Adblock vs Adblock plus: differences and similarities

Adblock and Adblock plus are similar although each one has an advantage over the other.

Internet advertising has become uncontrollable, so an ad blocker is an essential complement to any browser. That's why we compare Adblock vs Adblock Plus, two of the best of its kind.

In any case, we must take into account that the quality of the content of the site depends on the time that its authors can dedicate to creating it. And, that many times is only possible by making the site generate income. Therefore, an ad blocker should only be used on sites where it is abused.

What is an ad blocker

Let's start by saying that an ad blocker is not an ad blocker. In other words, what this piece of software does is prevent the browser from downloading and displaying certain content that follows the usual patterns of Internet advertising (for example, opening a pop-up window). While this most of the time makes a site display faster, it can also interfere with navigation. One possible case is when a site's login form opens in another window.

A second method is checklists.. With this system, to decide what content to show, the ad blocker checks one or more lists of links if the content was reported as advertising. These lists are maintained by a separate community from the blocker developers and set the rules about what to show or not to show. Other criteria used by lists are the element's ID, class, src attribute, or the use of script to load content from a third-party server.

Why use an ad blocker?

Adblock plugin allows to customize filters

The great advantage of Adblock over Adblock Plus is that it allows you to customize the filters to include ads that are not on the blacklist.

Beyond the issues we've outlined, an ad blocker has many advantages. Some of them are:

  • Safety: Not only the ad blocker prevents misleading advertising (In the sense of selling fraudulent products) from being displayed. Cybercriminals can use legitimate ad networks to distribute malware even without you clicking.
  • Improved browsing experience: By eliminating content that has nothing to do with the site itself and is often annoying, navigation is more fluid.
  • Speed:  According to some statistics, on news sites half of the load time corresponds to advertising. In other words, using a content blocker makes those pages load 40% faster.
  • Data Usage Reduction: This is especially critical when browsing using the mobile network.

However, they are not without drawbacks. We have already mentioned that they can make it difficult for some sites to work. Other problems could be that the blocker installs some kind of tracking mechanism, that they do not keep their lists up to date, or that, in exchange for payment, they agree not to block certain advertising.

Adblock vs Adblock Plus. Which is better?

Adblock Plus ad blocking plugin does not interfere with browsing.

Adblock Plus has a performance advantage over Adblock. Its use does not interfere with browsing when you have several tabs open.

Despite its similar name, Adblock Plus is not a more powerful version of Adblock. They are two different plugins, although with similar functions. Although Adblock Plus was the first (it started as an extension for Firefox) and Adblock was born for Chrome, both are now available for the rest of the browsers and use the same system of white lists (Sites to which access is allowed) and lists black (Prohibited sites) both use the same source of information. EasyList.

Another common practice is not to block ads that are considered acceptable.

In theory Adblock allows to add our own sites to the list, but this is as long as said advertiser has not paid the developers of the extension to avoid it. By the way, Adblock Plus also accepts payments from advertisers. To create custom filters in Adblock Plus you have to mark ad by ad on each site.

Regarding performance, most users mention that Adblock makes browsing slower when multiple tabs are open and this is especially noticeable in Firefox.

If we talk about from the user experience point of view, both are easy to install, use, configure and uninstall. The advantage of Adblock Plus is that it allows us to see how many ads were blocked.

In short, to decide which of the two to install, you must answer what matters most to you.. Whether it's personalization or security, the answer is Adblock. If it is performance install Adblock Plus.

However, there are many other ad blocking extensions. Also browsers like Brave that come with their own blocker.


5 comments, leave yours

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  1.   mercury said

    I have always used Adbock Plus, but a few months ago I stopped filtering some ads on YouTube, so I replaced it with uBlock, which works great and I even use it on Android Firefox

  2.   Persona said

    uBlock Origin much better than those 2.

  3.   Desbian said

    I think it is necessary to compare ublock origin, which is currently the one that, for me, is more effective and has a low performance cost

  4.   richo said

    I think uBlock Origin is open source, but very good article, it is totally appreciated, I did not know the differences, I hope you can make a post about ublock origin

    1.    Diego German Gonzalez said

      I don't know if uBlock Origin is enough to dedicate an entire article to it, but I'm definitely going to have to write about it.
      Clarification for everyone. The article was to clarify doubts about the similarity in the name. I never said they were the best.