About uBlock Origin
uBlock Origin is the most capable content blocker you can install, and the one the others get measured against. It is free and open source, written by Raymond Hill, and blocks ads, trackers and malicious domains using the EasyList family of filter lists plus its own. Its GitHub page says no donations are sought, and suggests supporting the people who maintain the filter lists instead.
Its strength is control. You can write your own rules, block by domain or request type per site, and switch off scripts or remote fonts for a single page. Hill says it works best on Firefox, which still allows APIs that Chromium does not, such as filtering response bodies and uncloaking CNAME-disguised trackers.
The catch is Chrome. uBlock Origin is a Manifest V2 extension, and Google removed all remaining Manifest V2 extensions from the Chrome Web Store on 31 August 2026. Chrome 139 and later do not run them, and Microsoft expects to finish switching them off in Edge by the end of 2026. If you use Firefox, install it and stop shopping. Brave offers it as a self-hosted option. Everywhere else, use uBlock Origin Lite, the reduced version Hill publishes for Chrome.
Pros and cons
- Full filtering power, including dynamic filtering and per-site switches
- Free, GPL-3.0 licensed, and no donations are sought
- Recommended by Firefox, with about 11 million Firefox users
- Actively maintained: version 1.75.0 shipped in September 2026
- Removed from the Chrome Web Store on 31 August 2026
- The Edge version is Manifest V2, and Edge is phasing that out
- Power features add settings casual users do not need
Permissions
On Firefox it can read and change data on all websites, see your open tabs, monitor navigation and change privacy settings. It needs this to inspect every request and hide page elements.
