Providers with documented Smart TV setup guides - Samsung, LG, Android TV and more.
Short answer: TrickByte is our top-rated Smart TV Smart DNS as of 2026-11-09 (4.5/10), from $2.08/mo, 14-day free trial without a card.
providers on this page: 19 · active today (excl. watch list): 15 · standalone DNS specialists: 12 · VPN-bundled Smart DNS: 6
quick picks
Cheap plans and a 14-day no-card trial, but the site is semi-dormant and still lists dead services, and refunds are purely discretionary - use the full two weeks on your exact services and do not pay beyond the trial until they work.
400+ claimed services, a bundled VPN and a 14-day no-card trial, while independent April 2026 tests found Netflix US broken although it is still listed - spend the trial window on your exact services before any annual or lifetime payment.
Technically the strongest DNS platform here (DoH/DoT/DoQ, 1009 documented services, 14-day no-card trial), but the operator calls unblocking best-effort and excludes it from refunds - buy it for per-service country rules, not if you only want one TV unblocked.
The category price floor at $2.99/mo, with a 7-day no-card trial and a 30-day money-back - the cheap entry if you watch on TV or mobile; check the Roku gap and the small operator before committing to a year.
An unmaintained Ziff Davis legacy that still works and takes PayPal and crypto - buy it as a StrongVPN bundle extra with the 30-day money-back, not as a standalone primary service.
Cheap flat pricing with DoH/DoT, custom overrides and three locations, run by a named individual with no published company and no refunds - the 3-day trial is your only safety net, so test the same evening you start it.
MediaStreamer is only worth it together with an ExpressVPN subscription: heavily audited operator and excellent setup guides, but US/UK only and no public product page - start the 30-day money-back and test your services in week one.
Verifiable Danish operator (Unlocator ApS, CVR 44498383) with 197 listed services, a 7-day no-card trial and a 30-day money-back - the strongest documented package in this comparison, even though the DNS-only price only shows at checkout. Start the trial, test Netflix and BBC iPlayer on your own TV, then take the annual plan.
Per the operator's own support pages CyberGhost SmartDNS no longer unblocks streaming - only take it if you want plain DNS alongside a cheap long-term VPN, and use the 45-day money-back to confirm it does what you need.
A cheap control-panel add-on from a court-proven no-logs VPN with a 30-day money-back - take it when you already want PIA, not as a Smart DNS pick, because the unblocking scope is undocumented.
A long-running Icelandic operator with honest trial terms (7 days without a card, 30-day money-back), but only 55 services and a logging claim an independent review disputes - start the trial with your own catalog before paying.
A long-running cheap bundle, but US unblocking has been broken for long stretches since 2024 and the trial is only 3 days - start the trial, test US services first and hold off the lifetime plan until they work for you.
Only buy the hardware if the household is non-technical: the no-DNS-editing app and per-service country switching are genuinely easy, but refund terms differ per product and independent testing is thin - start with the 7-day trial.
A well-audited bundle extra with a 30-day money-back, but Netflix is Originals-only, UK services are undocumented and unblocking is explicitly not guaranteed - buy it for the VPN and treat the Smart DNS as a bonus.
Sells Smart DNS with a 3-day trial, 30-day money-back and Bitcoin, but discloses no legal entity and re-registered its domain in 2024 - test hard inside the three days and stay on a monthly plan while the operator is unverified.
Abandoned for years, no Netflix, a frozen service list and three different entity names - only the 14-day e-mail trial makes it testable; treat it as a cheap experiment, not a long-term plan.
340+ listed services and a no-logs audit, but Netflix US is missing from the operator's own grid, prices doubled since 2024 and the apps are stale - test your services in the 3-day trial and prefer the 2-year tier for value.
A verifiable Toronto company with flat $5/mo, but the VPN is discontinued, there is no trial and the domain expires soon - wait for the renewal or buy month to month and use the 7-day refund window.
An add-on at best: the Bahamas owner cancelled lifetime deals in 2025 and the Smart DNS is a marketing line without a service list - take it with the 30-day money-back, never on a lifetime promise.
Smart TV is where Smart DNS earns its existence: no apps, no tunnels, no certificates - two DNS entries and every TV app routes through the provider. But each TV OS hides the setting in a different place, and two device classes actively fight the setup. The map:
100% of the providers on this page document Smart TV setups explicitly, and 100% document router-level DNS - the table's TV and router columns are the live check. A provider without TV documentation is not necessarily broken on TVs, but it is telling you where its support hours went.
TV platforms fail differently from laptops, and diagnosing without the map wastes evenings:
And the meta-fix that prevents the whole class of "it stopped working" weeks later: dynamic DNS. Home IPs change (router reboots, ISP maintenance), the provider's IP registration goes stale, and everything breaks at once. 32% of providers document an update URL - the [Unlocator dynamic-DNS guide][4] is the pattern - and 10 minutes of setup makes the TV setup permanently self-healing.
The router path configures every device in the house at once, which is why the veterans document it as the default[2]. The two traps that router setups specifically punish:
The clean middle path many households converge on: device-level DNS on the primary TV (precise, reversible), router-level only for the Chromecast/Roku corner cases.
| Provider | Smart TV | Router | DDNS | DoH/DoT | Netflix | BBC iPlayer | Trial | Annual | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TrickByte | TV | router | - | - | claimed | claimed | 14 days, no card | $39.96/yr | - |
| Smart DNS Proxy | TV | router | DDNS | - | claimed | claimed | 14 days, no card | $55.36/yr | - |
| ControlD | TV | router | DDNS | DoH/DoT | claimed | claimed | 14 days, no card | - | - |
| KeepSolid SmartDNS | TV | router | - | - | claimed | claimed | 7 days, no card | $29.99/yr | - |
| StrongDNS | TV | router | - | - | - | - | 7 days | $50.04/yr | - |
| dns4me | TV | router | DDNS | DoH/DoT | - | - | 3 days, no card | $35.88/yr | - |
| ExpressVPN MediaStreamer | TV | router | DDNS | - | claimed | claimed | - | $74.85/yr | - |
| Unlocator | TV | router | DDNS | - | claimed | claimed | 7 days, no card | - | - |
| CyberGhost Smart DNS | TV | router | - | - | no | no | - | - | - |
| PIA Smart DNS | TV | router | - | - | - | - | - | $47.88/yr | - |
| playmoTV | TV | router | - | - | claimed | claimed | 7 days, no card | $79.95/yr | - |
| Getflix | TV | router | DDNS | - | claimed | claimed | 3 days, no card | $44.98/yr | - |
| StreamLocator | TV | router | - | - | claimed | claimed | 7 days, no card | $49.99/yr | - |
| NordVPN SmartDNS | TV | router | - | - | partial | - | - | $65.88/yr | - |
| SmartyDNS | TV | router | - | - | claimed | claimed | 3 days, no card | $49.95/yr | watch |
| SimpleTelly | TV | router | - | - | no | claimed | 14 days, no card | - | watch |
| CactusVPN | TV | router | - | - | no | claimed | 3 days, no card | $70/yr | - |
| DNSFlex | TV | router | - | - | claimed | claimed | - | - | watch |
| VPNSecure | TV | router | - | - | - | - | - | $59.88/yr | watch |
Live values from our database - details and caveats in each review. "-" = not documented by the operator.
The TV column is where budget providers quietly differ from veterans: maintaining per-OS setup guides for six TV platforms is real support work, and its absence shows up as "contact us for TV setup" - which is where a cheap annual loses its shine. The comparison that matters for TV households:
The whole page compressed, for the household that wants it working tonight:
That is the entire maintenance story. When something breaks weeks later, the router guide's troubleshooting section reads like this list in reverse - and the provider's KB is the third place to look, after IP re-registration and the changes feed.
One level deeper than the map above - the per-OS facts that decide whether your evening setup takes 10 minutes or 2 hours:
The pattern behind the list: TVs with editable DNS make Smart DNS a two-minute job; TVs without it push you one level up to the router - where the router guide documents every major firmware's path.
Real households mix TV OSes, and the setups that survive are the ones designed for the mixture rather than the single device:
Every pattern works; what kills setups is half-migration - DNS from different providers mixed across devices, or a device left pointing at a dead provider. The router guide's cleanup checklist handles the aftermath.
A seasonal reality worth expecting rather than fearing: TV platforms push firmware updates that reset network settings, swap DNS handling, or update apps with new endpoints. The failure pattern is distinctive (everything worked, then an overnight update), and the fixes are the same three:
Providers that maintain per-OS KB pages (100% of this page's population document TV setups) update their guides when platforms change behavior - one more reason the documentation column in the table above is a buying criterion, not a nicety.
Samsung Tizen and LG webOS - both expose manual DNS per network in settings, and both respect it for all apps. Apple TV is the cleanest single-device setup; Fire TV usually wants router-level DNS (no per-device UI on most builds).
Classic Chromecast sticks hardcode Google DNS (8.8.8.8) and bypass your settings entirely. The fix is router-level: block or redirect port 53 to the provider's resolvers with a static route. The [router guide](/guides/router-smart-dns-setup/) documents the exact pattern per router platform.
It can - if the TV gets IPv6 from the router, streaming domains may resolve over IPv6 and skip your IPv4 DNS settings entirely. Disable IPv6 on the router (or use the provider's IPv6 instructions); this is the most under-diagnosed "provider broken" case.
Router-level if you have more than one device to cover or own a Chromecast; per-device for a single TV where you want guest devices untouched. The router covers everything but touches every device - the guide covers both paths.
Your home IP changed and the provider's IP registration went stale. Re-register in the dashboard, or automate it with the provider's dynamic-DNS URL ({{stat: ddns_n}} of providers document one) - then it self-heals forever.
No - that is the entire point of Smart DNS. No apps, no certificates, no sideloading. The only TV-side action is the DNS edit (or nothing, with router-level setup) plus an app restart to flush the resolver cache.
The ones with per-OS guides and a real KB - {{stat: smart_tv_n}} of the providers on this page document Smart TV support, and {{stat: router_n}} document router-level setup. The table's TV and router columns are the live audit.
For every app that respects the device resolver - which is nearly all TV apps. Exceptions are the hardcoded-DNS devices (Chromecast-class) and apps that do their own DoH (rare on TVs). The per-service table shows which providers document which services.
Router-level DNS (or the [hardware option](/best/smart-tv/)'s hub device). Roku is the classic case: no manual DNS anywhere in the UI, so the router carries the whole setup.
Marginally - the DNS values are identical, the menus differ. Good providers maintain per-device guides (the [setup overview][3] is the shape); the reviews flag operators whose TV documentation is stale or missing.