Best Router device for openwrt 2025
I am completely new to OpenWRT/Pi-hole and need a recommendation for a device that could run OpenWRT/Pi-hole on it to replace my current router. I’m not even sure if I used the correct wording in this sentence, lol.
I have checked:
- https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/9xkk75w3
- https://openwrt.org/supported_devices
- https://reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/1e3t29i/whats_your_favourite_openwrt_router_which_would/
- https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/hardware/list
- https://openwrt.org/toh/recommended_routers
I need recommendations for devices to get some hands-on experience. And please explain the advantages of the devices you recommend a bit. There are indeed a lot of options listed on the internet, but not enough reasons are provided.
- I need Pi-hole because I want local DNS, but I guess OpenWRT could do the job as well.
- My current router does not support changing the DNS server.
- I need a simple substitute.
- I need good performance because it might need to connect to about 15 devices (though I have no idea what good performance means in terms of a router).
- So I guess a device with at least 256MB of RAM is needed.
- No limitation on price as long as it is not excessively expensive.
-
Users should consider multi-core, ARM-based (or x86_64/AMD64) devices for mid-range and higher applications. (From https://openwrt.org/toh/recommended/_routers)
Thanks for your help in advance!
Not sure if this is the same thing, but “Custom filtering rules” (for both white and blacklist entries) allow you to enter as many as you want in a single field, or to copy a bunch in at once without having to enter them one at a time. Does Pi-hole have something similar?
I used that for some custom rules and pi-hole has that too. It was just my first time and I was following a pi-hole tutorial so I had to edit all of the rules to the correct syntax. Was my own fault that took so long.
But pi-hole lets you add multiple custom blocklist URLs at a time or add them with commands. I couldn’t find anything like that in AdGuard Home. Had to add each blocklist one at a time.