Koru Shield vs AdGuard DNS
AdGuard DNS is the ad blocker's DNS service: superb blocking, honest pricing, and a solid free tier. Here is how it stacks up against Koru Shield, row by row.
Protection that survives our own outage. Koru Shield's edge servers are stateless, run from signed configuration bundles, and fall back to last-known-good config automatically. We have run failure drills simulating control-plane and edge outages, and DNS kept resolving through them. A filter that disappears during an incident is not protection, so we lead with this.
| AdGuard DNS | Koru Shield | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Starter: $0, 300,000 queries per month, 5 devices, 100 custom rules. Free public resolver (94.140.14.14) with no account. | Always on. Free protection never silently switches off, quota or not. |
| Paid price | Personal: $2.49/mo plus VAT, 20 devices, 1,000 custom rules, 10M queries per month. Team: $29.99/mo plus VAT. | Guardian: $5/mo. Human support on every plan. |
| Ad blocking | Among the best DNS-level ad blockers, built on AdGuard's filter-list expertise. | Ad and tracker blocking included, with per-profile toggles. |
| Threat blocking | Phishing and malware blocking via threat feeds. | Malware, phishing, and scam blocking live now, with human support when something gets through. |
| Per-device rules | Per-device rules supported within plan limits. | Per-person, per-device profiles with independent rules. |
| Schedules | Parental controls with SafeSearch and YouTube Restricted Mode; time-based scheduling is not its focus. | Homework and bedtime schedules that enforce themselves, per profile. |
| Dashboard and analytics | Real-time dashboard with query stats and logs. | Real-time logs, per-device profiles, and analytics included. |
| Privacy | Cyprus-based company; states it does not log DNS queries. Check the current policy for details. | Never sells data; US-first residency (Northern Virginia, Oregon). |
| Encrypted DNS | DoH, DoT, DoQ, and DNSCrypt supported. | DoH on the unified us.korushield.com endpoint. |
| Support | Email support and knowledge base. | Human support on every plan, including free. |
| Network | Established global anycast network. | Two US regions live (Northern Virginia, Oregon). |
| Outage resilience | Global anycast network; resilience details not published. | Drill-verified. Stateless edges with signed config bundles and last-known-good fallback kept resolving through simulated control-plane and edge outages. |
| Maturity | Established service from a well-known ad-blocking company. | Live now. Newer, smaller, and shaped by early members. |
Pricing and features from public pages, October 2026. AdGuard DNS Personal commonly cited as $2.49/mo plus VAT.
Where Koru Shield wins
- Protection that survives our own outage, verified by failure drills
- Per-person profiles with homework and bedtime schedules
- Human support on every plan, including free
- Free plan that never silently degrades
- US-first data residency as a headline promise
Where AdGuard DNS wins
- Best-in-class DNS-level ad blocking
- Lower paid price ($2.49/mo Personal)
- Free public resolver with no account needed
- DoQ and DNSCrypt protocol support
- Years of operational history
The bottom line
AdGuard DNS is genuinely excellent, and if your main goal is blocking ads everywhere, it is hard to beat at the price. Koru Shield is for households that want more than blocking: different rules for each person, schedules that run themselves, and a human to email when something looks wrong. If that sounds like you, try it free and run both side by side.
Try the difference free.
Run our five-second protection check, then put Koru Shield on one device and see what it catches.