Battle Ublock Origin vs Adguard Chrome extension

Malakke

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Jan 29, 2013
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Hi guys. I'm a longtime Ublock Origin user, but lastly i'm using Adguard Chrome extension and i've found its capabilities superior to UBO, especially in:

- Stealth Mode: very useful to avoid cookies and tracking
- Specific language filter: select automatic filters according site language you are visiting.
- Better adblocking in some sites, e.g. inoreader.com, theverge.com, etc..
- Better user interface
- Better malware protection

As cons:

- Not open source (privacy concerns?)
- Slow browsing than Ubo
- Less customizable than Ubo about blocking scripts (by domain, frames, ....)

Your opinions will welcome ;)

Thanks

Regards
 
Last edited:

RoboMan

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Jun 24, 2016
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I'm gonna be straight honest with you.

I was an AdGuard for PC user. Ended up uninstalling because it generally slowed down browsing. Upon recommendations, I installed AdGuard extension and for my surprise, it had a lot of nice features as you mention. But browsing was still slow. So I installed uBlock, added tons of filters for privacy and ads and yet it's as fast as an extension-less browser.
 

Malakke

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Jan 29, 2013
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I'm gonna be straight honest with you.

I was an AdGuard for PC user. Ended up uninstalling because it generally slowed down browsing. Upon recommendations, I installed AdGuard extension and for my surprise, it had a lot of nice features as you mention. But browsing was still slow. So I installed uBlock, added tons of filters for privacy and ads and yet it's as fast as an extension-less browser.

Yes, slow browsing is the big cons. However, in my desktop PC speed browsing is fine, but in my laptop (CoreDuo, 3Mb RAM) really there is a noticeable difference. Which filters are you using in UBO?
 

Gandalf_The_Grey

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As user of both extensions my current favorite is uBlock Origin.
AdGuard does cosmetic filtering better and if used on Microsoft Edge browser you also get some blocking from AdGuard based on Google Safe Browsing.
uBlock Origin can block more based on your configuration, has less influence on your browsing speed and can use AdGuard's filter lists.

Capture.PNG
 

Malakke

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Jan 29, 2013
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IMHO, the slowdown in browsing using Adguard for Windows comes from 3rd party AV web filtering.
If you use Defender, the slowdown is less noticeable.

I'm using Defender. I've noticed that stealth mode slows down browsing too.

E.g. Try to open nytimes.com with UBO and Adguard. Difference is bigger than i expected... You'll be surprised.
 

Arequire

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If you're not going to use uBlock Origin's dynamic filtering then I see little reason to use it over Adguard.
If there's a performance impact when using AG that you find unacceptable then obviously you should use uBO instead.
 

vaccineboy

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Sep 5, 2018
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Adguard browser extension is open source!
It's slower yes, probably because of the safe browsing module which sends out hash of URLs to check against online blacklist, but you can disable.
The desktop version is better and much faster than the extension one. It filters before the web content entering the browser. I didn't truly understand the difference until I realized some ads entered the browser (and blocked by the extension) but was never there if using the desktop version. So the desktop version is more efficient.
Adguard filters are more optimized.
uBo is more configurable no doubt. And I do like uBo's UI more, simple, straightforward.

Edit: you can add AdGuard filter lists in uBo but there are some difference in syntax so uBo would not utilize the filters fully.

More monitoring stuff you enabled, more time a page will load.
Yeah, seriously people need to stop stacking up security extensions in the browser as well as filter lists in the security extension. Experts in this forum should educate people towards efficiency instead of scare them into the miserable sluggishness.
 
Last edited:

oldschool

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You didn't ask, but if you're not using dynamic filtering I suggest trying Edge Chromium's built-in tracking protection. Paired with Privacy Possum it's a very good set-and-forget setup. It has 3 levels of filtering, the 3rd of which should rid you completely of ads. It also features monitoring/setting exclusions directly from the address bar.
 

Malakke

Level 5
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Jan 29, 2013
221
Adguard browser extension is open source!
It's slower yes, probably because of the safe browsing module which sends out hash of URLs to check against online blacklist, but you can disable.
The desktop version is better and much faster than the extension one. It filters before the web content entering the browser. I didn't truly understand the difference until I realized some ads entered the browser (and blocked by the extension) but was never there if using the desktop version. So the desktop version is more efficient.
Adguard filters are more optimized.
uBo is more configurable no doubt. And I do like uBo's UI more, simple, straightforward.

Edit: you can add AdGuard filter lists in uBo but there are some difference in syntax so uBo would not utilize the filters fully.


Yeah, seriously people need to stop stacking up security extensions in the browser as well as filter lists in the security extension. Experts in this forum should educate people towards efficiency instead of scare them into the miserable sluggishness.

Thanks for the tip. I've disabled safe browsing and now is as fast as Ubo.

Edit: i've enabled again safe browsing and replace English Filter by Easy List... and it seems is snappier than before.
 
Last edited:

Terry Ganzi

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Feb 7, 2014
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I guess AG 'intervenes' before uBO ...?

I don't know why this is such a widespread misconception. As an extension, uBO will act before any external blocker solution.

The browser asks uBO whether a network request should be fired, uBO answers "no", hence no network request is fired, hence whatever external blocker there is beyond your browser is not going to see the cancelled network requests: they all act on network requests which have been fired by the browser.
Spoken By gorhill.
 

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