HN Debrief

We’re making Bunny DNS free

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Bunny.net announced that Bunny DNS is no longer billed by query and now includes DNS hosting for up to 500 domains per account. This is authoritative DNS, meaning Bunny hosts your domain records, not a public resolver like 1.1.1.1. The product matters mainly because Bunny layers in features beyond registrar DNS, including health checks, geo routing, smart records, scripting, and API support. For people already using Bunny’s CDN or edge products, removing per-query billing makes DNS easier to adopt without worrying about query spikes. For everyone else, the practical offer is less “free DNS” than “DNS no longer adds metered cost inside a Bunny account.”

If you want scriptable DNS, API-driven cert automation, or an EU-based Cloudflare alternative, Bunny now clears one pricing objection. But do not read “free” loosely. Check whether the $1 account minimum, missing access controls, and migration quirks make it workable for your setup before moving zones.

Discussion mood

Mostly positive about Bunny as a fast, low-cost Cloudflare alternative, with clear irritation at the “free” framing because of the $1 monthly minimum and some concern that the product still lacks team-grade controls and polished migration tooling.

Key insights

  1. 01

    Missing access controls block team adoption

    The real ceiling is not DNS pricing but account governance. Bunny still lacks scoped API keys, and people also asked for RBAC and per-zone access, which makes it hard to recommend inside growing companies or compliance-sensitive environments. One user described building edge-function indirection just to avoid handing broad account keys to deployment scripts. That is a workaround, not a platform capability.

    If you are evaluating Bunny for anything beyond a solo project, treat IAM and secrets handling as a first-pass diligence item. Do not wire it into CI or delegate access across teams until scoped credentials and zone-level permissions exist in the product.

      Attribution:
    • joe-at-bunny #1
    • xyzzy_plugh #1
    • MadsRC #1
    • tpetry #1
  2. 02

    DNS migration tooling still needs hand checking

    Import and export reliability came up as a practical pain point. People reported missed records during auto-detect, silent drops from zone-file import, and incomplete export behavior. The explanation is partly structural, because DNS records cannot be cleanly enumerated from the outside unless AXFR zone transfer is available, which most mainstream providers will not expose for migration. That means even a competent importer will still miss things, and Bunny users have seen bugs on top of that baseline difficulty.

    Plan a manual validation pass for every zone migration. Keep a canonical BIND zone file outside the provider, compare records after import, and do not assume provider export is a complete backup.

      Attribution:
    • sc6782682 #1
    • dzonga #1
    • meeb #1
    • Chu4eeno #1
  3. 03

    Spend control depends on product, not account

    Bunny’s prepaid model reassured some people because it limits runaway costs better than alert-only billing. But the protection is uneven. Commenters said the CDN has explicit bandwidth caps and shutdown controls, while other products can keep running until the shared account balance is exhausted. That leaves a gap between “you probably will not be bankrupted” and “you can set hard per-service cost ceilings.”

    If you are using Bunny for more than CDN, map out worst-case spend by product before launch. Prepay helps, but it is not the same as hard limits on every service, so bot traffic or misconfiguration still deserves its own controls.

      Attribution:
    • Diti #1 #2
    • kassner #1
    • KomoD #1
  4. 04

    Paid DNS is really about dynamic traffic steering

    Several comments clarified why anyone pays for DNS at all when registrars often bundle it free. The value is not serving static A records. It is GeoDNS, health-based failover, low-TTL routing, APIs, and automation. That framing makes Bunny’s change more legible. It is not competing with your registrar’s barebones DNS so much as lowering the price of programmable traffic steering.

    If you only need stable records, free registrar DNS is still good enough for many cases. The reason to switch is automation, routing logic, or operational control, not the hope that DNS hosting alone creates material value.

      Attribution:
    • KingOfCoders #1
    • spiderfarmer #1
    • lokar #1
    • nabeards #1
  5. 05

    Users like the speed and simple deployment path

    The strongest product praise was operational rather than ideological. People said Bunny’s site and services feel fast, one user cited very low-cost global API hosting, another shared a one-command deployment tool for static sites, and Bluesky reported positive experience using Bunny as a CDN. That gives the launch more weight than a pricing stunt alone. There are live workloads on it, and users keep emphasizing responsiveness and low friction.

    If you are considering Bunny, test it with a concrete workload instead of treating it as a symbolic Cloudflare alternative. Static sites, CDN-backed apps, and API delivery look like the easiest places to validate whether its cost and performance story holds for you.

      Attribution:
    • 9294 #1
    • bcye #1
    • jeremyjh #1
    • jcalabro #1

Against the grain

  1. 01

    For DNS-only users, nothing actually became free

    For people who want only DNS and none of Bunny’s other products, the $1 monthly account minimum makes this functionally paid DNS. That changes the launch from a real Cloudflare-style free offer into a packaging change. A few readers said they had ruled Bunny out before for exactly this reason and would keep ruling it out now.

    If your comparison set is Cloudflare DNS, registrar DNS, or another zero-dollar DNS-only option, Bunny’s announcement should not change your shortlist much. It becomes interesting only when you also value Bunny’s broader platform or its advanced DNS features.

      Attribution:
    • dwedge #1 #2
    • 1dom #1
    • johnathan101 #1
  2. 02

    No free CDN still limits the funnel

    Some readers argued that removing DNS fees misses the bigger adoption lever. Cloudflare wins hobbyists and small projects with a zero-cost CDN and static hosting path, not with DNS alone. Bunny may now be easier to try for DNS, but without a comparable on-ramp for content delivery it still loses many small projects before they ever care about advanced routing.

    If Bunny wants to pull more early-stage users off Cloudflare, watch its CDN pricing and free-tier strategy more than DNS. DNS can reduce friction, but CDN economics still decide where many static sites and side projects start.

      Attribution:
    • sparkling #1
    • ahmednazir #1
    • elashri #1
    • mmarian #1
  3. 03

    Fast authoritative DNS may not move the needle

    A few comments questioned how much real-world benefit faster authoritative DNS provides. Resolver caches already absorb most traffic for moderately used domains, and Cloudflare likely still wins average performance in many places. That does not make Bunny DNS bad. It just means the speed story is weaker than the product page implies unless you specifically need advanced routing or uncached lookups matter to you.

    Do not assume authoritative DNS latency alone will produce visible application gains. Benchmark actual resolver behavior, cache hit patterns, and end-user page loads before making DNS speed part of a migration business case.

      Attribution:
    • farfatched #1
    • HDBaseT #1
    • xinayder #1

In plain english

1.1.1.1 ↩
Cloudflare’s public Domain Name System resolver service that users can query to translate domain names into network addresses.
API ↩
Application Programming Interface, a way for software to call another service programmatically.
authoritative DNS ↩
A DNS service that stores and serves the official records for a domain, such as where its website or mail server lives.
AXFR ↩
A full DNS zone transfer protocol used to copy all records for a domain from one authoritative DNS server to another.
CDN ↩
Content Delivery Network, a distributed system of servers that caches and serves content closer to users.
GeoDNS ↩
A DNS feature that returns different answers based on the geographic location of the user making the request.
public resolver ↩
A DNS service like 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 that looks up domain names for users and applications.
RBAC ↩
Role-Based Access Control, a system for giving different users different permissions inside a product.
TTL ↩
Time to live, a setting that tells resolvers how long they may cache a DNS answer before asking again.

Reference links

Bunny documentation and tooling

Billing and support references

Cloud and DNS comparisons

Provider search and bargain hosting

Privacy Pass and bot verification