Hurricane Electric Free DNS: pricing, free tier and alternatives (2026)

§1

Overview

Hurricane Electric, a large internet backbone and colocation provider, runs a free DNS hosting portal at dns.he.net. You can host multiple domains per account, manage forward and reverse zones, and serve queries over both IPv4 and IPv6 from geographically diverse servers.

Supported records include A, AAAA, ALIAS, CNAME, CAA, MX, NS, TXT, SRV, SSHFP, NAPTR, LOC and PTR. Reverse zones have a 'smart mode' and several delegation formats (RFC 2317, RFC 4183 and others), which is why network operators use it for IPv6 reverse DNS. It can also act as a slave (secondary) for zones hosted elsewhere.

Dynamic DNS works with ddclient and simple HTTP calls, including dynamic TXT records for Let's Encrypt DNS-01 validation. The service is free with no SLA, the portal still calls itself an open beta, and DNSSEC signing is not listed as a feature.

Record changes may take a few minutes to propagate as TTLs expire, so wait before requesting a DNS-01 certificate after updating a dynamic TXT record.

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Pricing and plans

Free tier · no card

Free DNS hosting for multiple domains per account, forward and reverse zones, dynamic DNS and slave zones; no paid tier or SLA.

Plan	Price	What you get
Free DNS	$0	Multiple domains, forward and reverse zones, dynamic DNS, slave support

The service is free. The portal describes itself as an open beta; new users can register a free account. No SLA, query limits or zone limits were published on the page read. DNSSEC support is not listed among its features.

Source: dns.he.net/ · prices as published, excluding tax.

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What it does

Dual-stack DNS: Queries answered over both IPv4 and native IPv6.
Reverse DNS: Smart-mode IPv4 and IPv6 reverse zones with Standard, RFC 4183, RFC 2317 and DeGroot formats.
Record types: Includes ALIAS, CAA, SSHFP, NAPTR, LOC and SPF records.
Dynamic DNS: ddclient-compatible updates for A/AAAA and dynamic TXT records for DNS-01 challenges.
Slave zones: Act as a secondary for zones mastered elsewhere.
Delegation checks: Sanity checks for forward and reverse zone delegation.

§4

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

Completely free, run by an established network operator.
Strong IPv6 and reverse DNS support.
Secondary (slave) zone support for redundancy with another provider.
Dynamic TXT records for certificate automation.

Limitations

No SLA and no paid support option.
DNSSEC is not listed among its features.
No traffic steering, geo routing or failover.
The portal still describes the service as an open beta.

§5

Who it suits

Good for

Home labs and hobby projects
Network operators managing IPv6 reverse DNS
A free secondary DNS alongside another provider

Look elsewhere if

Businesses needing an SLA or DNSSEC
Apps needing health-checked failover

§6

Alternatives to Hurricane Electric Free DNS

Tool	From	Free option
Amazon CloudFront CDN with bundled WAF and DNS plans	$15/mo	Free tier
Bunny CDN Pay-as-you-go CDN with DNS and WAF	Usage-based	Paid
Cloudflare CDN, DNS, WAF and DDoS protection	$20/mo	Free tier
ClouDNS Managed DNS with free and low-cost plans	$2.95/mo	Free tier
deSEC Free DNSSEC-signed DNS hosting	—	Free tier
DNSimple DNS hosting and domain management	$0.5/mo	Paid

All cdn, dns and edge security →

§7

Questions

Is Hurricane Electric DNS free?

Yes. dns.he.net is a free DNS hosting service.

Does Hurricane Electric DNS support dynamic DNS?

Yes, including dynamic TXT records for Let's Encrypt DNS-01 validation.

Can Hurricane Electric act as secondary DNS?

Yes. The service supports slave zones.

Sources read for this page

https://dns.he.net/