployment, use Pi-hole hardware requirements to check the supported OS, RAM, storage and device options. Those are Pi-hole’s published requirements, not an AdGuard Home sizing specification.
The differences that actually change a decision
| Capability | Pi-hole | AdGuard Home |
|---|---|---|
| DNS sinkhole blocking, custom lists | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in DHCP server | Yes | Yes |
| Per-client configuration | Yes | Yes |
| Encrypted upstream (DoH, DoT, DNSCrypt) | Additional software; documented DoH option is dnscrypt-proxy | Native |
| Acts as a DoH / DoT server for clients | Additional software | Native |
| HTTPS on the admin interface | FTL’s own webserver binds 443 | Native |
| Built-in NTP server | Optional FTL feature | Not offered |
| Local recursive resolution | Documented Unbound pairing | Documented upstream options |
| Runs without superuser | Not documented as supported | Documented |
| Distribution | Installer on supported distros, plus Docker | Single binary, Docker, Snap |
| Parental controls, adult-domain blocking | Via non-default blocklists | Built in |
| Forced safe search on search engines | Not a built-in feature | Built in |
| Configuration surface | pihole.toml, gravity.db, pihole CLI, REST API | YAML config, web UI, REST API |
Two rows deserve elaboration, because published comparisons routinely get them wrong.
Encrypted DNS is the clearest split
AdGuard Home ships encrypted transport in both directions: it can talk DNS-over-HTTPS, DNS-over-TLS or DNSCrypt to its upstreams, and it can present itself to clients as a DoH or DoT server. Nothing extra is installed.
Pi-hole documents pairing it with dnscrypt-proxy for an encrypted upstream. That adds a service to install, monitor and update. The older cloudflared guide now warns that its required proxy-dns feature was deprecated and that new installations should not use that method. If encrypted upstream transport is a requirement, AdGuard Home supplies it within the filtering service.
Encrypting DNS transport protects that connection, while the upstream resolver still sees the queries sent to it. Pi-hole also documents a pairing with Unbound for local recursive resolution. Recursion avoids concentrating those lookups at one public recursive provider; it still sends queries to authoritative DNS servers and is not itself encryption.
AdGuard’s published comparison table describes an older Pi-hole
The AdGuard Home README carries a feature table comparing itself to Pi-hole. It is a useful summary and mostly fair, but it is a vendor comparison written by one of the vendors, and at least one row has aged out.
That table says HTTPS for the admin interface on Pi-hole is “kind of, but you’ll need to manually configure lighttpd.” Pi-hole no longer uses lighttpd. The current prerequisites page documents pihole-FTL binding ports 80 and 443 itself, falling back to 8080 and 8443 when those are occupied, with the port set through the webserver.port option. The webserver is now part of the resolver process.
Similarly, “cross-platform: not natively, only via Docker” understates the position. Pi-hole names Alpine, Armbian, Debian, CentOS Stream, Fedora, Raspberry Pi OS and Ubuntu as officially supported, with prebuilt FTL binaries for x86_64, armv6, armv7, armv8 and riscv64. That is narrower than a single Go binary that also runs on macOS, FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but it is not Docker-only.
The rows on encrypted DNS, safe search, access control and running without root remain accurate, and they are the substantive ones.
Packaging and operational model
AdGuard Home is one static binary plus a YAML configuration file. Install is a script, a Snap, a container image, or dropping the binary in place. Configuration is one file you can version-control, diff and restore. The documentation covers running it as a non-root user.
Pi-hole is a set of components installed and managed by the pihole command, with state in SQLite databases: subscribed lists and domain rules in /etc/pihole/gravity.db, query history in FTL’s own database. Since v6 the CLI authenticates through the same API the web interface uses, and the post-install documentation notes that adding your user to the pihole group lets those commands authenticate without entering the password each time, a convenience that can be switched off with webserver.api.cli_pw.
That distinction determines which one feels better to operate, and it is largely a matter of taste. A single YAML file is easier to back up and reason about. A database plus a purpose-built CLI is easier to query, script against and manipulate selectively, and pihole exposes genuinely useful verbs: pihole -q to ask which lists contain a domain, pihole tail to watch resolution live, pihole debug to produce a diagnostic bundle. Those tools are the reason the troubleshooting ladder in Pi-hole not blocking ads is as short as it is.
Pi-hole also carries features AdGuard Home does not: an optional NTP server built into FTL, and a large ecosystem of third-party dashboards, exporters and integrations accumulated over a longer life.
Which to choose
Choose AdGuard Home if you want encrypted DNS in or out without bolting on a second service, you want safe search and category-based parental controls without curating blocklists, you want to run on a platform outside Pi-hole’s supported list, you care about running unprivileged, or you simply prefer one binary and one config file.
Choose Pi-hole if you want the larger community and documentation surface, you want a scriptable CLI and SQLite state you can query directly, you plan to pair it with Unbound for local recursion, you want the built-in NTP server, or you are following one of the many well-maintained homelab guides that assume it.
Do not choose either based on blocking effectiveness. Both consume the same public blocklists, and the list you subscribe to matters far more than which engine reads it. Blocklist quality also beats blocklist quantity in both: large aggregated lists overlap heavily and each addition raises the odds of breaking something you need.
Running both, and not running both
They can coexist on one network, and there is one specific way of doing it that is always wrong: listing them as primary and secondary DNS on your clients. Clients are free to pick either, so results become inconsistent and blocking appears to work intermittently. That is a misconfiguration regardless of which two resolvers are involved.
If you want redundancy, run two instances of the same product with the same lists, so either answer is the correct answer. If you want to evaluate the other one, point a single test client at it rather than the whole network.
Finally, size the chosen service for its actual configuration. The memory and blocklist sizer estimates Pi-hole resources from list size and query volume. Do not treat its output as an AdGuard Home memory prediction or a measurement of either installed service.
