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 [ For those who care about privacy and security, some of these suggestions are clearly not options.]:
Google 8.8.8.8: Private and unfiltered. Most popular option.
CloudFlare 1.1.1.1: Private and unfiltered. New player.
Quad99.9.9.9: Private and security aware. New player that blocks access to malicious domains.
OpenDNS208.67.222.222: 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.
CleanBrowsing185.228.168.168: 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.
Comodo DNS 8.26.56.26: Old player that blocks malicious domains.
None of those are private by default. DNS queries are sent plain text to the web. Some of those dns providers might support DOH (ex cloudfare) that allows encryption of the dns query.
For as much as some of those companies preach they are private, they have a record of the opposite (ex. : google).
Even if the provider cross their fingers to not log on the individual level - in aggregate, DNS query data is valuable. You’d want to spread it over smaller providers.
So apart from privacy, check latencies with an App like com.catinthebox.dnsspeedtest or with cli tools like “mtr”. Anycasted services (quad, cloudflare etc) are of course very quick as a node not far away from you will answer your query.
Those are valid choices, but as I said, independent orgs or even privately run DNS servers can be more interesting, especially if they’re only a few nethops away.
fyi, com.catinthebox.dnsspeedtest went into cleanapk.org (2 days after app request), searching for “DNS Test” will suggest it. A test will show latencies over 4 repeated real dns queries to example.com (and Ads too).
