Koru Shield vs Cloudflare 1.1.1.1
1.1.1.1 is the free utility: fast, private, and deliberately simple. Here is what changes when you want an account, a dashboard, and real family controls.
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.
| Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 | Koru Shield | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free forever, no account. Paid upsell is WARP+, a VPN, not filtering. | Free plan with always-on protection; Guardian $5/mo, Family Space $8/mo, Prosumer $15/mo. |
| Account and dashboard | None. No analytics, no per-device policy, no history. | Full dashboard: real-time logs, per-device profiles, custom allow and block lists. |
| Filtering depth | Three fixed presets: 1.1.1.1 (unfiltered), 1.1.1.2 (malware), 1.1.1.3 (malware plus adult content). No customization. | Categories, custom lists, schedules, and per-device rules you control. |
| Family controls | 1.1.1.3 exists but is barely marketed: one fixed filter, no profiles, no schedules. | Family filter plus per-child profiles, SafeSearch, and homework schedules. |
| Privacy audit | KPMG audit in 2019 gave a clean bill of health; no repeat audit since. 24-hour log wipe claimed. | Never sells data. US-first residency (Northern Virginia, Oregon). |
| Speed | Among the fastest resolvers measured publicly (DNSPerf). | Millisecond checks on US servers in Northern Virginia and Oregon. |
| Support | Community and docs; no consumer support channel. | Human support on every plan. |
| Network | One of the largest anycast networks on earth. | Two US regions live (Northern Virginia, Oregon). |
| Outage resilience | One of the largest anycast networks on earth, engineered for extreme resilience. | Drill-verified. Stateless edges with signed config bundles and last-known-good fallback kept resolving through simulated control-plane and edge outages. |
From public pages, September 2026.
Where Koru Shield wins
- Protection that survives our own outage, verified by failure drills
- A real dashboard: analytics, profiles, custom lists
- Family controls beyond a fixed preset
- Human support when something looks wrong
- Malware, phishing, and scam blocking live now
Where 1.1.1.1 wins
- Free forever with zero signup friction
- Among the fastest resolvers ever measured
- Massive global anycast network
- Perfect if you want unfiltered speed, not filtering
The bottom line
1.1.1.1 is genuinely great at what it promises: fast, free, private resolving with no account. It is not trying to be a filtering service, and that is the whole point of this comparison. The moment you want to know what was blocked, set different rules per device, or protect your kids with more than a fixed preset, you need an account and a dashboard. That is the gap Koru Shield fills. Try it free.
Outgrow the preset.
Get a dashboard, per-device profiles, and family controls, starting free.