Mullvad shuts down its public encrypted DNS service and puts its weight behind Quad9
Swedish privacy company Mullvad has announced that it is shutting down its public encrypted DNS (DoH) servers, ending a service it has operated since 2022. The company said the move reflects the fact that the servers are largely redundant for its core audience: anyone using Mullvad VPN already has encrypted traffic and queries handled by the VPN's internal DNS. Outside of the VPN tunnel, however, the public servers have served as a standalone privacy service, something Mullvad now intends to provide by proxy, directing users to the Quad9 Foundation instead.
In the announcement, Mullvad framed the decision as a matter of focus rather than retreat, arguing that running a privacy-focused public DNS resolver is “a highly specialized undertaking” in which Quad9 is the undisputed leader. Rather than duplicating the nonprofit foundation's efforts only partially, the company says it will funnel the resources previously spent on its own resolvers into financially supporting Quad9. The move echoes a pattern familiar from Mullvad's history, such as its collaboration with the Tor Project on the Mullvad Browser, of partnering with established projects instead of building parallel infrastructure.
Users who relied on Mullvad's DoH service will need to act: manually configured setups must be migrated to Quad9 before November 2, 2026. Mullvad Browser users who kept the default DoH settings, or the built-in ad-blocking option, will be switched over to Quad9 automatically, though anyone with customized configurations will need to reset them manually. Existing iOS and macOS configuration profiles pointing at Mullvad's DNS servers will simply stop working, and the company is directing affected users to Quad9's own setup guides and replacement profiles for those platforms.
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External links
- Shutting down our public encrypted DNS servers and sponsoring Quad9 insteadMullvad VPN • Official source
Comments
I previously tried Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 service, but wasn't happy with the latency, so I switched to using DNS filtering with NextDNS. With Mullvad throwing weight behind Quad9 piques my interest.
Nextdns let you choose what stuff to block, quad9 is good for privacy too but i prefer dns with adblocking. You can check privacy guides list that will be as good :D: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/dns/
They shutted down search engine before too, are they experiencing crisis?
Why would they be experiencing a crisis? Not every business venture is a complete success and sometimes it is redundant/unnecessary like it was in this case.
Have been using this excellent service right from when they started till date. Pity to see them pack away the service but I understand the neccessities. Is there any other resolver better than Quad9 though, for Privacy freaks like me?
I've been using Quad9 for years, but I think
AdGuard DNS is also pretty good.
You can also check Privacy Guides's selection of privacy-focused DNS resolvers.
Personally I'd stick with Quad9 especially when even Mullvad endorses and now will help to contribute to their cause. Great news for Quad9 tbh. What concerns do you have about Quad9?
Nextdns let you choose what stuff to block, quad9 is good for privacy too but i prefer dns with adblocking. You can check privacy guides list that will be as good :D: [https://www.privacyguides.org/en/dns/](https://www.privacyguides.org/en/dns/)
I tried the DNS resolvers mentioned above, but they weren't as effective at blocking ads as Mullvad. I'm now using
dnsforge.de, which seems to block most ads just like Mullvad did.