Did you know that your DNS provider is as important as your anti-virus and firewall solution, possibly more important!
Using a defensive DNS provider that protects against Malware, Phishing and other risks are now mission critical.
Top DNS Security Provider Awards
Top DNS Provider Comparison Table
| Provider | Protective IP (Malware/Phishing) | Business Model | Jurisdiction | Logging Policy | Malware Blocking |
| Quad9 | 9.9.9.9 | Non-Profit (Donation/Grant funded) | Switzerland 🇨🇭 (GDPR compliant, strong privacy laws) | Strict No-Logs (Proven in court/audited) | Excellent (Aggregates 20+ threat feeds: IBM, CrowdStrike, etc.) |
| NextDNS | Profile Required (Requires account/linked IP) | Commercial (Freemium) | USA 🇺🇸 (Delaware) | Optional (User controlled: 0s to 2y, or off) | Excellent (User-selectable lists + AI detection) |
| Control D | 76.76.2.2(Free Malware Filter) | Commercial (Owned by Windscribe) | Canada 🇨🇦 (Five Eyes Alliance) | Optional (Free DNS = No logs) | Good (Internal filters + proxy capabilities) |
| Cloudflare | 1.1.1.2(“Security” tier) | Commercial (Publicly Traded) | USA 🇺🇸 | Transient (Logs kept 24h for debugging, then purged) | Good (Blocks known malicious domains only) |
| AdGuard | 94.140.14.14(“Default” tier) | Commercial (Freemium) | Cyprus 🇨🇾 (EU laws apply) | No Logs (For public DNS) | Good (Blocks Ads, Trackers, & Malware) |
| OpenDNS | 208.67.222.123(“FamilyShield” tier) | Commercial (Owned by Cisco) | USA 🇺🇸 | Data Collection (Collects data for analysis/business) | Good (Enterprise-grade phishing protection) |
| Comodo | 8.26.56.26(Secure DNS) | Commercial (Xcitium) | USA 🇺🇸 | Data Collection (Standard corporate logging) | Fair (Focuses on domain filtering) |
8.8.8.8(Standard – No specific security IP) | Commercial (Data Giant) | USA 🇺🇸 | Data Collection (Transient 24-48h + Anonymized permanent logs) | None/Minimal (Does not actively block malware/phishing sites) |
Using our product ‘PC Armour’ we have been able to evaluate the effectiveness of the top DNS providers against Malware and Phishing.
Winners
DNS Protection Rankings by “PC Armour”
Best Free Public DNS
Quad9 – 99.9% Protection
Quad9 is a safe (swiss) & secure company offering this kind of protection for free. If you are not using a paid solution, you should be using this.
Best Paid Custom DNS
NextDNS – 99.9% Protection
NextDNS paid solution allows for custom whitelisting and blacklisting, logging, diagnostics and additional custom blocklists/AI lists.
2nd Place
Free/Paid Custom DNS
Control D – 99.5% Protection
Control D is a great product, a bit more expensive but offers a free service. If you want custom control and 99.9% protection you need paid edition.
3rd Place
Free Service/Enterprise Options
CloudFlare – 87.9% Protection
CloudFlare is likely a better solution if you are completely into their ecosystem with enterprise contracts but the free DNS rating was not a winner.
Biggest Failures
The following services failed to offer any kind of reasonable protection with rankings from 0 to 5%
It was noted that OpenDNS, Google, Comodo also logs/stores and/or sells their DNS data to third parties.
