With the absurd number of intrusive ads and the constant feeling of being watched on the internet, it’s only natural to seek a single, simple tool to fix the problem. Both ad blockers and virtual private networks (VPN) promise to make the internet cleaner, safer, and more private.
The similarities between these two stop where their core functionalities begin. One deals with the appearance of the web, cleaning up content on the page. The other deals with the infrastructure of the web, shielding your connection itself.
You see premium VPN services like Surfshark rolling out features like CleanWeb 2.0, which is an ad blocker that performs surprisingly well. On the other hand, the best-known ad-blocker, AdGuard, has introduced its own VPN service. However, it might not be the best option if you need a reliable VPN.
So based on your needs, you might need one over the other, or maybe both. We’re here to help you decide.
What Does an Ad Blocker Do?
An Ad Blocker is, at its core, a content filter for your browser. Its job is simple: to make your browsing better by never letting unwanted stuff reach you. Ad blocker focuses on the visible (ads, pop-ups, notifications) and invisible (trackers) noise of the internet.
The mechanism involves filter lists, which are essentially long blacklists of domains and code snippets associated with ad networks and tracking agencies. Before your browser loads a webpage, the ad blocker intercepts all the resource requests the site makes. If a request matches a known entry on its list, be it a banner ad, a pop-up script or a third-party tracker, the ad blocker blocks the request entirely.
This results in three immediate, measurable benefits:
- Performance: By stopping the download of resource-heavy elements like video ads and complex tracking scripts, the page load time improves dramatically. You save bandwidth and mobile data, which is a direct financial and practical benefit.
- Experience: It eliminates the most annoying forms of digital clutter: intrusive banners, autoplay videos and time-wasting pop-ups. You can focus on the content you intentionally went to.
- Content-Level Privacy: Ads are the Trojan horses of the web; that’s where many of the most invasive trackers are embedded. By stopping the ads, the ad blocker also stops these third-party trackers from running in your browser, limiting the collection of personal browsing data used for targeted advertising.
Some Ad Blockers Use a “Fake” VPN
Since this article compares ad blockers to VPNs, it’s worth noting that some mobile ad blockers, especially on iOS or Android, use a local VPN profile just to get system-wide filtering permissions. This is not a privacy or security tool. It doesn’t encrypt your data or route your traffic through a server overseas. It just allows the app to intercept DNS requests on your device so it can block known ad domains across all your apps, not just your browser. If a tool is an “Ad Blocker with a VPN setting”, make sure to check if it’s actually encrypting your traffic for privacy or just using the VPN permission as a technical loophole for system-wide filtering.
What Does a VPN Do?
A VPN is a critical tool for privacy, security and anonymity. It works by creating a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN server. All your internet traffic goes through this tunnel before it hits the wider internet.
This does three main things:
- Traffic Encryption: As soon as you connect, the VPN encrypts all the data coming from your device. So anyone monitoring your local network (your ISP, a hacker on public Wi-Fi or surveillance agencies) can’t read your data, see the websites you visit or log your online activity.
- IP Masking and Location Spoofing: When your traffic exits the tunnel at the VPN server, it takes on the server’s IP address. This hides your real location and unique IP address from the websites you visit. This masking lets you:
- Be Anonymous: Websites and advertisers can’t build a profile based on your physical location or network identifier.
- Bypass Geo-Restrictions: By choosing a server in a different country, you can access content that’s blocked in that region.
- Connection Security: The tunnel is essential when using insecure environments, especially public Wi-Fi networks. On these open networks, the VPN protects your sensitive information, such as login credentials and financial details, from being intercepted by malicious actors.
Is a VPN Enough to Block Ads?
No. VPNs on their own are not enough for ad blocking.
VPNs can help you spoof your location, and they are private by nature, so they should help you prevent tracking. But beyond that, it’s not supposed to block ads altogether.
Here’s the lowdown on why a VPN, even a good one, isn’t enough:
- DNS-Level vs. Content Filtering: Most VPN ad blockers work by just filtering out traffic at the Domain Name System (DNS) level. They block your device from talking to servers that host malware or ads, but that’s not the same as actually blocking the ads on the page. Dedicated ad blockers, like browser extensions, can dig deeper and really get rid of the ads.
- Same Domain Problem: When ads are served from the same domain as the content you’re looking at, a VPN is basically useless. For example, any ad Google puts up on YouTube, or a sponsored post on social media, a VPN can’t block because it would also block the whole platform. You’d lose access to the site.
- No Pretty Cleanup: A VPN will block the ad server, but it won’t touch the page itself. That means you’re stuck with ugly white space where the ad used to be, and you might lose some page elements too. A real ad blocker will fix up the page so it looks clean and professional again.
Surfshark and NordVPN
But there are VPNs with solid built-in ad blockers that actually work well.
- Surfshark CleanWeb: This is actually pretty strong stuff. The browser extension version of CleanWeb 2.0 performed exceptionally well in tests, even blocking ads on YouTube. It’s good at getting rid of general ad banners and bad websites.
- NordVPN Threat Protection: This does a great job of keeping you safe from malware and trackers, but in tests, it didn’t do as well against general ad blocking as Surfshark’s offering.
While Surfshark and NordVPN are great at giving you a first line of defence against malware and trackers, you still need a dedicated ad blocker that can really clean up the page.
Can Using an Ad Blocker and a VPN Together Cause Conflict?
They usually don’t. In fact, they work superbly together.
Running a dedicated VPN for encryption alongside a standard browser ad blocker for content filtering is the best way to get both privacy and a clean web experience. Since one is focused on network traffic and the other is focused on web content, they rarely overlap on a desktop or in the browser. The combination creates multiple, overlapping layers of protection.
But this harmony can quickly break down when we move to mobile devices, where system architecture limits how multiple filtering tools can work together.
The “Local VPN” Problem
The main source of conflict is the clever way many system-wide mobile ad blockers work. Since mobile operating systems (like iOS and Android) tightly control how apps can monitor network traffic, many standalone ad blockers use a trick: they create a local VPN profile on your device.
This “fake” VPN is not routing your traffic to a remote, encrypted server; it’s just being used as a technical loophole to force all of your device’s DNS queries (the requests to look up domain names) through the ad blocker’s filter lists.
Since the operating system is only designed to run one VPN connection at a time, turning on your actual VPN (for privacy and encryption) immediately kills the ad blocker’s local VPN profile, or vice versa. You’re left with either privacy or ad blocking, but not both.
The DNS Blocker Conflict
Even without the “local VPN” setup, conflict can arise when you try to use a DNS-based ad blocker (like setting a custom ad-blocking DNS server) alongside a VPN.
When a VPN is active, it takes over the DNS resolution, usually routing all DNS queries to its own servers to prevent DNS leaks and maintain your anonymity. If you have manually set a third-party ad-blocking DNS, the VPN usually overrides this setting. Your DNS requests will then leak outside your encrypted VPN tunnel or simply bypass your ad-blocking filter, leaving you exposed.
The solution is easy
Look for VPNs that allow you to set a custom, third-party DNS server in their app settings. By routing the traffic through the VPN (for privacy) and setting the DNS within the VPN app to an ad-blocking DNS (like AdGuard’s), you get both layered protection and system-wide ad blocking. Alternatively, use the Ad Blocker that comes with your VPN.
Are VPN and Ad Blocker Bundles Worth It?
The bottom line is that whether or not a bundle is worth it is largely down to the real value of each product. VPNs are naturally pricier because they involve operating a massive, high-speed network of secure servers worldwide, which is a costly undertaking. That cost is reflected in the price of the service. An ad blocker, on the other hand, is mostly just software and maintenance.
Scenario 1: You Think the VPN is the Main Event
If you’re already committed to buying a premium VPN for its primary features— encryption, masking your IP address, and allowing you to unblock geo-restricted content—then the bundled ad blocker is almost always a good deal. Effectively, you’re getting a top-notch tool against malware and tracking at no extra cost, or at the very least at a significantly reduced price.
How Much Are You Paying?: The price will be set by the VPN, likely around $3 to $5 per month for a long-term plan.
The Value to You: Since you’re already paying for the VPN’s infrastructure, the ad blocker adds extra security. Tools like Surfshark’s CleanWeb and NordVPN’s Threat Protection effectively block suspicious sites and prevent network tracking, and they do a good job.
Scenario 2: You’re Prioritising a Good Ad Blocker
If you’re paying for an ad blocker and the VPN is just a necessary evil (so to speak), then you’re probably getting a VPN that’s not so hot, or even worse, is compromised when it comes to your privacy.
How Much Are You Paying?: The cost is probably lower than if you were buying a standalone VPN. Sometimes, as low as $2 in long-term plans
Example: A good example is AdGuard. It’s a top-tier ad blocker that beats most other competitors. But their VPN is a little more of an also-ran. It’s fine, but it’s not in the same league as the best VPNs out there in terms of server stability and so on.
Free and Paid Together
If you’re the kind of user who wants the very best, but without breaking the bank, then the best way to go is probably to layer them up:
Pay for Your VPN: Spend your cash on a top-end VPN that really knows what it’s doing (e.g, Surfshark or ProtonVPN).
Use Free Ad Blocker: At the same time, pair that VPN with a really powerful ad blocker that doesn’t cost you a thing, like uBlock Origin, for instance.
With this approach, you get military grade encryption from your paid VPN and top-end cosmetic filtering from your free ad blocker, and it all works together seamlessly. You don’t have to pay through the nose for a mediocre all-in-one product.
What Are the Limitations of a VPN Ad Blocker?
A VPN with an ad blocker is a security feature, not an experience feature. While VPN features like NordVPN Threat Protection Pro or Windscribe R.O.B.E.R.T. are great at blocking connections to malicious malware and phishing domains, they have technical limitations that prevent them from giving you a truly ad-free browsing experience.
The limitations come because the VPN is filtering at the network level, not the content level:
- The Ugly White Space Problem: Since most VPN ad blockers use DNS filtering to block requests, they simply cut off communication with the ad server. They don’t change the visual code of the page. So you get blank gaps, broken image icons, or ugly white boxes where the ad was supposed to be, unlike dedicated ad blockers that use “cosmetic filtering” to collapse the space.
- Failure Against Same-Domain Ads: The DNS filter can’t block ads that are served from the same domain as the website you’re on. That’s why VPN ad blockers are almost always ineffective against sponsored posts in social media feeds or pre-roll video ads delivered by YouTube’s own servers.
- Inconsistent Anti-Tracking: While a VPN hides your IP address, the built-in ad blocker doesn’t usually offer the fine-tuned, comprehensive defense against complex tracking methods like browser fingerprinting or persistent third-party cookies. For real anti-tracking, you need a dedicated tool with frequently updated filter lists and anti-fingerprinting technology.
- No User Control: VPN ad blockers are on/off switches. You don’t have the ability to manage custom filter lists or, more importantly, whitelist specific sites you like and want to support by allowing their non-intrusive ads.
If you want a peaceful internet, one without visual clutter and broken page layouts, you can’t rely on the VPN’s ad blocker alone. It’s a necessary baseline for security, but not enough for user experience.
However, it should be noted that Surfshark CleanWeb 2.0 can bypass many of these limitations.
Wrapping Up
The final takeaway is that if possible, your digital protection should be layered. The choice is not between an ad blocker and a VPN; it’s which ad blocker to pair with which VPN.
We usually recommend pairing Surfshark VPN with AdGuard. They’re both the best at what they do. And they’re priced reasonably. And you can also try AdGuard’s free browser extension, which does most of the job without any subscription.
But if you really need urgent protection, A VPN is going to protect your network traffic. It is more costly, but worth it.