Adblock Plus Review 2025: This Free Extension Secures Your Data

Adblock Plus is a free, open-source ad blocker extension that can tackle some ads but might let others fall through the cracks. For instance, Adblock Plus aced the AdBlock Tester test but failed to block any trackers despite having features and filters for keeping you private online.  

Let’s take a closer look at Adblock Plus's main features, premium offerings, blocking test results, and more. 

Overview

Ads blocked on Forbes homepage	17
AdBlock Tester score	100/100
Cover Your Tracks score	0/3
Can You Block It	1/3
Does it block YouTube ads?	Yes
Whitelisting available	Yes
Blacklisting available	Yes
Compatibility	Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, Opera, Yandex, iOS, Android
Paid version	Starts at $4.00/mo
Learn more	Get Adblock Plus

We last tested Adblock Plus on March 17, 2025.

Our experience

We tested Adblock Plus on a Safari browser on iOS and on the Chrome extension for desktop. Both the Adblock Plus extension and the app will walk you through how to enable the blocker. 

Adblock Plus quickly got to work removing all the ads on heavily populated webpages like Forbes. 

Although it's previously blocked YouTube ads, Adblock Plus was inconsistent during this recent round of testing. Even with the blocker enabled, we'd get a pre-roll ad on our videos but they would go away once we refreshed the video. 

We did like that you could enable or disable Acceptable Ads. These are noninvasive advertisements on a site, and add certain sites to our "allowlist" so that the ads display. This gives back to creators, like your favorite blogger, who rely on ad revenue for the content they create. 

Adblock Plus struggled more with our tests during our most recent round of testing, so we're not feeling as confident about recommending the blocker. But you could always bundle it with other ad blockers for more comprehensive protection.

Adblock Plus paid plan

Adblock Plus offers a free tool and a premium option that runs between $3.33-$4.00/mo. Adblock Plus Premium allows for even more options, like blocking site notifications and floating videos. Anyone who’s visited a recipe blog knows that these can overwhelm the page to the point of making it nearly unreadable.

The paid Adblock Plus plans are on the higher end compared to other ad blockers:

• Adblock Plus: $3.33/mo (billed annually)
• AdLock: $3.50/mo
• AdGuard: $1.49/mo (billed annually)
• Total Adblock: $8.25/mo (billed annually)

The Premium subscription also supports the work the Adblock Plus crew is doing so they can continue to bring a powerful and useful tool to all internet users. 

	Free	Premium
Price	Free	Yearly: $3.33/mo (billed annually) Monthly: $4.00/mo
Blocks ads and pop-ups
Blocks trackers
Blocks push notifications
Blocks social media icons tracking
Blocks site notifications
Blocks survey requests
Blocks floating videos
Blocks cookie consent pop-ups
Details	View plan	View plan

Adblock Plus promises that it exists solely on paid subscriptions and donations. This means your data is never for sale. 

eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus, even notes in its privacy policy that you’re practically invisible to the company as well. Adblock Plus does note that it shares aggregated anonymous information with some third parties, but that info cannot be traced back to you.

Main features

Adblock Plus is a web browser extension that comes with a clean, user-friendly interface and increased functionality. The free version may be all you need to enhance your webpage experience. 

Not all the features worked perfectly on every browser. Per usual, the Apple option, Safari, had far fewer features available than Chrome or Edge. However, Adblock Plus still held up by blocking ads on Safari.

Ad blocking

Adblock Plus blocks floating video ads, display ads, and banner ads. The paid version can even get rid of those annoying videos that pop up as you’re scrolling. 

While this is great for convenience, it also helps protect you from ads or pop-ups that may contain malware. 

Anonymous browsing

Adblock Plus also allows you the freedom to browse anonymously without trackers creating a profile of you. You can select which trackers you want enabled or disabled.

Allowlisting (whitelisting)

One of the more helpful features is the allowlisting toggle. You can whitelist a site to always allow ads or toggle off the blocker for a specific page. There’s no need to create a block list, as the plugin does that for you. 

There are even options to disable tracking features on social media sites so they can’t build a profile of you. This is all extremely useful, especially for a free product.

Custom filtering

Because Adblock Plus is open-source software, users have the ability to use custom filters. In addition to using the built-in filter lists, you can add community-trusted filters, create your own filters, or add filters based on the URL.  

Adblock Plus test results

To test Adblock Plus, we used AdBlock Tester, Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF’s) Cover Your Tracks, and Can You Block It. 

AdBlock Tester looks at specific forms of ads like contextual advertising, banner advertising, analytics tools, and more. Adblock Plus scored a clean 100/100, blocking all the ad types thrown at it. 

The Cover Your Tracks test results indicated that Adblock Plus provided no protection from tracking ads and invisible trackers, which can be dissuading if you prefer to be anonymous online. 

We also went into the settings to turn on the Block additional tracking and Block social media icons tracking features, but the result was the same.

It also determined that our browser has a unique fingerprint. Fingerprints online are much like real fingerprints: a collection of data regarding hardware, location, usage, and other very specific information that helps profile you.

The more unique your fingerprint, the easier it is to build a profile of you. Adblock Plus didn’t help with generalizing our fingerprint.

Finally, the Can You Block It test is designed to check if your ad blocker actually works. We opted for the simple test and Adblock Plus struggled this time around.

First, we received the interstial ad despite having Adblock Tester enabled. Then, the main test results page featured a bunch of banner ads, which Adblock Plus should've blocked. 

We're not sure how Adblock Plus successfully blocked banner ads with one test but not the other. We rely on it passing all the ad blocking tests, so the results were disappointing this go around.  

Adblock Plus scores

	AdBlock Tester	Cover Your Tracks	Can You Block It
Adblock Plus score	100/100	0/3	1/3

YouTube ad test

Adblock Plus struggled to block YouTube ads during our most recent test. As soon as we opened the Tiny Desk video, we were greeted with a pre-roll ad despite Adblock Plus being enabled.

YouTube videos have increasingly become filled with advertisements in the company’s efforts to push its subscription-based services. It can be frustrating when you’re trying to watch a longer video or follow a recipe, and an ad interrupts your flow. 

Adblock Plus has blocked YouTube ads in the past, so we hope it updates to continue tackling this issue. As YouTube continues to push its paid subscription services, ad blockers for YouTube are extremely useful forif you feel like you’re already paying too much for piecemeal entertainment.

Bypassing paywall test

Ad blockers, free or paid, typically can't bypass hard paywalls like the ones you'd see on national news sites. But some of the most powerful ad blockers can bypass soft paywalls like the ones you'd see on local news sites. 

That's why we put all the ad blockers we review to the test on sites like The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Unfortunately, Adblock Plus wasn't able to bypass any paywalls. 

How to use Adblock Plus

Adblock is easy to use. After navigating to the website to download the extension on our preferred browser, we just needed to enable it. Open the extension in your browser and toggle to enable/disable. 

To set up more advanced features, select the settings icon in the upper right-hand corner of the extension management view.

In Settings, you have the option to enable/disable special tracking features, show acceptable ads, add "allowlisted" websites, create custom filter lists, and get in touch with customer support. 

Top alternatives

If you’re not sold on Adblock Plus, there are plenty of options for ad blocking software. Here are some of the best ad blockers you can consider instead. Plus, all of these tested and recommended ad blockers can block YouTube ads. 

Compatibility

Adblock Plus has a decent offering of browser compatibility. It would be nice to see additional browsers included as well, but these are a great start:

• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Safari
• Microsoft Edge
• Opera
• Yandex Browser

Additionally, you can download the Adblock Browser for Android from the Google Play Store and for iPhone or iPad from the Apple App Store. The Android app has a 4.0-star rating and over 220,000 reviews while the iOS app has a 4.4-star rating and over 15,000 ratings. 

FAQs

Bottom line: Is Adblock Plus good?

Adblock Plus is solid, especially for a free ad blocker. It allows you to browse the internet without having a million distractions — and possibly malicious files — overwhelming you.

Using Adblock Plus was easy and made browsing the web, watching videos, and visiting blogs much more enjoyable. You don’t realize how annoying visual clutter is until you don’t have to worry about it anymore. 

However, we were disappointed that it failed to block any trackers and struggled with our other ad tests, notably blocking ads on YouTube. Many of the best ad blockers can tackle both ads and trackers with ease. See how Adblock Plus compares to these other options

• Adblock Plus vs. Total Adblock
• Adblock Plus vs. AdGuard
• Adblock Plus vs. uBlock Origin
• Adblock Plus vs. Ghostery
• Adblock Plus vs. Privacy Badger

Featured ad blockers to consider