

Unbound
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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
Netherlands
EU
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
Features
Unbound News & Activities
Highlights All activities
Recent activities
Unbound information
AlternativeTo Category
Network & AdminGitHub repository
- 3,531 Stars
- 387 Forks
- 341 Open Issues
- Updated Jun 5, 2025
Comments and Reviews
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.
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).
Secure and reliable, active development