From https://coredns.io/manual/toc/#configuration "The binaries we provide have all plugins, as listed in plugin.cfg, compiled in. Adding or removing is easy, but requires a recompile of CoreDNS." Currently I've to add following dirty patch to customize plugin.cfg. https://gitlab.com/rahilarious/gentoo-config/-/blob/main/etc/portage/patches/net-dns/coredns/0001-remove-bloat.patch With savedconfig flag modding will be easier. I was able to reduce binary size from 72MiB to 22MiB which will help in reducing memory usage on production server. Thanks.