Our research shows the following are the best adblockers for Firefox and Chrome, in alphabetical order:
AdBlock Adblock PlusAdBlocker UltimateAdGuardGhosteryuBlock Origin
All adblockers tested are also free to use. If you want to see how they stack up against each other, and which one we think is the best, keep reading.
Use Adblockers Fairly
Please think about us, people just like you, trying to pay our bills before you use an adblocker on sites like ours. We try abnormally hard to find the right balance between having ads to pay the bills and not annoying you so that you leave us. So please, if you do choose to use an adblocker, make sure to whitelist our site. Now that’s said, let’s look at the best adblockers to use on sites that don’t respect you as much as we do.
How Do We Know Which Adblocker Is Best?
We can’t test all the adblockers available, so we narrowed the list to 6. To do this, we gathered the number of downloads, the number of reviews, and the average rating out of 5 stars for adblockers from the Firefox Add-Ons and Chrome Web Store Extensions sites. Then we used our Review Factor formula to show us which adblockers were arguably the best. The highest Review Factor possible is 100. This was done to remove the bandwagon effect of people selecting the most downloaded adblocker that has a good star rating. Review Factor = ((Reviews / Downloads) x Average Star Rating) x 100 After the top 6, the Review Factor dropped off sharply, so it wouldn’t be helpful to you to include anything beyond that. Then came the testing. The following is our testing methodology:
6. AdBlock Plus (Chrome, Firefox)
AdBlock Plus also subscribes to the fair-play ads philosophy. They’ve even created an independent committee called Acceptable Ads. It’s not clear whether they are actively working with any other adblockers than Adblock Plus, so the independence of the committee is debatable.
CanYouBlockIt Results
Presence was detected (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed pop-under ads (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed direct link ads (Chrome and Firefox)
AdBlock Tester Results
Allowed Google Analytics (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed Sentry and Bugsnag error monitoring (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed the downloading of Flash banners, gifs, and static images, but blocked the display of them (Chrome and Firefox)
5. AdBlock (Chrome, Firefox)
AdBlock can be used for free or you can make a donation. You can get a refund within 60 days if you’re not happy with AdBlock. AdBlock is a fair-play adblocker, meaning it tries to block the most obtrusive and invasive ads while allowing more palatable ads so that the sites you’re viewing can still have some income.
CanYouBlockIt Results
Presence was detected (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed pop-under ads (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed direct link ads (Chrome and Firefox)
AdBlock Tester Results
Allowed Google Analytics (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed Sentry or Bugsnag error monitoring (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed the downloading of Flash banners, gifs, and static images, but blocked the display of them (Chrome and Firefox)
4. Ghostery (Chrome, Firefox)
Ghostery claims to do the adblocking that all the other adblockers do and speed up page loading. We weren’t able to test that, but the extension does allow you to see the download time of a page. What’s really interesting is that Ghostery is open-source. Generally speaking, making software open source leads to it becoming better and more secure. Yet it seems like a bold step as advertisers may use that to find a way to circumvent Ghostery.
CanYouBlockIt Results
Allowed banner ads (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed direct link ads (Chrome and Firefox)
AdBlock Tester Results
Allowed Flash banners to load and display (Chrome)Allowed Sentry error monitoring (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed the downloading of gifs and static images, but blocked the display of them (Chrome and Firefox)
3. AdGuard (Chrome, Firefox)
AdGuard employs a filtering database with more than 1 million phishing and malware websites in it. This means it not only employs traditional adblocking but can protect you from some nasty sites.
CanYouBlockIt Results
Presence was detected (Chrome and Firefox)
AdBlock Tester Results
Allowed Google Analytics (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed Sentry and Bugsnag error monitoring (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed the downloading of gifs and static images, but blocked the display of them (Chrome and Firefox)
2. uBlock Origin (Chrome, Firefox)
uBlock Origin is another open-source adblocker, that claims to be, “a wide-spectrum content blocker with CPU and memory efficiency as a primary feature.” What they’re saying is that other adblockers may use more resources and slow your computer down. We were unable to test that, as it was beyond the scope of this article.
CanYouBlockIt Results
Allowed direct link ads (Chrome and Firefox)
AdBlock Tester Results
Allowed Flash banners to load and display (Chrome)Allowed Flash banners to load but didn’t display (Firefox)Allowed Sentry error monitoring (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed the downloading of gifs and static images, but blocked the display of them (Chrome and Firefox)
1. AdBlocker Ultimate (Chrome, Firefox)
AdBlocker Ultimate touts itself as, “the most effective adblocker there is!”. We haven’t tested every adblocker available, yet AdBlocker Ultimate tops our list. There is no predefined list of acceptable ads for AdBlocker Ultimate. It strives to block everything. Their work is supported by a name-your-price system allowing you to donate what you think is fair via PayPal.
CanYouBlockIt Results
Presence was detected (Chrome and Firefox)
AdBlock Tester Results
Allowed Bugsnag error monitoring (Chrome and Firefox)Allowed the downloading of gifs and static images, but blocked the display of them (Chrome and Firefox)
What AdBlocker Do You Use?
As we mentioned above, there are a lot of adblockers out there. What do you use? Is it different from the ones on our list? What do you like most or least about your adblocker? Let us know in the comments below.
