After a lot of research, I found two possible options: Control D HaGeZi Pro++ and RethinkDNS. RethinkDNS offers more customization, but I found the setup too complicated and left it halfway.
My requirements:
- Non-rooted Android phone.
- Keep Google Chrome for official Chrome Sync.
- No local VPN-based ad blockers because my banking and payment apps detect them and block access.
- Free, unlimited DNS queries with good ad blocking.
I previously used NextDNS and AdGuard DNS to combine AdGuard and OISD blocklists, but their free plans have a 300,000 monthly query limit, which I used up in about two weeks.
I even bought AdGuard's lifetime family plan and used its Android APK for a couple of months. I specifically used the APK because the Play Store version doesn't support all the features I needed. AdGuard's filtering was excellent, especially for in-app ads in JioHotstar, SonyLIV, and mobile games. I've tried several alternatives, but none blocked these ads as effectively as AdGuard.
However, the local VPN caused problems. Sometimes AdGuard wouldn't start automatically after restarting my phone, and banking/payment apps remained blocked even after I excluded them from filtering.
Now I'm trying Control D's HaGeZi Pro++ through Android Private DNS. After a couple of hours, I haven't noticed any issues. On an ad-blocking test website, Chrome scored around 97%, compared with 84% in Edge using only uBlock Origin Lite. The results seem comparable.
The main limitation is that YouTube ads aren't blocked in Chrome Android, but many people use alternative YouTube clients anyway. I haven't tested Control D on Windows yet.
Is Control D HaGeZi Pro++ a good long-term option, or is there a better free, unlimited alternative that can block in-app ads as effectively as AdGuard without requiring a local VPN?
