We’ve written a ton of stuff about Reddit before, as it is a hugely popular website and can definitely compete with all the social media giants in terms of internet traffic. In order to make money, Reddit also shows advertisements to all of its visitors.
Don’t want to see any annoying or intrusive ads and do you just want to browse Reddit without distractions? Here are the best methods to block all Reddit ads on your preferred device.
In short, you can block advertisements on Reddit by using browser add-ons, a specific browser than eliminates ads completely. We’ll also review alternatives, such as DNS blocking and Pi-hole.
Why does Reddit need to show ads to its visitors and users?
Simply put, Reddit is one of the most popular sites on the internet – and server costs aren’t cheap. Additionally, Reddit is a private company, and making a profit is quite important to keep the company running and the staff members paid.
Reddit’s business model relies on two streams of income:
- Display advertising and sponsored posts
- Reddit Premium subscriptions and Reddit coins purchases (Silver, Gold, and Platinum Awards, for example).
Sometimes, you can even score Reddit Premium for free. Premium users also won’t see any advertisements as a benefit, which makes the Premium subscription a good deal to some users.
As you can see, display advertising is the main ‘moneymaker’ for Reddit, which results in people seeing ads. Luckily, the amount of ads on Reddit is really limited compared to Facebook or Instagram, for example, but it can still be enough to be annoying.
An added benefit of blocking ads is that you also block any kind of trackers for advertisement purposes, making you more anonymous on Reddit. Blocking advertisements also means that you have to load less data, which could help if Reddit is feeling slow to load.
Want to get rid of them? Let’s take a look at the best options.
How to block Reddit Ads on iOS
If you’re browsing Reddit on your browser on your iPhone, there are a couple of things you can do to get rid of the ads.
Jailbreaking your device is not required.
When you’re browsing via Safari (the standard Apple browser on iPhones), you can simply install a free ad-block application that will get rid of Reddit’s ads (and pretty much every other ad you’ll come across online). BlockBear is one of the more popular ones, with 4.7 stars and almost 2000 ratings.
After installing one of the adblocking plugins, go to Settings on your iPhone or iPad. Next, go to Safari, and you’ll notice a content toggle for BlockBear (or another plugin you decided to install). Switch it on, and the ads will start to get blocked.
Alternatively, you can also use a browser that has built-in ad blocking. Brave Browser comes to mind, which is already being used by more than fifty million users. If you visit Reddit via Brave browser, you won’t see any of the ads anymore.
Pretty simple, right? Of course, this trick also works for iPadOS devices.
How to block Reddit Ads on Android
The process for Android is actually quite similar. You can simply download Brave Browser from the Google Play Store, or download an adblocker of your own choosing that will apply to your browser.
Google is a lot less strict when it comes to allowing apps in their app store, so you’ll have plenty of options to choose from. Adblock Browser and Brave are considered to be the better options.
How to block Reddit Ads on Windows and Mac
On a computer, there’s a lot more freedom to install adblockers of your choosing. AdBlockPlus and uBlock Origin are both considered to be very excellent adblockers and will make sure that you won’t see any ads on Reddit which are served through an external domain.
Sponsored posts, however, will still be visible – because they’re built into Reddit itself, and blocking them would mean you’d have to block the entirety of Reddit.
Luckily, there are some ways around that.
How to block sponsored posts on Reddit on Chrome and Firefox
As mentioned above, sponsored posts are also ads, but a little bit more hidden. Most regular adblockers won’t be able to spot the difference and delete them, but there are a few plugins that will help you out.
If you’re using Chrome (or a Chromium-based browser that supports plugins), you can go ahead and download the extension called Reddit Promoted Ad Blocker. It even works for people who prefer to use the old.reddit.com domain.
When installed, the plugin will automatically get rid of the sponsored posts. Be sure to go to your extension page and enable the application.
There is a very similar extension for Firefox users, simply called Reddit Ad Remover. This takes care of the promoted posts as well as the regular ads in the feed and the sidebar.
Can you block Reddit Ads on the Reddit App?
Unfortunately, blocking Reddit apps in the official Reddit app proves to be quite difficult. Even when using special methods such as a DNS-based service or PiHole (which eliminates ads before they are even sent to your browser), you can’t block ads in the Reddit app.
The reason is actually very simple: every Reddit ad that is served through the application is directed from the “reddit.com” domain name. Because all of the other content is served from this domain as well, blocking the ads would mean that you’d have to block the entire domain, and then the app wouldn’t really be of much use anymore.
The only way to get rid of ads in the Reddit app remains to have a Reddit Premium subscription. But as we’ve mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are legitimate ways to get Reddit Premium and ad-free browsing for free. Another method, although a quite sophisticated and tedious one, is using Bulk Downloader For Reddit to view Reddit offline without ads, as it will skip the ads when it downloads content.
Summary
Blocking ads on Reddit is fairly simple – even without paying for Reddit Premium. Most adblockers will get rid of everything except for sponsored posts – you’ll need Firefox or Chrome on a computer for that. Blocking ads in the Reddit app, unfortunately, isn’t possible at this time.
