European Alternatives to Google Public DNS

Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) is a free public DNS resolver that Google announced in December 2009. It is fast and widely used, and it is often the first alternative to the internet provider's own resolver that people try. Reasons to look for another one are mostly about data: Google states that its temporary logs hold the IP address and query details for 24 to 48 hours and that permanent logs keep anonymised data such as domain names, request types and city or region. Google also states that it does not use the data for ad targeting. Still, the operator is a US company, which matters for anyone who wants lookups to stay under European law.

European alternatives to 8.8.8.8

• Quad9 (Switzerland): run by a non-profit foundation, blocks known malware and phishing domains by default and says it stores no client IP addresses. Filtering can occasionally hit a harmless site, and an unfiltered address exists for that case.
• DNS4EU (Czech Republic): EU co-funded, operated by Whalebone, five filter variants including child protection and ad blocking. The service is young and its free offer is meant for individuals in Europe.
• AdGuard DNS (Cyprus): blocks ads and trackers for a whole network and offers a family protection server. Pure malware protection is better covered by Quad9 or DNS4EU.
• CZ.NIC ODVR (Czech Republic): a neutral, unfiltered, DNSSEC validating resolver from the .cz registry operator, without extras and without a stated logging policy.

Switching in practice

The new addresses go into the router to cover every device, or into the operating system or browser for one device. Encrypted variants (DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS) keep the lookups from being read on the way. The full comparison with seat, variants and logging is on the page public DNS servers and resolvers. Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 is covered on its own page.