head to head · open source
uBlock vs thorium
uBlock has 69,033 GitHub stars, 4,427 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thorium has 7,620 stars, 297 forks, 140 open issues and last shipped 23 days ago. uBlock leads on adoption by 806% (69,033 vs 7,620 stars). uBlock is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0; thorium is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. uBlock has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, thorium 4%. uBlock was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chromium), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| uBlock | thorium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 69K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | JavaScript | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.4K | ⑂ 297 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick uBlock if
- You weight community size — 69K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thorium if
- You want the thorium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and thorium fits your workflow better
About uBlock
[![Badge Commits]][Commit Rate] [![Badge Issues]][Issues] [![Badge Localization]][Crowdin] [![Badge License]][License] [![Badge NPM]][NPM] [![Badge Mozilla]][Mozilla] ![Badge Chrome] [![Badge Edge]][Edge] uBlock Origin (uBO) GitHub Releases Stable and development versions on Firefox, Chromium MV2, and Thunderbird. Must be placed manually into web browsers; the Chromium and Thunderbird versions usually won't auto update. Related: uBlock Origin Lite uBlock Origin (uBO) is a CPU and memory efficient [wide spectrum content blocker][Blocking] for Chromium and Firefox. It blocks ads, trackers, coin miners, popups…
read the full uBlock overview →
About thorium
Thorium Chromium fork for linux named after radioactive element No. 90. Windows/MacOS/RasPi/Android/Other builds see below. Always built with the latest LTS version of Chromium. Intended to behave like and have the featureset of Google Chrome, with differences/patches/enhancements listed below. Compiler optimizations such as LTO, CFlag, LDFlag, LLVM Loop, and PGO, to make it FAST. :boom: In addition, we release builds tailored to different CPUs with different SIMD instructions, for even more execution speed. We offer SSE3, SSE4, AVX, and AVX2 builds, named as such in the Releases. If you are unsure which one to…
read the full thorium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is uBlock or thorium more popular?
uBlock has 69,033 GitHub stars and thorium has 7,620. uBlock has the larger community by that measure.
Are uBlock and thorium free?
Both are open source. uBlock is licensed under GPL-3.0 and thorium under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between uBlock and thorium?
uBlock is written in JavaScript and thorium in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, uBlock or thorium?
Choose uBlock if you want the larger community (69,033 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose thorium if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.