Cisco Umbrella vs NextDNS
Cisco Umbrella and NextDNS are both network ad blocking software. Cisco Umbrella is a commercial product from Cisco. NextDNS is a commercial product from NextDNS.
Which to pick
- Pick Cisco Umbrella when
- A business or school wants a simple first layer of web filtering and threat blocking across all sites and devices.
- Pick NextDNS when
- You want network-wide blocking on phones and laptops wherever they go without running a Pi-hole.
Side by side
Cloud DNS-layer security that blocks malicious and unwanted domains for offices and roaming laptops, extending to secure web gateway and firewall features.
A hosted DNS resolver that blocks ads, trackers and malicious domains on every device and network, with parental controls and query logs.
Higher tiers get expensive and are being folded into Cisco's wider security bundles.
A small company, the service has gone quiet on development at times, and logs go to a third party unless disabled.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service (both)
Not published (both)
Closed source, sold by Cisco
Closed source, sold by NextDNS
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code. (both)
No Wikipedia article of its own (both)
Other comparisons
More network ad blockers and DNS filters
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.