Free Public DNS Servers

DNS stands for Domain Name System. DNS server is a key part of the internet. Their job is to translate the human friendly domain addresses (example: pc-factory.at) into the machine friendly IP address (example: 116.203.57.174), so that your device can communicate with the server and get things done.

Sometimes, the default DNS server from ISP may be slow or they also block certain sites at DNS level, or for some users they may not be secure enough. In either case, you may be better off using one of the public DNS servers listed below.

List of free public DNS servers

Servers are listed with their IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

DNS Provider	Primary DNS	Secondary DNS
Google - IPv4	8.8.8.8	8.8.4.4
Google - IPv6	2001:4860:4860::8888	2001:4860:4860::8844
Quad9 - IPv4	9.9.9.9	149.112.112.112
Quad9 - IPv6	2620:fe::fe	2620:fe::9
OpenDNS - IPv4	208.67.222.222	208.67.220.220
OpenDNS - IPv6	2620:119:35::35	2620:119:53::53
OpenDNS - FamilyShield	208.67.222.123	208.67.220.123
Cloudflare - IPv4	1.1.1.1	1.0.0.1
Cloudflare - IPv6	2606:4700:4700::1111	2606:4700:4700::1001
Verisign	64.6.64.6	64.6.65.6
CleanBrowsing - Family Filter	185.228.168.168	185.228.169.168
CleanBrowsing - Adult Filter	185.228.168.10	185.228.169.11
CleanBrowsing - Security Filter	185.228.168.9	185.228.169.9

Using a DNS server from the list above will reduce your DNS lookup time and it may speed up your browsing experience. If the default DNS server is slow or causing any issue or you want extra security features, it's worth a try. Public DNS servers could protect you from malicious and phishing sites (primarily designed to steal your sensitive data) or inappropriate/adult sites that you may want to block for kids / family users.

Note: You could also ping to the DNS servers and select the one based on the latency (the lower the ping the better it is) to keep the DNS resolving time as low as possible.