Unbound icon
Unbound icon

Unbound

 15 likes

Unbound is a validating, recursive, and caching DNS resolver.

The C implementation of Unbound is developed and maintained by NLnet Labs. It is based on ideas and algorithms taken from a java prototype developed by Verisign labs, Nominet, Kirei and ep.net.

Unbound is designed as.

License model

  • Free • Open Source

Country of Origin

  • NL flagNetherlands
  • European Union flagEU

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows  Windows 64 & 32-bit binary: [https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/download/](https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/download/)
  • Linux
Unbound alternatives  
4.8 / 5 Avg rating (4)
15likes
3comments
10alternatives
0news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features
  1.  DNS Server
  2.  DNS-over-TLS
  3.  Support for IPv6
  4.  DNS Caching

 Tags

  • nameservers

Unbound News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent activities

  • App icon
    joshuatownsend added Unbound as alternative to BlueCat Micetro
    25 days ago
  • niksavc liked Unbound
    10 months ago
  • jdakfkj333 updated Unbound
    11 months ago
  • jdakfkj333 updated Unbound
    11 months ago
  • jdakfkj333 added Unbound as alternative to WireHole
    11 months ago
  • jdakfkj333 rated Unbound  
    ★
    ★
    ★
    ★
    ★
    11 months ago

    After cached, the speed of this is on par with commercial alternatives like 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare).

    It is flexible. You can set it up on your client (laptop for example), raspberry pi, docker, WSL, server, on Virtualbox, etc.

    If you go to their website rather than the Github repository, they have binaries for Windows. The exe. didn't work for me, but the .zip Windows did. Just extract it and copy to c:/programs/unbound, make an unbound.conf file using the sample one in the folder, and then go...

Show all activities

Unbound information

  • Developed by

    NL flagNLnet Labs

  • Licensing

    Open Source (BSD-3-Clause) and Free product.

  • Written in

  • Rating

    Average rating of 4.8

  • Alternatives

    10 alternatives listed

  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Category

Network & Admin

GitHub repository

  •  3,531 Stars
  •  387 Forks
  •  341 Open Issues
  •   Updated Jun 5, 2025 
View on GitHub

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Our users have written 3 comments and reviews about Unbound, and it has gotten 15 likes

Unbound was added to AlternativeTo by vermin96 on Jan 6, 2012 and this page was last updated Jul 7, 2024.

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Top Positive Comment
Peter S.
★
★
★
★
★
Dec 30, 2023
2

I used it to hide my DNS from statist spies. With DNScrypt as SimpleDNScrypt. It did work, but often broke down. I had to waste extra time to fix it by restarting the unbound service. Today I got fed up with it and switched to the Acrylic DNS proxy. So far it's been working fine. Unbound will no longer break on me.

Sam Lander
★
★
★
★
★
Jul 7, 2024
1

After cached, the speed of this is on par with commercial alternatives like 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare).

It is flexible. You can set it up on your client (laptop for example), raspberry pi, docker, WSL, server, on Virtualbox, etc.

If you go to their website rather than the Github repository, they have binaries for Windows. The exe. didn't work for me, but the .zip Windows did. Just extract it and copy to c:/programs/unbound, make an unbound.conf file using the sample one in the folder, and then go to network settingsadapter settingsipv4 properties, and set preferred DNS server to 127.0.0.1. For a basic setup, you want the configuration file (unbound.conf) to use port 53 and server 127.0.0.1.

This can also be used in conjunction with DNS-Crypt Proxy 2, anonymized DNS relays (or other software using this protocol, such as Simple DNSCrypt, SecureDNS, Encrypted DNS Server, or YogaDNS).

madnuttah
★
★
★
★
★
Feb 10, 2022
1

Secure and reliable, active development

What is Unbound?

Unbound is a validating, recursive, and caching DNS resolver.

The C implementation of Unbound is developed and maintained by NLnet Labs. It is based on ideas and algorithms taken from a java prototype developed by Verisign labs, Nominet, Kirei and ep.net.

Unbound is designed as a set of modular components, so that also DNSSEC (secure DNS) validation and stub-resolvers (that do not run as a server, but are linked into an application) are easily possible.

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