Duck DNS – free dynamic DNS hosted on AWS

For anyone hosting their domain on Google Domains, there&#x27;s a neat API endpoint they&#x27;re offering for updating the DNS with a simple CURL. I&#x27;ve been using this for years now for a public Raspberry PI behind a home router that changes IPs every other day.<p><pre><code> curl -s -k --user &quot;username:password&quot; &quot;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;domains.google.com&#x2F;nic&#x2F;update?hostname=yourdomain.com&quot; </code></pre> There&#x27;s more parameters (and you can specify an IP, the above request only takes the caller&#x27;s IP).<p>Here are the docs: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;domains&#x2F;answer&#x2F;6147083?hl=en#zippy=%2Cuse-the-api-to-update-your-dynamic-dns-record" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;domains&#x2F;answer&#x2F;6147083?hl=en#zipp...</a>

I was quite surprised to learn this has nothing to do with DDG. Interesting how DDG seem to have taken the meaning of &quot;duck&quot; in (my) mind.

I have been using Cloudflare Tunnel for several months now to get around dynamic DNS requirements and port forwarding. It creates a secure tunnel between your server and their edge, and supports name-based service config (domain X points to localhost Y.) Downside is they only supports HTTP(s).<p>There is a free tier, although you need to provide them a full domain (not a subdomain) for it to work, and then each site&#x2F;tunnel will create a subdomain. It does work with free domains like .tk if you really want to go that route.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.cloudflare.com&#x2F;cloudflare-one&#x2F;connections&#x2F;connect-apps&#x2F;create-tunnel&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developers.cloudflare.com&#x2F;cloudflare-one&#x2F;connections...</a><p>There are also open-source alternatives using VPNs like Wireguard + nginx, but typically these solutions require you to run a publicly-accessible server already to host the proxy.

I&#x27;m currently on the search for a service to facilitate DDNS. Duck DNS seems popular, but I&#x27;m skeptical of things that are simply offered for free. What assurance do we have that Duck DNS is secure, or that it will not just disappear one day? The alternative that seems better to me is Namecheap with their API.

This service is infamous to be abused by spammer.

I love DuckDNS but we seriously need a more automated and integrated solution to this kind of thing. It&#x27;s the missing piece that holds self hosted back.<p>Something that:<p>* Lets you set up a domain with a single command<p>* Handles security for you. There shouldn&#x27;t be any manual admin needed to make a secure context site<p>* Works offline on the LAN if possible, and on Yggdrasil meshes.<p>I should be able to buy a device, plug it in, then scan the QR code on it&#x27;s display and be instantly taken to its website, no setup or account creation.<p>Unfortunately the web blocks all insecure requests from within secure contexts, and has no MDNS type functionality, so building a P2P solution with service workers or something is very hard&#x2F;impossible.<p>DuckDNS is really almost there. It&#x27;s the security that makes it hard, Let&#x27;s Encrypt is not exactly consumer grade.

I&#x27;ve been using noip.com for my projects, works quite well except that you have to confirm you still want your noip domain reserved every once in a while. I&#x27;ll try Duck Dns in my next project. Thanks for the share.

Be aware that Facebook Messenger blocks URLs with duckdns.org as unsafe links. The workaround is probably to find a cheap domain (not free, these are blocked as well) and attach it using CNAME.

This has nothing in common with DuckDuckGo?<p>DDG (unfortunately) is bigger and bigger with every year. They are developing desktop browser, email proxy etc.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if they&#x27;d lunched DDGDNS.

I’ve been using DuckDNS for a couple of years now but one day I discovered that Reddit login is no more so I’m locked out of my account, still works though!

In the past I&#x27;ve tried using the free tier of other DynDNS services but with 2 commercial routers I had it always boiled down to the firmware being crap and having some bug that wasn&#x27;t working with the free DynDNS. Many people recommend OpenWRT but you need to plan in advance which router you are going to buy to be compatibile with OpenWRT and I never planned so much in advance.

I have my own domain and run a Cloudflare Workers endpoint that updates a DNS record. It’s quite simple to run one’s own dDNS service.

I have used DuckDNS for nearly a decade. I highly, highly recommend them. It&#x27;s never not worked, super simple to set up on any server or always on system, and just is exactly what you want if you&#x27;re a hobbyist.<p>The only possible downside is that you end up with a url with &quot;duckdns.org&quot; in it, but I don&#x27;t mind

That&#x27;s great and all but since dyndns providers are hardcoded in my router this does not help.

I use Cloudflare, and there are also tons of APIs for update IP of DNS configuration.

I remember using it years ago to be able to point from the outside to a dynamic IP.<p>I used an old Android phone with their app to keep the IP updated. Like the old no-ip but without a PC.

Just curious, how does this project pays bills?

Happy user here. DuckDNS is one of those great things that does one thing simply and just works

For some time I kept getting SMS phishing mails with duckdns.org urls here in Japan.

Thank you. This was exactly what I&#x27;ve been looking for for a while now.

It is a great service - I have been using it for over 6 years now.

anyone knows why reddit doesnt like them using the reddit api?

I know it is significantly less easy and not free, but wouldn’t a dedicated $6 vps running a level 4 haproxy to get access be a lot safer? A script to ssh to the vps to update your backend ip is pretty trivial.

To me, this domain is synonymous with phishing.

to avoid reverse proxy, dynamic dns to access servers at home, maybe try tailscale to achieve same thing

one could just pay a small yearly fee to register their domain with google and get easy&#x2F;unlimited ddns.

Why AWS? How about we start building services that work anywhere instead of targeting a platform owned by a company that avoids paying billions in taxes?<p>Edit - I&#x27;ll leave my original comment up but I originally thought this was a service that users could deploy themselves into their own AWS accounts which it is not. It is, as it says, a DDNS service which is free. The fact that it&#x27;s hosted in AWS should be neither here nor there.

New to this. &quot;Practically&quot;, it seems the same as ngrok or tor onion services. Is that right?