uBlock

Motivation for creating this page, this comment made in the spirit of Fake News (with no supporting objective evidence, merely just a "trust me" statement):

Ublock is inferior in capabilities [to Adblock Plus (ABP)] as a result of being lighter on the browser [source]

There is nothing wrong with preferring ABP to uBlock Origin (uBO). There is, however, something wrong when someone engages in misinformation regarding uBO because of their preference for ABP.

Here is my reference answer to such claims.

uBO is lighter on the browser because of the many choices made regarding the internal design of the filtering engine. A coarse enumeration of these choices is:

lean in-memory filter representation
plain string comparisons instead of regular expressions wherever possible
- a majority of network filters can reduce to basic string comparison, and is what uBO does internally for these filters, whereas ABP converts all network filters into regular expressions.
- Example, &ad_zones= (filter found in EasyList).
  - ABP's code conceptually is: /&ad_zones=/.test(url) -- the whole URL must be scanned
  - uBO's code conceptually is: url.startsWith('&ad_zones=', i) -- no scanning of the URL
does not unconditionally inject 18,000+ (that is with EasyList only) generic CSS rules in all pages/frames
^{meaning no undue memory usage issues}

Do these design choices cause uBO to be "inferior in capabilities" compared to ABP? See the capabilities comparison grid below for an answer (at the time of writing):

Features	ABP	uBO
network filtering
multi-stage filtering engine ^{ability for users to easily override filters in 3rd-party filter lists on a per-site basis}		yes
`@@...$document`	yes	no
can read hosts files		yes
CNAME uncloaking		yes
`denyallow`		yes
`domain` with entity-matching		yes
`inline-script` ^{to prevent execution of inline javascript}	no	yes
`important` ^{to be able to override exception filters}		yes
`popunder`	no	yes
`redirect` ^{to redirect to local resources, key to privacy and to counter anti-blockers}	in own syntax, ^{do not used to privacy and disable anti-adblock mechanism}	yes
`csp=` ^{see rationale}		yes
`badfilter` ^{to disable an existing filter}		yes
strict blocking		yes
rule-based filtering ^{firewall-like or URL-based rules with corresponding point-and-click UI}		yes
behind-the-scene ^{uBO's logger reports behind-the-scene request, filtering is opt-in}		yes
cosmetic filtering
entity-based filters		yes
`-abp-properties`	yes	no
`:has`	~~not yet~~ yes (`:-abp-has`)	yes
`:has-text`	yes (`:-abp-contains`)	yes
`:matches-css`, `:xpath`		yes
`:remove`		yes
`:style`	no	yes
`:upward`		yes
Scriptlet filtering
`+js(...)` Ability to inject scriptlets in page content ^{key to counter anti-blockers}	in own syntax to defuse mostly ad-reinsertion, ^{limited to one list and my filters panel, don't used to cover anti-adblock}	yes, ^{works from any list, cover anti-adblock mechanisms}
HTML filtering
Ability to modify response data on the fly ^{WebExtensions uBO 1.15+}		yes
privacy
pro-user default settings ^{uBO is not monetized, it's under no pressure to compromise on pro-user interests}		yes
disable pre-fetching		yes
disable hyperlink auditing		yes
disable local IP addresses leakage through WebRTC		yes
block CSP reports		yes
other features
pre-compilation of filter lists for fast loading of filters		yes
"acceptable ads"	yes	no
disable everywhere	yes
count filter hits	no	no
ability to globally ignore generic cosmetic filters ^{useful for low-performance mobile devices}		yes
cloud storage	Firefox only	yes
point-and-click firewall-like filtering ^{allows for relax or strict default-deny approach}		yes
logger	per-page	unified
point-and-click per-site no-popups		yes
point-and-click per site no-cosmetic-filtering		yes
point-and-click per site no-large-media-elements		yes
point-and-click per site no-remote-fonts		yes
integrated element picker	yes (with excluded domains)	yes
element zapper		yes
easy backup/restore of all settings	no	yes

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

uBlock Origin - An efficient blocker for Chromium and Firefox. Fast and lean.