hickory-dns/hickory-dns

Health v2 · maintenance only

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Adoption not part of the score

5381 stars · 622 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Hickory DNS (formerly Trust-DNS) is a Rust-based DNS client, server, and resolver library suite built for safety and security. It supports DNSSEC, TSIG, SIG(0), DoT, DoQ, and DoH, and can run as an authoritative server, forwarding, stub, or experimental recursive resolver.

Use cases

• run a self-hosted authoritative DNS server in Rust
• resolve DNS names from a Rust application without libc resolver
• validate DNSSEC-signed records
• serve DNS over TLS, HTTPS, or QUIC
• manage zone data in memory, flat files, or SQLite
• send dynamic DNS update messages programmatically

When to choose

• you need a memory-safe, pure-Rust DNS stack
• you want DNSSEC or encrypted DNS (DoT/DoH/DoQ) support
• you're embedding DNS resolution or serving into a Rust service

When to avoid

• you need a battle-tested recursive resolver for large-scale production (recursion is experimental)
• you need a drop-in BIND replacement with full feature parity
• you're not working in Rust or need a standalone DNS appliance with GUI management

Facets

library · maturity active

networking security http-server http-client networking security developer-tools self-hosted rust cross-platform windows self-hosted dns dnssec dns-server dns-client resolver dot doh doq trust-dns linux macos

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