About Ghostery
Ghostery is a friendly all-rounder that works on more browsers than anything else here. It blocks ads and trackers, hides cookie pop-ups and lists the trackers on each page and who runs them. It comes from Ghostery GmbH, the code is on GitHub under GPL-3.0, and the site says all features are free with no subscription, with optional contributions.
It is listed on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and the App Store for Safari, and needs almost no setup. The Chrome Web Store accepts only Manifest V3 extensions after the August 2026 purge, and Ghostery updated its Chrome listing in October. We rank it fifth because we found less independent evidence on its blocking than for the uBlock family.
Know what it reports before you install. Its privacy policy says the extension sends a small daily installation ping, including browser, operating system, language and country. It can send extra opt-in telemetry, and users who accept the policy also report anonymised tracker data to its WhoTracks.Me project. Ghostery says no personal data is collected, but this is more reporting than uBlock Origin Lite. For the most aggressive blocking, choose a uBlock Origin variant.
Pros and cons
- Free and open source (GPL-3.0), actively updated
- Available on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and Safari
- Hides cookie consent banners and shows which trackers a page uses
- Recommended by Firefox, with about 1 million users there
- Less fine control than uBlock Origin
- Sends a daily anonymous installation ping, per its privacy policy
- We found little recent independent testing of its ad blocking
Permissions
On Firefox it asks for access to all websites, your tabs, cookies and the ability to block web requests. It needs this to block requests and hide cookie banners on any page.
