We aim to have a major release every six months. The latest major release train receives correctness, stability and security updates by the way of minor releases. We support older releases with critical updates for one year after the following major release.
Older releases are marked end of life and receive no updates at all. Pre-releases do not receive immediate security updates.
The currently supported release train of the PowerDNS Recursor is 5.1.
PowerDNS Recursor 5.0 will only receive critical updates and will be End of Life one year after PowerDNS Recursor 5.1 was released.
PowerDNS Recursor 4.9 will only receive critical updates and will be End of Life one year after PowerDNS Recursor 5.0 was released.
PowerDNS Recursor 4.0 through 4.8, 3.x, and 2.x are End of Life.
Note: Users with a commercial agreement with PowerDNS.COM BV or Open-Xchange can receive extended support for releases which are End Of Life. If you are such a user, these EOL statements do not apply to you. Please refer to the support commitment for details. Note that for the Open Source support channels we only support the latest minor release of a release train. That means that we ask you to reproduce potential issues on the latest minor release first.
| Version | Release date | Critical-Only updates | End of Life |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5.1 | July 10 2024 | ~ February 2025 | ~ February 2026 |
| 5.0 | January 10 2024 | July 10 2024 | July 10 2025 |
| 4.9 | June 30 2023 | January 10 2024 | January 10 2025 |
| 4.8 | December 12 2022 | June 30 2023 | EOL June 30 2024 |
| 4.7 | May 30 2022 | December 12 2022 | EOL January 10 2024 |
| 4.6 | December 17 2021 | May 30 2022 | EOL June 30 2023 |
| 4.5 | May 11 2021 | December 17 2021 | EOL December 12 2022 |
| 4.4 | October 19 2020 | May 11 2021 | EOL May 30 2022 |
| 4.3 | March 3 2020 | October 19 2020 | EOL December 17 2021 |
| 4.2 | July 16 2019 | October 19 2020 | EOL May 11 2021 |
| 4.1 | December 4 2017 | March 3 2020 | EOL October 19 2020 |
| 4.0 and older | EOL | EOL | EOL |
Note we did not have a very regular release schedule in the past, so the dates for older releases do not follow the pattern described above.