Safari iOS w/ Adguard Free vs Safari iOS w/ uBlock Origin Lite vs Brave

Questions
1

I know we have many topics around iOS browsers (Safari/Brave) and Adguard/Ublock, but I couldn’t find a topic that compare these 3 options.

My personal experience:

  • Don’t see a significant difference between Safari with Adguard free or Ublock Lite
  • See a favorable difference in loading speed towards Brave
  • When setting Brave as the default browser, sometimes when a mobile app redirects payment/login to Brave, it doesn’t auto redirect again to the mobile app
  • in NL, not all website that uses DigiD (our resident identification app) could work with Brave e.g. mijngezondheid.net

The only thing I haven’t tried is Adguard Full version. But I am using ProtonVPN with Netshield (malware, ads, and trackers blockers excl adult content) on, so I thought perhaps Adguard Full isn’t needed.

My ideal goal is to only use 1 browser on iOS. So I’m curious how other people’s experiences are with these 3 setups and knowing all browsers on iOS are Safari-reskinned, I wonder if there is one setup that is the most favorable when it comes to functionality and some extent of privacy.

Tyvm.

2

Free. Open source.

3

Thanks! It looks promising but I’m not a technical person. So until it’s recommended by PG I’ll wait :slight_smile:

4

wBlock looks very AI sloppy: eg. Deepen Safari blocker comparison · 0xCUB3/wBlock@79941a3 · GitHub
also who puts spaces in directory names!?!?

I’d recommend uBOL, but if you use the popup browser from eg. Maps, then you might consider using AdGuard since it can cover that too.

5

DNS based will only become less effective over time as more sites bundle ads on essential domains.

6

I have used Safari with Wipr for a long time and it works extremely well at blocking ads.

7

AdGuard for iOS and uBOL pretty much have the same blocking quality. The primary difference in my experience is:

AdGuard - can add custom filters and filters update independently of the app.

uBOL - In my experience, has less performance impact than AdGuard. Less “customization” options. Filters only update when app is updated.

I personally use uBOL due to the better performance, but blocking quality wise they are mostly at parity.

Your choice between Safari and Brave comes down to personal preference. Safari punches above it’s weight class privacy wise when it comes to options from “big tech”, but Brave still comes out ahead probably if stuff like iCloud sync or Private Relay doesn’t matter to you.

8

thanks all for your responses. Decided to give uBOL another shot and this time, it seems to be snappier. Removing memory under the uBOL settings seems to help (not sure if there is a causation there). Still gonna keep Brave on the side in case Safari is acting up again.