How to Watch Ad-Free YouTube Without Paying for a Premium Subscription

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Our editors are known for seeking out — and successfully finding — under-the-radar workarounds to get you access to the best streaming services and entertainment platforms for free. But ad-free YouTube, of all things, has been notoriously hard to crack in that department, making users pay $15.99 per month for the Individual plan of its Premium membership at the conclusion of a one-month free trial.

Note that YouTube Premium is the only official way to watch all your favorite videos, channels, and content creators without ads. The lower-priced Premium Lite tier ($8.99/month) removes ads on most but not all videos and still plays ads on YouTube Music.

But there is an unofficial hack that will unlock uninterrupted enjoyment of Shorts, new music video releases, or exclusive Rolling Stone interviews with today’s most renowned musicians.

How to Get Ad-Free YouTube Without Paying

According to a 2025 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 84% of U.S. adults use YouTube, so it’s no surprise that the U.S. version of the site is heavily monetized. In fact, many American YouTube users report that the number of ads they’re exposed to has become “insufferable,” with sponsored content being pushed “what feels like [every] three minutes” in the span of a single video.

That being said, YouTube ads don’t play in places where Google doesn’t run monetization. Countries in which in-video YouTube advertising is blocked (be it because of a small population, local prohibitions, or even economic sanctions) include Albania, Myanmar, and Madagascar.

If you don’t currently live in any of the mentioned places, you can still take advantage of their ad-lessness by turning to some of the best VPNs, also known as Virtual Private Networks, for browsing online content from what looks to be a different country.

We’ve been reviewing industry-leading VPN providers for a while now and are constantly tracking new developments in the space. The most reliable of the bunch are NordVPN and ExpressVPN, both of which come with no-risk trial periods that will essentially extend your ad-free YouTube experience to two months versus one.

Important to know: Neither has a free trial in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, NordVPN and ExpressVPN offer generous, 30-day money-back guarantees through which you’ll be able to request a full refund as long as you cancel the respective subscriptions within a month.

Albania, Myanmar, and Madagascar are all present in NordVPN and ExpressVPN‘s extensive lineup of servers, though Albania appears to be the most foolproof choice in the context of avoiding ads.

Free VPNs vs. Paid VPNs for Watching YouTube Without Ads for Free

While there are free VPNs out there that will switch your IP address from the U.S. to Albania, say, they are not as dependable as the ones we’re highlighting here.

Certain complimentary VPNs, for instance, might log and keep your data, have a spotty or slow connection, limit the number of servers, and actually display targeted ads of their own. NordVPN, on the other hand, is equipped with internal ad blocking, runs speedily and efficiently with no exceptions, supports over 220 locations, and helps solve any issue you might have courtesy of 24/7 live-chat customer support.

As for ExpressVPN, it boasts best-in-class encryption, servers in over 110 countries, the ability to be used across 14 devices, and connection speeds that are dubbed “lightning-fast.”

How to Watch Ad-Free YouTube With a VPN

Once you’ve signed up for either NordVPN or ExpressVPN and activated your membership— downloading the application version of each to your computer, phone, or any other device with which you plan to watch YouTube — you’ll need to manually change your VPN location to Albania by searching for it on the app’s landing page, which will then put you in so-called “Protected” mode (in NordVPN’s case).

Once that’s set up, head over to youtube.com or the YouTube app and find a video that’s typically monetized via ads. During our testing, this meant Gracie Abrams‘ discography, for which relevant music and lyric videos loaded without introductory ads or any other kind of ads on an Albanian server.

This entire process takes less than five minutes, and the result is distraction-free YouTube viewing that gets you what you want — the actual clip, that is — faster.

The ultimate trick? Stacking one VPN subscription on top of another after your YouTube Premium trial ends. This makes it possible to binge YouTube sans ads for not just two but three whole months.

Traveling to the Balkans without leaving your house has never been more enticing.