European Public DNS Servers and Resolvers

A public DNS resolver is the server that turns a domain name into an IP address whenever a device asks for it. By default that is the resolver of the internet provider, but a router, an operating system or a browser can be pointed to a public one instead, such as 1.1.1.1 from Cloudflare or 8.8.8.8 from Google. People look for an alternative DNS server because the resolver sees every domain a household or company looks up, and because the best-known public resolvers belong to US companies. This page lists public DNS servers operated from Europe.

European DNS servers compared

Resolver	Operator and seat	Variants	Encrypted protocols	Logging according to its own statement
Quad9	Quad9 Foundation, Zürich, Switzerland	Malware blocking (recommended), with ECS, unfiltered	DoH, DoT, DNSCrypt	No client IP addresses stored, only aggregate counters
DNS4EU	Whalebone s.r.o., Brno, Czech Republic	Five: protective, child protection, ad blocking, both, unfiltered	DoH, DoT	Queries logged with an anonymised client IP; narrow exceptions for attack defence
AdGuard DNS	AdGuard Software Limited, Limassol, Cyprus	Default (ads, trackers), non-filtering, family protection	DoH, DoT, DoQ, DNSCrypt	No personal data processed on the public servers; account variant has its own query log
CZ.NIC ODVR	CZ.NIC, Prague, Czech Republic	One, unfiltered, DNSSEC validating	DoT, DoH	No policy on the ODVR page

What to look at when choosing an alternative DNS server

• Filtering: Some resolvers only resolve names, others block malware and phishing (Quad9, DNS4EU) or ads and trackers (AdGuard DNS). Filters can block harmless sites, so a variant without filtering should be available.
• Encryption: Plain DNS can be read on the way to the resolver. DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT) encrypt that connection.
• Logging: The operator can in principle see every lookup. The table repeats what each provider states itself; outsiders cannot verify such statements.
• Jurisdiction: The seat of the operator decides which law applies to its data.

Public resolvers versus DNS hosting

A public resolver answers the lookups of the people who use it. DNS hosting is the other side: authoritative name servers that publish the records of a domain. For that, see DNS providers. For a direct replacement of a well-known address, see Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and Google Public DNS.