Is Defenras worth it? Sometimes no.
We make this product, so treat the praise with suspicion and the criticism as the useful part. Here is what the free version covers, what paying actually adds, and the three situations where the honest answer is that you should not buy it.
What you get without paying anything
Malware and phishing blocking, on every browser and every app on the device, with no time limit and no card. Around 238,000 known-bad domains, refreshed hourly from eight independent threat feeds.
That is not a teaser. It is the whole security layer, and for a meaningful number of households it is the only part that matters. If your concern is that your child clicks a fake login page or a malware link, the free version handles it and you can stop reading.
What paying adds
- Content categories — adult, gambling, and vaping/nicotine/cannabis sites. The free tier does not block these.
- Tamper resistance — a parent PIN on settings, so the filter cannot be switched off by the person it applies to.
- App Blocker (Android) — block specific installed apps by name.
- Screen time — daily usage per app.
- Guardian alerts — an email if the app is removed or stops reporting in.
- Panic button — your child sends you their location with one tap.
$6.99 a month or $34.99 a year in Canadian dollars. The annual works out under $3 a month.
Start with the free tier
Malware and phishing blocking, unlimited, no card. If that is all you need, stop there — we would rather you did.
Get Defenras free →Three reasons not to buy it
1. You already have a good router, and the device never leaves the house
If the device in question is a family iPad that lives in the living room and never touches mobile data, a router-level filter or a free DNS service genuinely covers you. Eero, Nest Wifi and ASUS all ship parental filtering, and NextDNS or Cloudflare's 1.1.1.3 will do domain filtering for nothing.
Buying an app for that device is paying for a problem you do not have.
The moment that changes is when the device leaves your network. A router protects a network, not a child — and the second a phone switches to mobile data, a friend's Wi-Fi or a hotspot, router filtering is simply not there. For a teenager with a phone, that is most of their usage. The full comparison is here, and we say the same thing in it.
2. You need app blocking and everyone is on iPhone
The App Blocker and the Purchase PIN Gate are Android only. They rely on Android's Accessibility API, and iOS has no equivalent that a third-party app is permitted to use.
On iPhone, Defenras filters content across every browser and app, and that part works well. But if what you actually want is to stop your child opening TikTok at 2am, Apple's own Screen Time does app-level limits on iOS and Defenras does not. Use Screen Time for that, and Defenras for filtering, or use Screen Time alone.
We would rather tell you now than have you find out after paying.
3. You only want malware protection
Then use the free tier. It is not limited by time, device count or nagging, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to move you onto a plan.
Where paying does make sense
- Your child has their own phone with a data plan. This is the case a router simply cannot cover. On Android, Defenras runs as an app with a parent PIN and a Guardian Alert if it is removed — something a deletable DNS profile cannot match. On iPhone, know that we filter through a DNS configuration profile too, because Apple allows no other route, so it can be removed from Settings as easily as any other and our alert only fires if the app itself goes quiet.
- You want it to hold when someone tries to switch it off. Tamper resistance is the actual difference between a filter and a suggestion.
- You do not want to configure anything. NextDNS is excellent and costs almost nothing, but it expects you to pick blocklists and maintain them. If that sentence sounded like a chore, that is a real cost.
- You want the filtering without the surveillance. We do not collect your child's browsing history — not encrypted, not anonymised. The check happens on the device and no record is created. Most competitors in this category sell you a dashboard of everything your child looked at.
How to decide in one question
Does the device leave your home network, and would your child switch the filter off if they could?
Two nos — use your router, or a free DNS service, and keep your money. One or two yeses — a device-level app with tamper resistance is the category you need, and at that point compare us properly against the alternatives rather than taking our word for it.
Frequently asked questions
Is the free version of Defenras actually free?
Yes, with no time limit and no card. It blocks malware and phishing domains across every browser and app. Content categories like adult and gambling, plus the PIN, app blocker and screen time, are the paid features.
Is Defenras better than NextDNS?
Not universally. NextDNS is cheaper and excellent at DNS filtering if you are comfortable configuring blocklists, and on a home network it is hard to beat. Defenras is an app rather than a DNS profile, so it adds tamper resistance, an alert if it is removed, app blocking on Android and a panic button. If your child would delete a DNS profile, that difference is the whole point; if they would not, NextDNS may be the better buy.
Does Defenras work on iPhone?
Content filtering does, across every browser and app. The App Blocker and Purchase PIN Gate do not — they depend on Android's Accessibility API, which iOS has no equivalent of. For app-level limits on iPhone, Apple's Screen Time is the tool.
Is a router filter enough instead of paying for an app?
It is, if the device never leaves your home Wi-Fi. A router protects a network, not a device — once a phone is on mobile data or another network, router filtering does not apply at all. For a teenager with a phone, that covers most of their usage.
Can my child uninstall Defenras?
On Android, settings sit behind a parent PIN and you get a Guardian Alert if the app is removed or goes quiet. On iPhone, filtering runs through a DNS configuration profile that can be deleted in Settings — and because our alert triggers on the app going silent, removing only the profile would not notify you. No parental control app is uninstall-proof on a device someone physically holds, but the gap is meaningfully larger on iOS and you should know that before buying.
Defenras blocks all of this — without collecting your child's data.
One app, every device, every browser. Adult content, gambling, vaping, scams, malware, social media — all blocked. PIN-locked. Free version available, no credit card.