How We Test, Rate, and Review Ad Blockers

Ad blockers work by stopping specific lines of code that ads use from loading on the page, creating a much smoother browsing experience for you. In a world so overrun with ads, this almost feels like a necessity today.

When evaluating ad blockers, we test their effectiveness, features, usability, compatibility, support, and pricing. This holistic approach allows us to report not only if the ad blocker works, but also if it’s a good choice for your time and investment.

Using this information, we then weigh each feature and calculate an average rating out of five to let you know which are the best ad blockers available. Here’s what those weights look like:

Read on to discover the specific traits we consider for each feature we weigh.

Ease of use (30%)

If software is too complicated, we know you likely won’t use it. When we evaluate ad blockers, we want to make sure they’re easy enough for anyone to operate. The majority of people block ads now, so having user-friendly software is essential.

UI functionality

What it is: User Interface (UI) is how you, the user, interact with the software. It describes what you see and where the controls are located.

How we test it: We test this by using the software ourselves. We check to make sure the features are displayed well, and the dashboard is useful and tidy rather than cluttered and overly technical.

How we rate it:

• Best: A clean, modern-looking dashboard with intuitive navigation and controls.
• Worst: Cluttered with terminology you don’t understand or overly technical requirements to use.

Customer service

What it is: Being able to reach a customer service professional in a timely manner can make or break your experience. What kinds of support are offered, and is it effective?

How we test it: We evaluate a product’s support offerings by reading the pages dedicated to troubleshooting. Often, we reach out to support for an issue to evaluate how long it took to receive a response, if it resolved our issue, and how easy the instructions were to understand.

How we rate it:

• Best: Phone or live chat support where we get to talk to a real person in real-time.
• Worst: A support page with limited resources and no direct contact.

Testing (20%)

Making sure the ad blockers actually work is integral to our rating. We use several different trusted third-party tools to stress test the effectiveness of each ad blocker. We also use the software on websites known for a lot of ads to see how they do in a real-world environment.

Adblock Tester

What it is: Adblock tester runs multiple types of ad scripts to see if the software blocks it, giving a final score out of 100.

How we test it: We turn on the ad blocker in question and load the Adblock Tester page. The Adblock Tester then shows you the various categories of ads and whether the blocker can stop them. It gives you a final score out of 100.

How we rate it:

• Best: A perfect 100/100 score.
• Worst: Anything under 50 is considered a fail.

Cover Your Tracks

What it is: Cover Your Tracks checks if the ad blocker is hiding you from trackers while also making you look less unique online. The more unique you look, the easier it is to track you.

How we test it: We turn on the ad blocker in question and load the Cover Your Tracks page. The site takes a few moments to run its tests, but then it returns the results along with an explanation of what the results mean.

How we rate it:

• Best: A perfect 3/3 score.
• Worst: 0/3 is pretty bad, but we’re not thrilled with 1/3 either.

Can You Block It

What it is: This site is geared more toward intrusive ads, such as interstitial ads (ads that pop up when the page loads) or notifications telling you to disable your ad blocker. There are three tests: Simple, Advanced, and eXtreme.

How we test it: We turn on the ad blocker in question and load the Can You Block It page. Usually, it takes a moment to load, and then we see the results.

How we rate it:

• Best: All four attempts would be blocked, ensuring that the ad blocker is effective.
• Worst: None or only one of the attempts were blocked.

Forbes test

What it is: Forbes tends to serve readers 3-10 ads on any given visit, although it can be more in our experience.

How we test it: We visit Forbes to see if the ad blocker in question can block the site’s heavy ad traffic.

How we rate it:

• Best: No visible ads.
• Worst: No blocking at all.

Features (20%)

Good ad blockers can thwart YouTube ads. They also give you the ability to choose what sites you absolutely never want to see ads on and others where it may be ok. This is called blacklisting and whitelisting, respectively.

YouTube ads

What it is: YouTube serves users aggressive amounts of ads in an attempt to woo users into purchasing a subscription.

How we test it: We look for ads before and during the video to see if they’re blocked. Most of the time, YouTube will need to be accessed from a browser rather than an app. This is due to the fact that apps have a harder time regulating what happens in other apps, whereas browsers have an easier time blocking certain coding.

How we rate it:

• Best: No ads before, during, or after a YouTube video.
• Worst: Ads show up either before or during the video.

Whitelisting

What it is: Whitelisting means creating a list of allowed things. In this instance, it means allowing certain pages to display ads. This is useful if you’re trying to support a creator or cause.

How we test it: When we open the ad blocker, is there a place where we can build an allow list? If yes, does it work to allow ads on a certain site, but not on others?

How we rate it:

• Best: You can add to the allowlist directly from the agent in the toolbar.
• Worst: No allow list at all.

Blacklisting

What it is: The opposite of whitelisting, blacklisting means creating a never allow list. In this instance, we’re looking for ways to completely disable ads on any site, even if we pause ad blocking.

How we test it: When we open the ad blocker, is there a place where we can build a block list? Does it work to block ads on that site, no matter what? If yes, then the test is successful.

How we rate it:

• Best: The blacklist is easily accessible from the main dash.
• Worst: No blacklisting capabilities.

Compatibility (20%)

Since ads are rampant on every one of our devices, it’s important that ad blockers offer broad compatibility and support.

Desktop apps

What it is: This is for laptops and desktop computers. Apps tend not to provide as strong of blocking features, so we like to see them combined with browser extensions.

How we test it: We download and enable the app, then run our ad-blocking tests to see if it works.

How we rate it:

• Best: All ads blocked during testing.
• Worst: Nothing or less than 40% of items blocked.

Browsers

What it is: A browser extension is essentially a small plugin that alters how your browser interacts with the internet. Ad blocker extensions typically work better than apps on the desktop.

How we test it: We enable the extension in our browser, usually through the dashboard or main website of the ad blocker, then perform our tests.

How we rate it:

• Best: Multiple extensions are available for the most popular browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Brave, Opera, and Yandex.
• Worst: There is no extension, it’s too difficult to install, or it’s only compatible with one browser.

Mobile apps

What it is: This refers to apps that can be downloaded onto a mobile device like an iPhone or an Android. They typically have less power than a browser extension.

How we test it: We download the app and then run our tests on our phones.

How we rate it:

• Best: The app blocks everything or comes with a browser extension that, combined, blocks everything.
• Worst: Nothing is blocked, and there are no additional extensions to help.

Value (10%)

There are a lot of ad blockers available that have low or no cost. It’s necessary to balance the pros and cons of ad blockers. For instance, if it’s free but it doesn’t block much, it might be worth your while to purchase an ad blocker that’s exceptional.

Price and plans

What it is: We check to make sure that the ad blocker is priced reasonably in relation to its power. Good ad blockers might cost you a nominal fee, while free ad blockers might not protect you at all.

How we test it: We run the ad blocker through our tests and then determine, based on competitor prices and testing results, if the software being tested is a good value for money.

How we rate it:

• Best: A free ad blocker that blocks everything.
• Worst: A paid ad blocker that has poor or mediocre results.

How we calculate our ratings

Once we’ve finished testing an ad blocker and written out all our testing notes, we evaluate our findings against the rating rubric we’ve created. Each section is worth points and is weighted based on its relevance to the product. The scores are then calculated using the weighted average, and that’s how the star rating system is based.

This is applied to every ad blocker we test and then maintained in a spreadsheet where the calculations are applied automatically when the metrics are inserted. This ensures consistency across the board, making sure we can confidently recommend the best ad blockers.