A couple of months ago I did a performance comparison between some of the top free DNS Resolvers available. It was just after Quad9 had launched and I was trying to decide which one to use and recommend to families and friends. Google, OpenDNS, Quad9, .. some many options… I love options …

And things just got better. CloudFlare, one of the companies that know the most about Internet performance recently launched their own free DNS resolver. It supports DNS over TLS and DNS over HTTPS by default, which makes it even more interesting.

Now we have an even more interesting playing field: Google's 8.8.8.8, Quad9’s 9.9.9.9 and CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 , in addittion to OpenDNS's 208.67.222.222 and a few other niche providers as options for us to use.

Providers Tested

Let's compare them and see how fast they are from across the world. Those were the top 8 free DNS providers that we chose to evaluate:

Google 8.8.8.8 : Private and unfiltered. Most popular option.

: Private and unfiltered. Most popular option. CloudFlare 1.1.1.1 : Private and unfiltered. New player.

: Private and unfiltered. New player. Quad9 9.9.9.9 : Private and security aware. New player that blocks access to malicious domains.

: Private and security aware. New player that blocks access to malicious domains. OpenDNS 208.67.222.222 : Old player that blocks malicious domains and offers the option to block adult content.

: Old player that blocks malicious domains and offers the option to block adult content. Norton DNS 199.85.126.20 : Old player that blocks malicious domains and is integrated with their Antivirus.

: Old player that blocks malicious domains and is integrated with their Antivirus. CleanBrowsing 185.228.168.168 : Private and security aware. New player that blocks access to adult content.

: Private and security aware. New player that blocks access to adult content. Yandex DNS 77.88.8.7 : Old player that blocks malicious domains. Very popular in Russia.

: Old player that blocks malicious domains. Very popular in Russia. Comodo DNS 8.26.56.26: Old player that blocks malicious domains.

That's a quick feature breakdown between them regarding their privacy options:

Privacy options comparison

The Privacy option above is based on the providers promise to do not log or share your DNS requests.

Locations

We ran our tests from 18 locations from around the globe. We used mostly VPS providers + some broadband locations to try to query their DNS from as many places as we could. It will tell us how well connected they are, where their datacenters are located and how close someone's experience in that area will be. Locations chosen:

North America : San Diego, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Atlanta, Dallas, Fremont, San Francisco

: San Diego, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Montreal, Atlanta, Dallas, Fremont, San Francisco Europe : London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt

: London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt Asia : Tokyo, Singapore, Bangalore (India), Sydney, Brisbane (Australia)

: Tokyo, Singapore, Bangalore (India), Sydney, Brisbane (Australia) South America: Sao Paulo

Update: there is this tool that you can run from your own location to compare the performance of these providers. I tested it myself and worked pretty well. Try it out and let me know the results from your city/ISP, and I will update this post.

Results Summary

Our test was very simple and we performed 70 DNS lookups throughout the course of an hour for different popular domains (google, facebook, twitter, gmail, etc). We averaged all the requests per location to get an overall performance indicator per DNS resolver.

TLDR / Summary

All providers (except Yandex) performed very well in North America and Europe. They all had under 15ms response time across the US, Canada and Europe, which is amazing. In reality, you can choose any one of them and do not notice the few msec of latency difference. However, Asia and South America made the difference in the overall averages (and finding the winner) as some of the providers are not well connected there.

In reality, you can choose any one of them and do not notice the few msec of latency difference. However, Asia and South America made the difference in the overall averages (and finding the winner) as some of the providers are not well connected there. CloudFlare was the fastest DNS for 72% of all the locations . It had an amazing low average of 4.98 ms across the globe.

. It had an amazing low average of ms across the globe. Google and Quad9 were close for second and third respectively. Quad9 was faster than Google in North America and Europe, but under performed in Asia / South America.

and were close for second and third respectively. Quad9 was faster than Google in North America and Europe, but under performed in Asia / South America. CloudFlare has a strong presence everywhere. While Google and Quad9 had some high response times from some locations, CloudFlare performed well from everywhere.

has a strong presence everywhere. While Google and Quad9 had some high response times from some locations, CloudFlare performed well from everywhere. Yandex is only for Russia. It doesn't leverage Anycast like the other providers, and was very slow from everywhere.

is only for Russia. It doesn't leverage Anycast like the other providers, and was very slow from everywhere. CleanBrowsing was the fastest provider offering adult (porn) content filtering.

was the fastest provider offering adult (porn) content filtering. We know we can't compare these providers 1 to 1, as they all have special features that can add some latency (Quad9 and Comodo blocks access to malicious domains, for example). Take the results as is.

Global Average

#1 CloudFlare: 4.98 ms

#2 Google: 16.44 ms

#3 Quad9: 18.25 ms

#4 CleanBrowsing: 19.14 ms

#5 Norton: 34.75 ms

#6 OpenDNS: 46.51 ms

#7 Comodo: 71.90

#8 Yandex: 169.91

North America Average

#1 CloudFlare: 3.93 ms

#2 Quad9: 7.21 ms

#3 Norton: 8.32 ms

#4 Google: 8.53 ms

#5 CleanBrowsing: 11.83 ms

#6 OpenDNS: 14.66 ms

#7 Comodo: 25.91 ms

#8 Yandex: 119.09 ms

Europe Average

#1 CloudFlare: 2.96

#2 Quad9: 4.35

#3 CleanBrowsing: 5.74

#4 Google: 7.17

#5 OpenDNS: 8.99

#6 Norton: 10.35

#7 Comodo: 13.06

#8 Yandex: 35.74

Results Data