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The All About Cookies editorial team strives to provide accurate, in-depth information and reviews to help you, our reader, make online privacy decisions with confidence. Here's what you can expect from us:
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Free product blocks ads, pop-up, trackers, push notifications, social media icons tracking, and even YouTube video ads
Open-source software allows for custom filtering and community-based support
All About Cookies is an independent, advertising-supported website. Some of the offers that appear on this site are from third-party advertisers from which All About Cookies receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear).
All About Cookies does not include all financial or credit offers that might be available to consumers nor do we include all companies or all available products. Information is accurate as of the publishing date and has not been provided or endorsed by the advertiser.
The All About Cookies editorial team strives to provide accurate, in-depth information and reviews to help you, our reader, make online privacy decisions with confidence. Here's what you can expect from us:
Adblock Plus is a free, open-source ad blocker extension that can fight the good fight against pesky ads. It easily scans sites you visit and blocks content that looks like an ad.
Although Adblock Plus aced all the ad blocking tests we threw at it, it struggled 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, ad blocking tests, and more.
0/3 Cover Your Tracks score
| Ads blocked on Forbes homepage | 31 |
| AdBlock Tester score | 100/100 |
| Cover Your Tracks score | 0/3 |
| Can You Block It | 3/3 |
| 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 |
Each ad blocker we review goes through a standardized test designed to push the limits of what the software is capable of. This includes vigorous third-party testing using websites like adblock-tester.com, coveryourtracks.eff.org, and canyoublockit.com. We also visit popular websites to test the ad blocker’s day-to-day capabilities, including watching YouTube videos and browsing Forbes.
Once we’ve completed the testing, we calculate our editorial rating by taking into account key features you’d expect from a good product. We score each ad blocker in the following categories and use a weighted average to calculate the final rating out of 5 stars:
To learn more about how we test, read our full ad blocker methodology here.
We last tested Adblock Plus on October 28, 2024.
Adblock Plus was a breeze to install. During testing, we installed Adblock Plus on a Safari browser on macOS and iOS and tried out the Chrome extension as well.
From YouTube to blogs to sites like Forbes, ads were blocked, and browsing was clean and seamless.
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The YouTube blockers were especially impressive because they blocked the ads at the beginning and eliminated any loading of ads in the middle of a video.
We also liked that you could turn on Acceptable Ads, which 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.
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Adblock Plus allows you the choice to support content you find relevant, and we really appreciate that.
Adblock Plus offers a powerful free tool and a premium option that runs between Free to $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:
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 |
|
| 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.
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.
It blocks YouTube ads, 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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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 initially scored 81/100, having passed all the tests for contextual advertising and banner advertising. It failed some tests for error monitoring, and other tests failed to load.
However, when we enabled the Block additional tracking and Block social media icons tracking features and retested, Adblock Plus scored a clean 100/100.
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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.
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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 was successful. It blocked the disable ad blocker warning, banner ad, and interstial ad.
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| AdBlock Tester | Cover Your Tracks | Can You Block It | |
| Adblock Plus score | 100/100 | 0/3 | 3/3 |
Adblock Plus blocks YouTube ads both at the beginning and throughout the video. It’s worth noting that it took a few seconds of loading to block the “Skip Ads” feature, but we never had to watch an ad during that loading time.
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. Some advertisements on YouTube will even disrupt content to the point of turning the app off.
If you’re a regular user of the site for long-form videos like nature sounds for sleep or calming music for your pet when you’re gone, blocking these ads can enhance your experience.
As YouTube continues to push its paid subscription services, products like Adblock Plus are extremely useful for people who feel like they’re already paying too much for piecemeal entertainment.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
 |
 Threat Protection |
 CleanWeb |
|
| Best for | Best for blocking YouTube ads | Best overall | Best for blocking streaming ads |
| Price | Starts at $1.59/mo (billed annually) | Starts at $3.59/mo (billed every two years) | Starts at $1.99/mo (billed every two years) |
| Free version? | |||
| Adblock Tester score | 100/100 | 91/100 | 98/100 |
| Cover Your Tracks score | 2/3 | 2/3 | 0.5/3 |
| Can You Block It score | 3/3 | 2/3 | 3/3 |
| Blocks YouTube ads? | |||
| Compatibility | Windows, Mac, Chrome, Edge, Opera, Amazon Fire, Safari, Android, iOS | Threat Protection Pro: Windows, macOS
Threat Protection: |
Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, FireTV |
| Learn more | Get Total Adblock | Get NordVPN Threat Protection | Get Surfshark CleanWeb |
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.
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 200,000 reviews while the iOS app has a 4.4-star rating and over 11,000 ratings.
Yes, Adblock Plus is a free extension that can block most ads. There's also a Premium subscription, with bonus features like blocking cookie consent pop-ups and other distractions.
Yes, Adblock Plus is safe to use. Just be sure to download Adblock Plus from the official site or an official browser extension store. If you download Adblock Plus from any other location, it could contain malware.
Adblock Plus makes money from donations as well as its Premium subscription, which costs Free to $4.00/mo.
Total Adblock, NordVPN Threat Protection, and AdLock are all better than Adblock Plus because they can successfully block trackers.
Adblock Plus is good, 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 according to its Cover Your Tracks test results. Many of thebest ad blockers can tackle both ads and trackers with ease. See how Adblock Plus compares to these other options
| Ad blocker | |
|
|
| Best for | Best for blocking YouTube ads | Best for streaming | Best overall |
| Price | Paid plan costs $1.59/mo (billed annually) | Paid plans start at $1.99/mo (billed every two years) | Starts at $3.59/mo (billed every two years) |
| Blocks YouTube ads | |||
| Learn more | Get Total Adblock | Get Surfshark CleanWeb Ad Blocking | Get NordVPN Threat Protection |
Free product blocks ads, pop-up, trackers, push notifications, social media icons tracking, and even YouTube video ads
Open-source software allows for custom filtering and community-based support
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