As of November 2025 the proxy-dns was deprecated by cloudflare.
Starting February 2, 2026, the
cloudflared proxy-dnscommand will be removed from all newcloudflaredreleases.
I was wondering what other people that use pihole have decided to move onto?
It looks like the easiest solution, for those wanting to use DoH, is switching over to dnscrypt-proxy
At this point I would say switch to selfhosted AdGuard if it is possible for you.
AdGuard support normal DNS, DoH, DoT and DoQ natively for incoming and outgoing DNS requests, while PiHole only supports normal DNS for out and incoming.
PiHole lacks of so many modern features and support that I’m fat up with it. I do not want to build a hundred different systems around PiHole myself just to get it to a state where it is comparable to AdGuard.
Depending on how invested you are in Pi-Hole, I’d consider a possible change if encrypted DNS is important to you. Other self-hostable (e.g. Adguard Home) or hosted (e.g. NextDNS) solutions support DNS encryption natively.
Pi-hole is the OG of the space and has my respect for that. But there are alternatives today that feel a lot more modern to me. Are there specific features or capabilities of pi-hole that keep you preferring it to the alternatives?
No. I mostly use pihole because thats what I learned about first. I currently run two raspberry pi 3b (one is an older model one is a newer model of it) with pihole installed. One is basically meant as a backup if the other disconnects for whatever reason but, both are advertised to devices from the router.
Happy to provide more information in terms of my setup if you feel like it would add context.
I would be interested to read more about what options you might reccomend over pihole, on the encrypted dns front, if you feel like spending time writing out your thoughts.
Another alternative to Adguardhome is Technitium. For serving DoH and DoT adguardhome should be enough. Technitium is more capable, can host authoritative zone, do axfr transfer etc.
Adguard Home is what currently appeals to me most. My reasons for preferring it aren’t that deep. I like that it natively supports DoH, DoT, etc. With AGH, using encrypted DNS upstreams is pretty much just as simple as using normal/insecure DNS. Beyond that, Iike the UX/UI, and havent’ felt limited by it.
edit: one other possible reason to prefer Adguard Home that will matter to some people (but be irrelevant for most people) is it can be integrated into some router OSes and there are some commercial router’s that integrate it ootb (gl-inet)
NextDNS is a strong option to consider if you don’t care about self-hosting.
@arise1984 @xe3 @Onscreen5341 I will have to look into all this. I appreciate all the info!
Yes! And is also available as an OpenWrt package. 
