NextDNS vs OpenBLD
NextDNS
nextdns.ioOpenBLD
openbld.netSide by side
| Figure | NextDNS | OpenBLD |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | £1.79/mo | $15/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 3 |
| Spec score · Internet Filtering Software | 9.0 (#5) | 9.0 (#6) |
| Documentation and support | The Help Center lists 25 getting-started articles, four privacy or blocklist articles, eight how-to guides, four troubleshooting articles, 3,317 discussions, 1,123 ideas and 3,147 bug reports. | Documentation covers introduction, setup categories, operating modes, Plus deployments, contacts and a dated technical blog; support is offered through Telegram and email. |
| Rating on Chrome Web Store | 4.7 out of 5 from 21 ratings for the unofficial NX Enhanced extension. | 5 out of 5 from 6 ratings |
| Support | The pricing page lists community support for Free and Pro, and email support for Business and Education. | OpenBLD Plus includes professional support, while technical questions and general support are directed to Telegram. |
| What it does | NextDNS is a cloud DNS firewall that blocks security threats, ads and trackers and provides supervised internet controls across devices and networks. | OpenBLD provides public protective DNS intended to block malware, phishing, tracking and unwanted domains. |
Plans
NextDNS
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Pro£1.79 a month
- Business£17.90 a month
- Education£17.90 a month
OpenBLD
- OpenBLD FreeFree
- OpenBLD Plus$15 a month
- OpenBLD Plus enterprise deploymentsPriced on request
In their own words
NextDNS
NextDNS filters internet traffic to block security threats, ads, and trackers, and offers controls for supervising children's access across devices and networks. Its listed threat protections include malware, phishing, cryptojacking, DNS rebinding, lookalike domains, typosquatting, domain generation algorithms, and newly registered domains. Parental controls include category blocking, SafeSearch, YouTube Restricted Mode, and blocks for specific sites, apps, and games, plus scheduled Recreation Time. DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS provide encrypted DNS connections. Users can disable logging or choose retention from one hour to two years and select storage in the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, or Switzerland. The free plan costs nothing and includes 300,000 queries per month; after the limit, it continues answering as a non-blocking DNS service. Pro costs £1.79 a month. Business and Education each cost £17.90 a month, for every 50 employees or 250 students respectively. Free and Pro list community support; Business and Education list email support.
OpenBLD
OpenBLD provides protective DNS to block malware, phishing, tracking and unwanted domains. It supports classic DNS, DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS. The free service can be configured on phones, browsers, computers and routers without installing an agent or additional software. Its ADA profile is adaptive for most users, while RIC applies stricter filtering that may affect some services. OpenBLD Free is presented for personal use, home networks and small offices, and is billed Free forever with about 100,000 DNS queries per day and a limit of 100 requests per second per IP. OpenBLD Plus is aimed at companies, security teams and managed service providers. It adds organization-specific policies, centralized DNS analytics, security events and corporate DNS integrations. Deployment options are Managed Cloud, Dedicated DNS and On-Premise; the On-Premise option keeps DNS traffic, events and analytics within customer infrastructure. The documentation says there is no Service Level Agreement for OpenBLD DNS, while Plus lists SLA options. The service was founded in 2019.