This article spotlights alternative tools to dig.

The software featured here is free and open source. All tools provide a command-line interface (CLI). dog features in our Top 100 CLI apps.
| Alternatives to dig | |
|---|---|
| dog | DNS client with colorful output, DNS-over-TLS and DNS-over-HTTPS support |
| doggo | Command-line DNS client for humans |
| drill | Perform DNS lookups and display answers returned from the name server(s) |
| dnslookup | Supports plain DNS, DoH, DoT, DoQ, and DNSCrypt |
| dug | Global DNS propagation checker |
| q | Support for UDP, TCP, DoT, DoH, DoQ and ODoH |
Have we missed any open source alternatives to dig? Please let us know!
All the CLI tools in this series.
| Alternatives to CLI tools |
|---|
| age // awk // bc // cal // cat // cd // chmod // cksum // cloc // cmp // compress // cp // cron // curl // cut // date // dd // df // diff // dig // du // fdisk // file // find // free // ftp // grep // gzip // hexdump // history // jq // kill // less // locate // ls // lsof // make // man // more // mv / ping // ps // psql // rename // rm // sed // split // ssh // stow // strings // sudo // sysctl // tail // talk // tar // telnet // time // top // touch // traceroute // tree // uname // uniq // uptime // vi // watch // Wget // who // whois // xargs |
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Don’t forget that there are DNS servers that ship DNS utilities. I’m thinking of knot which gives khost and kdig. There’s also Unbound which gives unbound-host.
We’re really considering standalone utilities in this series, but we’ll take a look at these. Great tip.
While not as good as dog or drill, there’s dnslookup.
Thanks Pedro. We’ve added an entry for dnslookup.
What about doggo? It’s got over 2k GitHub stars.
Thanks for your suggestion Frankie.
doggo has now been added.