# What is CoreDNS?

CoreDNS is a DNS server. It is written in [Go](https://golang.org).

CoreDNS is different from other DNS servers, such as (all excellent)
[BIND](https://www.isc.org/bind/),
[Knot](https://www.knot-dns.cz/),
[PowerDNS](https://www.powerdns.com/) and
[Unbound](https://www.unbound.net/) (technically a resolver, but still worth a mention), because it
is very flexible, and almost all functionality is outsourced into plugins.

Plugins can be stand-alone or work together to perform a "DNS function".

So what's a "DNS function"? For the purpose of CoreDNS, we define it as a piece of software that
implements the CoreDNS Plugin API. The functionality implemented can wildly deviate. There are
plugins that don't themselves create a response, such as [metrics](/plugins/metrics) or
[cache](/plugins/cache), but that add functionality. Then there are plugins that *do* generate
a response. These can also do anything: There are plugins that communicate with
[Kubernetes](/plugins/kubernetes) to provide service discovery, plugins that read data from
a [file](/plugins/file) or a [database](/explugins/pdsql).

There are currently about 30 plugins included in the default CoreDNS install, but there are also a whole
bunch of [external](/explugins) plugins that you can compile into CoreDNS to extend its
functionality.

> CoreDNS is powered by plugins.

Writing new [plugins](#writing-plugins) should be easy enough, but requires knowing Go and having
some insight into how DNS works. CoreDNS abstracts away a lot of DNS details, so that you can just focus
on writing the plugin functionality you need.