FreeDNS: The Free Dynamic DNS Serving 7.1M Members

7 min read · Last updated: October 24, 2026

FreeDNS is a free dynamic DNS and domain hosting service at freedns.afraid.org, run by Joshua Anderson, with a copyright line dating back to 2001. It just resurfaced on Hacker News. Its homepage lists 7,161,396 members, 13,834,329 DNS records and 2,326 queries per second. One curl request keeps a hostname pointed at your changing home IP.

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The service

• FreeDNS homepage, freedns.afraid.org (live counters as captured October 24, 2026)

The discussion

• Hacker News thread on FreeDNS, 17 points and 1 comment (October 2026)

Someone posted the FreeDNS homepage to Hacker News, and it picked up 17 points and one comment. Small numbers. There was no launch, no funding round and no new feature. An old tool simply came back into view.

The homepage is the real story. It shows a copyright line running from 2001 to 2026, a live member counter, and a footer saying the service is processing 2,326 DNS queries per second on a five minute average. The page claims it rendered in 0.001 seconds.

Key takeaways

• FreeDNS lists 7,161,396 members and 13,834,329 DNS records across 1,276,001 zones.
• It reports about 2,326 DNS queries per second, measured as a five minute average on its own homepage.
• Only 5,593 members are premium, roughly 1 in every 1,280 accounts.
• The shared domain registry offers 23,236 domains you can attach a free subdomain to.
• A dynamic IP update is one curl call to a personal URL, with a separate v6. host for IPv6.

What is FreeDNS?

FreeDNS is a DNS hosting service that lets you create subdomains, host your own domains, and update records automatically when your IP address changes. It is free, with optional premium plans. The site describes itself as free, dynamic, static and premium DNS, "trusted by millions of users", and the counters back that up.

Here is what the member menu on freedns.afraid.org exposes, and what each part is for:

Feature	What it does for you
Subdomains	Get a name like yourbox.somedomain.com under a shared domain
Domains	Host DNS for a domain you already own
Dynamic DNS	Update a record automatically when your IP changes
Web Forward	Redirect a URL to another address (free and premium)
IPv6 Reverse	Host reverse DNS for IPv6, forward and reverse
Backup DNS	Act as a secondary DNS server for your zone
Registry	Browse the shared domains other members have opened up

The homepage pitch is plain: access your computer with a name, such as zeus.afraid.org or yourdomain.com, instead of a numeric IP address. Point it at home, work, school, a datacenter or the cloud.

FreeDNS by the numbers

Every figure below comes from the live counters on the FreeDNS homepage, captured on October 24, 2026.

Metric	Value
Members	7,161,396
Premium members	5,593
DNS records	13,834,329
Zones	1,276,001
Domains in the shared registry	23,236
DNS queries per second (5 min average)	2,326

A few things fall out of that table if you do the arithmetic.

There are about 1.9 records per member. Most accounts are small, probably one hostname pointing at one machine. That matches the main use case.

Premium members are about 0.08 percent of the total. That is a tiny paying base supporting a very large free one.

If 2,326 queries per second held all day, that would be roughly 201 million lookups in 24 hours. Treat that as a rough scale check, not a measured daily number, since the counter is a five minute average.

Why does FreeDNS matter to a developer?

FreeDNS matters because most home and small office internet connections get a dynamic IP that changes without warning. If you run anything from home, a dev server, a Raspberry Pi, a game server or a demo, your address breaks every time it changes. Dynamic DNS gives you a fixed hostname that follows the IP for free.

Think about the usual situation. You build a side project. You want a friend or a client to hit it on your home machine. You send them an IP address. Two days later it stops working, because your router got a new address from your provider.

A dynamic DNS name fixes that. The name stays the same. A small script tells the DNS provider your new IP whenever it changes.

There are two other reasons FreeDNS is worth knowing about.

It is old and still running. A service whose copyright line starts in 2001 and is still answering thousands of queries a second has survived a lot of tools that came and went. For something as boring as DNS, boring is the feature.

It has a shared registry. You do not need to buy a domain to get a usable hostname. Members have opened up 23,236 domains you can attach a subdomain to. For a quick demo or a learning project, that removes a cost and a signup.

How does the FreeDNS dynamic update work?

FreeDNS gives each dynamic record a unique update URL. You send an HTTP request to that URL, and FreeDNS sets the record to whatever IP the request came from. For IPv6 you call the same URL on a v6. subdomain. No client software is required, only curl or anything that can make a web request.

This is the exact demo on the FreeDNS homepage, using its v2 interface:

$ curl https://sync.afraid.org/u/CyTXMbtq5cPnLjEg5vKHTPDE/
Updated demo.freshdns.com from 107.170.238.X to 50.23.197.94

And the IPv6 version, which only adds v6. to the host:

$ curl https://v6.sync.afraid.org/u/CyTXMbtq5cPnLjEg5vKHTPDE/
Updated demo.freshdns.com from 50.23.197.94 to 2607:f0d0:1102:d5::2

That is the whole protocol from your side. If you have used a REST API, it is the simplest one you will ever call: a GET request where the URL is the credential and your source IP is the payload.

That also means the token in the URL is effectively a password. Anyone who has it can repoint your hostname. Keep it out of public repos and screenshots.

What changes in practice?

In practice, nothing about FreeDNS changed this week. What changes is your options. If you self-host anything on a home connection, you can get a stable hostname in minutes without paying for a domain or installing a client. The trade-off is that you depend on a free service run by a small operation.

Here is how it compares with the alternatives you would otherwise reach for. These are general trade-offs, not benchmarks.

Option	Cost	Stable name on a dynamic IP	Setup effort
Share your raw IP	Free	No, breaks when the IP changes	None
FreeDNS subdomain from the shared registry	Free	Yes, with an update script	Low
FreeDNS hosting your own domain	Domain cost only	Yes, with an update script	Medium
Static IP from your provider	Usually a paid add-on	Yes, by default	Depends on provider

The homepage also points new users to router setup guides for DD-WRT, the open source router firmware, in a v1 and a v2 version. The v2 guide covers native IPv6. If your router supports it, the router can run the update for you and no machine at home needs a script at all.

One practical warning from the FreeDNS homepage itself, listed as Tip #1: keep your email address current in your preferences. If you forget your password, that email is the only way to recover the account.

What should you do this week?

If you run anything from a home connection, set up one dynamic hostname this week and automate its update. It takes about fifteen minutes. Start with a free subdomain from the shared registry, wire the update URL into a scheduled job, and test it from your phone on mobile data.

1. Sign up at freedns.afraid.org and set a real, current email in Preferences.
2. Pick a subdomain from the shared registry, or add your own domain under Domains.
3. Point it at your current IP, then open the Dynamic DNS section to get your personal update URL.
4. Test the update by running curl against that URL and reading the response line.
5. Schedule it so the record follows your IP without you thinking about it.
6. Check it from outside your network, for example on your phone with Wi-Fi turned off.

For step 5, a cron job on any always-on Linux box is enough. This runs the update every five minutes and stays quiet:

# crontab -e
*/5 * * * * curl -s https://sync.afraid.org/u/YOUR_TOKEN_HERE/ > /dev/null

If your connection has IPv6, add a second line with v6.sync.afraid.org so both record types stay current.

If the thing you are exposing runs in a container, read our guide on what Docker is and how it works first, so you know exactly which port you are opening to the internet. A stable hostname makes your service easy to find. That cuts both ways.

FAQ

Is FreeDNS really free?

Yes. FreeDNS offers free subdomain hosting, domain hosting, backup DNS, reverse IPv6 DNS and URL forwarding. It also sells premium plans, but as of October 24, 2026 only 5,593 of its 7,161,396 members were premium, so the overwhelming majority use it for free.

Who runs FreeDNS?

The copyright notice on freedns.afraid.org credits Joshua Anderson and covers 2001 to 2026. The service lives at the afraid.org domain, which is why you will often hear it called "afraid.org" DNS.

Does FreeDNS support IPv6?

Yes. Dynamic updates work over IPv6 by calling the same update URL on the v6.sync.afraid.org host. The service also offers IPv6 reverse DNS hosting, and its v2 DD-WRT router guide covers native IPv6.

What is the FreeDNS shared domain registry?

It is a list of domains that members have made available for others to create subdomains under. On October 24, 2026 it held 23,236 domains. You can attach a free hostname to any of them, or use a domain you own instead.

Set up one dynamic hostname for your home server this week and put the update on a schedule. While you are at it, browse the free tools on Art of Code, and if this is your first time exposing a project to the internet, read how my first app hit 40 users.

Written by Adithya Guttha, Founder of Art of Code.