Best Ad Blocker for Chrome (2026)
We compared Omit, uBlock Origin, AdBlock Plus, and AdGuard head-to-head — features, privacy, performance, and Manifest V3 readiness. We make Omit, but we’ll tell you when one of the others is the better pick.
On this page
We make Omit
Disclosure first, since this matters: we make Omit. We tried to write this comparison the way we’d write it for a tech publication that doesn’t ship an ad blocker. If you find a place where we’re unfair to a competitor, please email us and we’ll fix it.
Short answer
- You want to install once and never touch it again → Omit.
- You like tweaking filter lists → uBlock Origin Lite.
- You want ad blocking on your phone, browser, and home network → AdGuard.
- You actively want some ads → AdBlock Plus.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Omit | uBlock Origin | AdBlock Plus | AdGuard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free | Free | Free + Premium |
| Manifest V3 native | ✓ Native | Lite version only | ✓ | ✓ |
| YouTube ads | ✓ | ✓ | Limited | ✓ |
| Twitch ads | ✓ | Partial | ✗ | ✓ |
| Cosmetic filtering | ✓ | Best in class | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cookie banners | ✓ | Yes (with annoyances list) | Limited | ✓ |
| Acceptable Ads | ✗ | ✗ | Yes (default on) | ✗ |
| Privacy | No telemetry | No telemetry | Some analytics | Some telemetry |
| Open source | In progress | ✓ | Partial | ✓ |
Omit
Best for: users who want to install one extension, get YouTube and Twitch ad blocking out of the box, and never see settings again.
Omit was designed for the post-Manifest-V3 era. It uses Chrome’s declarativeNetRequest API natively rather than as an afterthought, ships with cookie-banner blocking on by default, and has zero telemetry. The trade-off is fewer knobs than uBlock Origin — there’s no per-site cosmetic editor or filter-list scripting language. If that matters to you, you’re probably already a uBlock user.
uBlock Origin (Lite)
Best for: power users who write their own filter rules and want maximum control over cosmetic filtering.
Raymond Hill’s blocker has been the gold standard for a decade. Manifest V3 forced a rewrite (uBO Lite), and the new version is still excellent — just slightly less powerful than the original at cosmetic filtering and dynamic rule changes. If you can find a browser that supports Manifest V2 (Firefox does), the original uBO is still the most capable blocker on the market.
AdBlock Plus
Best for: users who want to allow some advertising for sites they trust.
ABP is the most-installed ad blocker by a wide margin, mostly because it has been around since 2006. The catch: by default it participates in the “Acceptable Ads” program, which means some ads from approved networks (notably Google) are still shown. You can switch this off in settings, but most users don’t. If you want zero ads, pick a different blocker.
AdGuard
Best for: users who want a single brand to handle browser, mobile, and DNS-level blocking.
AdGuard makes the browser extension, a standalone macOS/Windows app that blocks across all browsers, an iOS Safari content blocker, an Android app, and AdGuard DNS. The extension alone is solid — feature parity with Omit on most things. The reason to pick AdGuard over Omit specifically is if you want one vendor across every device. The downside: AdGuard does send some product analytics by default.
How we tested
We installed each extension on a fresh Chrome 122 profile (Windows 11, MacBook Pro M3, Linux Mint) and visited 50 websites: top 10 news sites by US traffic, top 10 ecommerce sites, the homepage and a sample video on YouTube and Twitch, and 30 random sites from Tranco’s top 1M list. We measured:
- Number of ads visible after page load
- Page load time (DOMContentLoaded) vs. no blocker baseline
- Trackers blocked (using a separate audit tool)
- Site breakage (Did the site work? Could you check out / log in?)
- Whether YouTube’s anti-adblock popup appeared
Our recommendation
Pick one and move on. The differences between Omit, uBO Lite, and AdGuard for everyday browsing are smaller than the difference between using any of them and using none. If you want our pick: install Omit. We obviously think it’s the best fit for most people. If after a week it isn’t doing what you need, you haven’t lost anything — uninstall it and try uBO Lite.