Question 1

Wait — Casper uses Pi-hole?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Pi-hole is the ad-blocking engine inside Casper's broader privacy stack. Pi-hole is the gold standard for DNS-level ad blocking — built by an open-source team, battle-tested over 10+ years, with curated blocklists that are second to none. We didn't see a reason to reinvent that part of the wheel. So Casper runs Pi-hole as our ad-blocking layer and adds the things Pi-hole alone doesn't ship: encrypted VPN tunnel, ML-based zero-day phishing detection, native mobile apps with per-app controls, and mobile-network coverage away from home.

Question 2

So why would I pay for Casper if Pi-hole is free?

Accepted Answer

The honest answer: if you're a technical user with a home network, comfortable maintaining a small Linux server, primarily protecting devices that stay on your home WiFi, and you want maximum control with zero recurring cost — Pi-hole alone is excellent. Many of us on the Casper team run Pi-hole at home in addition to working on Casper. We'd recommend Pi-hole to those users without hesitation. Casper is for everyone else — people who don't want to self-host, who need mobile coverage on cellular, who want hostile-WiFi encryption when traveling, who want zero-day phishing detection beyond what blocklists alone provide, or who just want it to work without a Raspberry Pi running in their closet.

Question 3

Does Casper give Pi-hole credit / contribute back?

Accepted Answer

Pi-hole is GPL-licensed open-source software; the license requires us to credit the project and we're explicit about that — Pi-hole is named on this page, in our changelog, and in our support docs. Beyond required attribution, we contribute to upstream maintenance and have sponsored Pi-hole project work directly. The open-source-DNS-filtering ecosystem is small and Casper's commercial viability is in part dependent on Pi-hole's continued health, so contributing back is good practice and good policy.

Question 4

Can I run both — Pi-hole at home and Casper on mobile?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and this is a common setup among technical users. Pi-hole at the router gives whole-home filtering for everything on your home network. Casper on your phone gives the on-the-go encryption + threat detection + mobile-network coverage that Pi-hole alone doesn't reach. When your phone is on home WiFi, it gets Pi-hole's filtering at the router level; when it's on cellular, Casper takes over. They don't conflict; they layer.

Question 5

Is Casper just a Pi-hole wrapper, then?

Accepted Answer

Not quite. Pi-hole is a meaningful part of the stack (the ad-blocking layer) but Casper's broader product has substantial work beyond that: the WireGuard VPN tunnel infrastructure, the ML threat-detection classifier (~40-feature scoring model, separate from Pi-hole's blocklist approach), native iOS/macOS/Android apps with per-app routing controls, the resolver infrastructure that scales to the customer base, the threat-intel pipeline. Pi-hole inside Casper handles ad blocking specifically; everything else is the surrounding stack we built.

Question 6

Can I migrate from Pi-hole to Casper?

Accepted Answer

Yes. You can stop running Pi-hole locally and use Casper as a managed replacement that includes Pi-hole's filtering plus the extras. Or — more commonly — you can keep Pi-hole at home for whole-network filtering and add Casper for mobile and on-the-road coverage. Custom blocklists or whitelist entries you have in your local Pi-hole can be exported and imported into Casper's allowlist/blocklist management in our app.

Question 7

What if I want Pi-hole's open-source ethos AND Casper's convenience?

Accepted Answer

That's a fair tension. The honest position: Casper's filtering layer (Pi-hole) is fully open-source and you can inspect the same code we use. The surrounding stack — apps, ML model, VPN infrastructure — is proprietary. If full open-source-only is a hard requirement for you, Pi-hole alone (or alternatives like AdGuard Home or Blocky, both open-source) is the right answer. If you want most of the open-source-ethos signal (we use and credit open-source, contribute back) with the convenience of a managed service, Casper fits.

Question 8

What about the threat-intel side — does Casper use Pi-hole for that too?

Accepted Answer

Pi-hole's role is the ad/tracker-blocklist filtering layer. The threat-detection side (zero-day phishing, malware command-and-control, scam-site identification) is Casper's own ML classifier — a separate system that runs on top of Pi-hole's filtering. The two systems coexist: Pi-hole catches the known-bad-by-list-membership, the ML layer catches the never-seen-before destinations that haven't been added to any blocklist yet.

Feature	Casper's Cloak	Pi-hole (self-host)
Pi-hole ad-blocking engine
Casper uses Pi-hole as its ad-blocking layer. You're getting the same engine either way — the question is whether you self-host it or have us run it.
Self-host on your own hardware
Free / no recurring cost
Network-wide coverage (all home devices, no per-device setup)
Pi-hole at the router level filters every device on the home network with one config. Casper's per-device VPN model covers each device individually.
Mobile coverage (on cellular, away from home)
Pi-hole only covers devices on your home network. Mobile devices on cellular need a tunnel back to your home Pi-hole (extra setup) or a managed service like Casper.
Encrypted VPN tunnel (hostile WiFi protection)
AI threat detection (ML-based zero-day phishing)
Pi-hole filters via blocklists (reactive). Casper adds an ML classifier on top of Pi-hole's filtering — scores every DNS query against ~40 features for zero-day phishing detection. Median time-to-block: <90s.
Tracker blocking via curated blocklists
Both use community blocklists (EasyPrivacy, EasyList, OISD, others). Same source data.
Native mobile apps (iOS, Mac, Android)
No maintenance / no updates to manage
Pi-hole requires periodic updates, blocklist maintenance, and occasional troubleshooting when the Pi or container has issues. Casper handles this.
Per-app override / per-device controls
Full transparency / open-source codebase
Pi-hole is fully open-source and inspectable. Casper's filter layer uses Pi-hole (the same open code), but our broader managed service (apps, VPN infrastructure, ML model) is proprietary.
Works on $35 hardware

Casper's Cloak vs Pi-hole — and why we use Pi-hole inside Casper

A note about Pi-hole

Feature-by-feature: self-host vs managed

Self-host or managed? Honest decision criteria

…if you want managed Pi-hole + the extras

…if you want maximum control + zero recurring cost

Or run both — many of our users do

Casper vs Pi-hole FAQs

Managed Pi-hole + the layers Pi-hole alone doesn't ship.