Hurricane Electric Free DNS
- Free allowance
- Free hosted forward and reverse DNS with multiple domains per account, in open beta, for IPv6 certification or tunnelbroker account holders, colocation customers and transit customers
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, phone required
- Binding limit
- write-gatedthe service is in open beta and is limited to IPv6 certification or tunnelbroker account holders, colocation customers and transit customers; no record count and no query cap is published
- Evidence
- documented19 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-03checked 2026-11-02 (live); stale on 2026-12-03
| Free tier | free hosted forward and reverse DNS with multiple domains per account, in open beta, for IPv6 certification or tunnelbroker account holders, colocation customers and transit customers unit objects; metered on none |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits |
|
| Identity | email one free registration shared by ipv6.he.net, tunnelbroker.net and dns.he.net, whose form requires an account name, a password, an e-mail address that receives the activation link, a first and last name, a country, a street address, a city, a state or region, a postal code, a phone number and a captcha code; the phone number is posted to the server for a check as it is filled and the form has no field for a code from the phone; whether a code is sent to the phone after the form is submitted is unverified: behind a sign-up; no card is asked; existing admin.he.net customers ask support for a password (https://tunnelbroker.net/register.php, https://ipv6.he.net/certification/register.php, https://dns.he.net/) |
| Egress | no query cap published |
| Per-object cap | no record count is published |
| Retention | zones persist while the account is active |
| Interface | unknown no record-management API is documented on dns.he.net or dns.he.net/docs.html; the programmatic path is the dyndns-compatible endpoint https://dyn.dns.he.net/nic/update?hostname=<record>&password=<key>&myip=<address> (GET, POST, or HTTP basic auth with the record name as the user), one request for IPv4 and one for IPv6, and txt= in place of myip= for a TXT record first created in the panel; the dynamic service is included free with a dns.he.net account; the update URL changes the address of an A or AAAA record, or the value of a TXT record, that already exists, and its interface term would be dyndns, which the vocabulary lacks, so interface carries unknown |
| Tooling | the web panel for zone and record management; the dyndns URL for dynamic A, AAAA and TXT records; no SDK and no documented REST API |
| Composes with | reverse DNS and secondary zones, which the other free providers in this set do not do as readily |
| Reliability | the registration form is withheld from some source networks, which receive 'Your IP address is not permitted to register at this time (This network is restricted)' in its place |
| Notes | An unpublished cap is a discretionary throttle. A design that depends on it has no ceiling to plan against, which is worse than a small published one. The interface field is 'unknown' rather than 'rest' because the only programmatic path is a key-based dyndns URL, which cannot create a zone or enumerate records. |
| Evidence note | documented the service page was read and states the eligibility gate and the dyndns syntax. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 19
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | probe: https://dns.he.net/ | 200, 16,458 bytes, the service page and login portal; the service answers and requires an account |
| 2026-10-22 | dns.he.net/ | 'The Open Beta has been expanded and now includes our IPv6 certification or tunnelbroker account holders, Colocation customers and those with Transit services'; 'Multiple domains per account.'; the dyndns update syntax with separate ipv4 and ipv6 values and a txt= variant for Let's Encrypt DNS-01, where the dynamic record must be created in the panel first |
| 2026-10-30 | tunnelbroker.net/register.php | the shared Hurricane Electric registration form marks the phone number as required, beside the account name, e-mail, names, country and full postal address |
| 2026-10-30 | ipv6.he.net/certification/register.php | the registration page withholds the form from some source networks |
| 2026-10-30 | dns.he.net/docs.html | the dynamic-update service is included free with a dns.he.net account |
| 2026-10-30 | tunnelbroker.net/register.php | the account is activated by an e-mail link; the same registration covers ipv6.he.net, tunnelbroker.net and dns.he.net |
| 2026-10-30 | dns.he.net/ | the eligible account is a free registration, not a paid relationship |
| 2026-10-30 | dns.he.net/docs.html | the update path is dyn.dns.he.net/nic/update with hostname, password and myip parameters; the docs document no other API |
| 2026-10-30 | dns.he.net/ | the service remains an open beta for IPv6 certification or tunnelbroker account holders, colocation and transit customers |
| 2026-11-02 | dns.he.net/docs.html | the dynamic DNS service updates the IPv4 and IPv6 address of A and AAAA records of domains managed on dns.he.net, through a simple web request or any dyndns compatible client |
| 2026-11-02 | tunnelbroker.net/register.php | the registration form carries a captcha code input beside the phone number input |
| 2026-11-02 | dns.he.net/docs.html | the zone to be updated dynamically is created before the dynamic DNS service is used |
| 2026-11-02 | dns.he.net/ | a dynamic TXT record cannot be created or deleted through the update URL |
| 2026-11-02 | tunnelbroker.net/register.php | the registration form's phone number is a plain text input marked needed |
| 2026-11-02 | tunnelbroker.net/register.php | the registration form posts each field marked needed to the server for a check as it is filled and shows the error text the server returns |
| 2026-11-02 | ipv6.he.net/certification/register.php | the registration form that dns.he.net links to carries the same captcha code input |
| 2026-11-02 | forums.he.net/index.php?action=printpage;topic=4094.0 | third party: a user on the vendor's forum reports that registration refused an outlook.com address (April 2021) |
| 2026-11-02 | www.ivu4e.cn/blog/service/2021-05-27/672.html | third party: a user reports that registration answered Invalid registration data until the postal code and the phone number had an accepted format (May 2021) |
| 2026-11-02 | tunnelbroker.net/register.php | the registration form's only stated activation step is an e-mail sent after registration |
Unknown values 1
- interface: the access interface was not established
Corrections
- 2026-10-22 Hurricane Electric's free DNS was recorded with `interface: rest` beside a detail field saying it has no REST API