How to block adult sites on your home Wi-Fi

Before you start

A family DNS on your router filters every device on that Wi-Fi, including ones with no settings of their own, like a smart TV. It doesn't follow phones onto mobile data.

Step 1: Change the DNS on your router (10 minutes)

1. Find your router's address. It's usually printed on a sticker on the router, often 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.
2. Open that address in a browser and log in with the admin password from the same sticker.
3. Look for DNS under a menu called something like Internet, WAN or Advanced.
4. Switch it from automatic to manual and enter the two addresses for the filter you picked.
5. Save, then restart the router.

Some routers from internet providers don't let you change DNS at all. If yours doesn't, set the filter on each device instead. The phone guides and the laptop guide walk through it.

Filter	Addresses for your router	IPv6
Cloudflare for Families	1.1.1.3 and 1.0.0.3	2606:4700:4700::1113 and 2606:4700:4700::1003
AdGuard DNS Family	94.140.14.15 and 94.140.15.16	See AdGuard's server list
CleanBrowsing Adult Filter	185.228.168.10 and 185.228.169.11	See CleanBrowsing's filter list

If your router has a separate IPv6 DNS setting, fill it in too. Otherwise devices that prefer IPv6 can skip the filter.

Our test

On 16 October 2026 we checked the four best-known family filters ourselves, because most comparisons online just repeat what the providers say.

What we did. We took 42 of the best-known adult sites and looked each one up through each filter, plus 6 www. versions and 12 normal sites, including the NHS, Planned Parenthood, Reddit and X. We ran it twice, seven minutes apart. Both runs gave the same answers. We counted a site as blocked when the filter refused to give its address or pointed it at a block page. Cloudflare's normal, unfiltered 1.1.1.1 was the control. We're keeping the list of sites to ourselves.

Filter	Adult sites blocked	Normal sites blocked by mistake	Forces Google SafeSearch	Forces YouTube Restricted Mode
Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 (no filter, control)	0 of 42	0 of 12	No	No
Cloudflare for Families 1.1.1.3	42 of 42	0 of 12	Yes	No
CleanBrowsing Adult Filter	42 of 42	0 of 12	Yes	No
AdGuard DNS Family	42 of 42	0 of 12	Yes	Yes
OpenDNS FamilyShield	39 of 42	0 of 12	No	No

What surprised us.

• The oldest name did worst. OpenDNS FamilyShield missed 3 of the 42 sites in both runs, and it didn't force SafeSearch on Google or Bing.
• Only one filter handled YouTube. AdGuard was the only one that pushed YouTube into Restricted Mode. Cloudflare and CleanBrowsing left YouTube alone.
• None of them touched Reddit or X. That's on purpose. These filters judge a whole site, and most of Reddit and X isn't adult. If your nights start on Reddit, a family filter won't help much there.
• Only AdGuard closed the iPhone loophole. It refused the lookups iPhones use for iCloud Private Relay, which is Apple's own way for a network to ask for Private Relay to be turned off. More on why that matters below.

What this test can't tell you. Our list is the famous end of the internet. Smaller and newer sites would separate these filters more, and we didn't test them. We ran it from a home connection in India, and the filters answered from their own servers. We'll re-run it every three months and update this page.

Which one to pick

• Cloudflare for Families if you want the simple choice. It caught everything in our test and forces SafeSearch.
• AdGuard DNS Family if YouTube is part of the problem. It also blocks ads and trackers, which now and then breaks a site.
• CleanBrowsing Adult Filter if you'd rather use a company whose whole business is filtering.

We'd skip OpenDNS FamilyShield for now, based on our results.

Worth knowing. NextDNS is popular with people who like to tinker, and it lets you choose exactly what to block. Its no-cost plan has a catch: after 300,000 lookups in a month it keeps working but stops blocking. A busy home can get there.

What this won't catch

A router filter is the easiest one to step around. These are the ways out.

• Mobile data. The filter lives on your router. The moment a phone drops off the Wi-Fi onto 4G or 5G, it's gone. Set the filter on the phone too.
• iPhones with iCloud Private Relay. When Private Relay is on, Safari skips a DNS set by the network. A router using AdGuard's filter asks those iPhones to turn Private Relay off for your Wi-Fi. With the others, set the filter on the iPhone itself.
• Browsers with their own DNS. If someone picked a DNS provider in Chrome's or Firefox's settings, that browser goes around your router.
• VPNs. A VPN carries its own lookups, so the router never sees them.
• Anyone with the router password. Which, at home, is usually everyone, because it's on a sticker.

Make it stick

Change the router's admin password to something you don't know. Have a housemate or a friend type it in and keep it. It's the same idea as letting someone else hold your phone's Screen Time passcode: you can still ask for it, but asking is a step. Often that step is enough.

What a blocker can't do

A family filter cleans up the whole house in ten minutes. It can't do anything about the moment after, when you're on the sofa at midnight with the urge and nothing to point it at.

That moment is where the change happens. Urge surfing is a three-minute practice for exactly then: notice where the urge sits in your body, and stay with it while it eases. Sherpa, the app we're building, is made for those moments. It's a few weeks out.

While you're changing the router, change one more thing: phones charge in the kitchen tonight, yours included.