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DNS benchmark online: compare DNS servers by latency

Run a free DNS benchmark in your browser to compare DNS servers on median, average, minimum, jitter, and reliability — then understand exactly what those numbers mean.

Updated 8 min read

What is a DNS benchmark?

A DNS benchmark is a repeated timing test that sends several name-lookup requests to each DNS resolver and summarizes the results — usually as median, average, minimum, jitter, and reliability — so you can compare resolvers on real, measured speed instead of assumptions.

Below, run the live benchmark against multiple public resolvers from your own connection, then read on for what each metric means and how to get a fair result.

DNS Speed Test

Each resolver is queried 8 times (plus 2 warm-up, excluded) — more lookups give a steadier, more accurate median but take longer. Measures 34 resolvers in your browser: verified where the resolver allows it, otherwise an approximate round trip.

Runs entirely in your browser. We measure how quickly each resolver answers a fresh lookup over encrypted DNS-over-HTTPS — no downloads, no account, nothing stored.

DNS latency test metrics, explained

Every DNS benchmark boils a batch of lookup times down to a handful of numbers. Here is what each one tells you, and which to weigh most heavily.

Median
The middle value once every lookup time is sorted. Half the lookups were faster, half slower. Because a single freak slow reply can't drag it far, the median is the number most worth trusting for “how fast is this resolver, typically.”
Average (mean)
The sum of every lookup divided by the count. It's easy to compute but sensitive to outliers — one very slow reply pulls the average up even if most lookups were fast. Comparing average to median tells you whether outliers are present: if they're close, the resolver is consistent; if the average is much higher, something occasionally stalls.
Minimum
The single fastest lookup recorded during the run — the resolver's best case, when the network path, the resolver's cache, and everything else lined up perfectly. It's optimistic by definition and shouldn't be read as a typical result.
Jitter
The standard deviation of the lookup times — a measure of how much they vary from one another, not how fast they are. A resolver with a 20ms median and low jitter answers in a tight, predictable band. One with the same median but high jitter swings between very fast and noticeably slow replies. Low jitter matters most for real-time uses like gaming and video calls, where an unpredictable spike is more disruptive than a slightly higher, consistent latency.
Reliability
The percentage of lookups that returned a valid answer at all, as opposed to timing out or erroring. A resolver that answers quickly nineteen times out of twenty but fails the twentieth is, in practice, worse than a slightly slower resolver that never fails — a failed lookup means a full retry, which costs far more time than any latency difference.

How to compare DNS servers fairly

A DNS benchmark is only as trustworthy as the conditions it ran under. A few habits make the difference between a noisy one-off number and a result you can act on.

  • Run it more than once. A single pass can be thrown off by one slow reply or a momentary Wi-Fi hiccup. Run the benchmark two or three times, ideally minutes apart, and look for the resolver that stays near the top each time rather than the one that won a single race.
  • Keep network load low. Pause large downloads, close bandwidth-heavy streams or video calls, and avoid running the test while a backup or update is in progress. Contention for your connection adds noise that has nothing to do with the resolvers themselves.
  • Prefer Standard or Detailed mode. More lookups per resolver means the median and jitter settle into a steadier, more representative value. A Quick pass is fine for a rough check, not for a final decision.
  • Weigh consistency, not just the fastest single number. A resolver with a slightly higher median but low jitter is often the better everyday choice over one that occasionally posts a very fast lookup but swings wildly the rest of the time.
  • Test from where you'll actually use it. Latency to a resolver depends on your location and ISP's routing. A benchmark run on a laptop at home won't necessarily match results on a phone on mobile data or a server in another region.

How a browser benchmark differs from GRC DNS Benchmark or namebench

Native benchmarking tools such as GRC's DNS Benchmark (Windows) and namebench send raw DNS queries over UDP on port 53 — the same low-level protocol your operating system uses to resolve every hostname. They can open that kind of socket because they run as installed applications with direct network access.

A web page cannot do that. Browsers deliberately forbid JavaScript from opening raw UDP or TCP sockets, for security reasons that have nothing to do with DNS specifically. So an online DNS benchmark measures resolvers using DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) instead: the same DNS query, wrapped inside a regular HTTPS request that the browser is allowed to make. That adds a thin, consistent layer of TLS and HTTP overhead on top of the raw lookup time — but because it's applied equally to every resolver being tested, the relative comparison between resolvers stays fair, even though the absolute millisecond figures run a little higher than a native UDP test would report.

The practical upshot: use this benchmark to compare resolvers against each other, from your own connection, in a way you can repeat any time with no install. If you want the closest possible match to your operating system's raw resolution time, a native tool is the more literal instrument — though it also only tests the DNS protocol on the machine it runs on, not the encrypted DoH or DoT paths increasingly used by modern browsers and operating systems. Full detail on both approaches, warm-up requests, and randomized lookups is on the methodology page.

Compare DNS servers by feature

Speed is only one axis. Once you know which resolvers are fastest for you, weigh these differences before switching.

Feature comparison of public DNS resolvers
Provider Primary DNS No logsDNSSECMalwareAdsFamily
Cloudflare DNS 1.1.1.1 Yes Yes No No No
Cloudflare for Families 1.1.1.3 Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Google Public DNS 8.8.8.8 No Yes No No No
Quad9 9.9.9.9 Yes Yes Yes No No
OpenDNS 208.67.222.222 No Yes Yes No Yes
AdGuard DNS 94.140.14.14 Yes Yes Yes Yes No
CleanBrowsing 185.228.168.9 Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Control D 76.76.2.0 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Alternate DNS 76.76.19.19 Yes Yes No Yes No
AliDNS 223.5.5.5 No Yes No No No
DNSPod Public DNS 119.29.29.29 No No No No No
DNS.SB 185.222.222.222 Yes Yes No No No
Mullvad DNS 194.242.2.2 Yes Yes No No No
360 Secure DNS 101.226.4.6 No No Yes No No
Restena Public DNS 158.64.1.29 Yes Yes No No No
DNS4EU (Protective) 86.54.11.1 No Yes Yes No No
UncensoredDNS 91.239.100.100 Yes Yes No No No
LibreDNS 116.202.176.26 Yes Yes No Yes No
NextDNS 45.90.28.0 Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Digitale Gesellschaft 185.95.218.42 Yes Yes No No No
SWITCH Public DNS 130.59.31.248 No Yes Yes No No
Comcast Xfinity DNS 75.75.75.75 No Yes No No No
CIRA Canadian Shield 149.112.121.20 No Yes Yes No No
DNS for Family 94.130.180.225 No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Yandex DNS 77.88.8.8 No No No No No
Level 3 / Lumen (4.2.2.x) 4.2.2.1 No No No No No
Vercara UltraDNS Public 64.6.64.6 No Yes No No No
Comodo Secure DNS 8.26.56.26 No No Yes No No
Hurricane Electric DNS 74.82.42.42 No No No No No
DNS.WATCH 84.200.69.80 Yes Yes No No No
Quad101 101.101.101.101 Yes Yes No No No
DNSforge 176.9.93.198 Yes Yes Yes Yes No
FDN (French Data Network) 80.67.169.12 Yes Yes No No No
BlahDNS 78.46.244.143 Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Tiarap 174.138.21.128 Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Freifunk München (ffmuc) 5.1.66.255 Yes Yes No No No
Nawala ChildProtection 180.131.144.144 No No Yes No Yes
SafeDNS 195.46.39.39 No No Yes No Yes
Gcore Public DNS 95.85.95.85 Yes No No No No
CZ.NIC ODVR 193.17.47.1 No Yes No No No
OpenBLD DNS DoH only No Yes Yes Yes No
IIJ Public DNS DoH only Yes Yes No No No
Applied Privacy DoH only Yes Yes No No No
RethinkDNS DoH only Yes No No No No
Comss.one DNS 83.220.169.155 No Yes Yes Yes No
FlashStart 185.236.104.104 No No Yes No Yes

DNS benchmark — questions

What is a DNS benchmark?

A DNS benchmark measures how quickly one or more DNS resolvers answer name-lookup requests, usually by sending several test queries to each resolver and summarizing the results as median, average, minimum, jitter, and reliability. The goal is to compare resolvers on real response speed rather than guesswork or marketing claims.

Is an online DNS benchmark as accurate as a native tool?

It measures a slightly different thing, not a lesser one. A browser-based benchmark times DNS-over-HTTPS requests, which include a small layer of HTTPS overhead applied equally to every resolver. A native tool like GRC's DNS Benchmark or namebench sends raw UDP packets on port 53, closer to how your operating system actually resolves names. Both are legitimate ways to compare resolvers relative to each other; see the full breakdown on the methodology page.

Why do my benchmark results change between runs?

DNS latency reflects your current network conditions — Wi-Fi interference, background downloads, VPN overhead, and the resolver's own load can all shift by the second. This is normal. Run the benchmark two or three times at different moments and look for the resolver that stays near the top consistently, rather than trusting a single run.

Which DNS metric should I trust most: median or average?

Median, for a typical-case picture — it isn't skewed by one slow lookup. Check the average alongside it: if the two are close, the resolver is behaving consistently; a much higher average signals occasional slow replies. For latency-sensitive use like gaming, weigh jitter just as heavily as median.

Does a lower DNS latency mean faster internet?

No. DNS latency only affects how quickly a hostname is translated to an IP address before a connection starts — it shortens the initial delay before a page begins loading. It has no effect on your download or upload bandwidth, and it won't speed up a slow website or a slow internet plan.