DNS hosting privacy ratings
Services that host the DNS records for your own domains.
9 DNS hosting are rated against 12 public criteria, and 9 have enough evidence for a letter grade. Our pick is Cloudflare DNS. Of the 9 with a known jurisdiction, 4 are based in a Five Eyes country, and 6 in the wider Fourteen Eyes.
Criteria for this category · Suggest an addition · Markdown
| Name | Grade | Score | Data | Jurisdiction | Open source | No trackers or telemetry | No ads or data sales | Independent audit | Transparency report | Tells users about requests | DNSSEC | API access | Two-factor login | TLS configuration | Security headers | Modern web standards |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cloudflare DNS Our pick Authoritative DNS hosting on Cloudflare's anycast network with a free plan, DNSSEC, an API and security-key login. |
Grade C | 66 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Not tested yet |
Free authoritative DNS hosting from the Berlin non-profit deSEC e.V., with automatic DNSSEC signing, a full REST API and open-source software. |
Grade B | 77 | 100% | Germany Fourteen Eyes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not tested yet |
Authoritative DNS hosting and domain registration service from Amazon Web Services, with health checks, routing policies and pay-per-use pricing. |
Grade D | 52 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | No | Partial | Yes | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not tested yet |
Paid managed DNS hosting and domain registrar with DNSSEC, secondary DNS, an API, a CLI and a Terraform provider. |
Grade D | 52 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | Partial | No | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Not tested yet |
Anycast DNS hosting from Romania with DNSSEC, a REST API and git integration that builds zones from BIND or Lua files, with a free plan and paid plans. |
Grade D | 52 | 100% | Romania Outside Eyes | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Partial | Not tested yet |
Authoritative DNS hosting from the Slovenian CDN provider bunny.net, with DNSSEC, scriptable DNS records, health-check failover and usage-based pricing. |
Grade D | 43 | 100% | Slovenia Outside Eyes | No | No | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | Partial | Not tested yet |
Free authoritative DNS hosting from the German provider Hetzner, managed in the Hetzner Console and through the Hetzner Cloud API. |
Grade D | 43 | 100% | Germany Fourteen Eyes | No | Partial | Yes | Partial | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Not tested yet |
Managed DNS hosting from Bulgaria with a free plan and paid plans adding anycast, DNSSEC, GeoDNS, DDoS protection, secondary DNS and failover. |
Grade F | 36 | 100% | Bulgaria Outside Eyes | No | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes | Partial | Not tested yet |
Free authoritative DNS hosting from the US network operator Hurricane Electric, with forward and reverse zones, secondary DNS and dynamic DNS updates. |
Grade F | 25 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | Partial | Yes | No | Partial | No | No | No | No | Partial | No | Not tested yet |
Questions
What is the most private option among DNS hosting?
Our pick is Cloudflare DNS. Free on every plan, one of the fastest DNS networks, a complete API, and hardware security key login. DNSSEC is automatic when the domain is also registered with Cloudflare Registrar.
How are DNS hosting rated?
Each entry answers 12 questions: open source, no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales, independent audit, transparency report, tells users about requests, TLS configuration, security headers, modern web standards, DNSSEC, API access and two-factor login. Answers need links to evidence. See the full criteria.
Does jurisdiction matter?
Jurisdiction decides which laws can compel a provider to hand over data. Each entry shows its country and whether it is in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes. The data a provider can hand over depends mostly on what it stores and who holds the keys. Read about jurisdictions and the CLOUD Act.