How to search for Android apps without ads?

Question

Is it possible to limit searches within the Google Play Store to apps (gratis or paid) that do not contain ads?

If it's not possible within the Google Play store, is there another effective way to accomplish this?

Related or possible duplicate: Advanced searching in Play app store? — Reddy Lutonadio, Jun 12 '19 at 19:33
There are similar questions about filtering apps by a specific permission or in-app purchases. — Dmitry Grigoryev, Jun 13 '19 at 13:01
Does this answer your question? How do I distinguish apps with in-app purchases from completely free apps on Google Play? — Rohit Gupta, Jun 24 '23 at 12:15

score 58 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 12 '19 at 06:34

58

There's the Playsearch website which allows you that without having to install anything beforehand:

^{Playsearch website, your criteria marked (click image for larger variant)}

In addition to what you asked for, you even can specify how long ago the last update should be at maximum, what size the app should have, what Android version it should support, how well it ranks (stars) – and how wide-spread (number of installs) it should at least be.

answered Jun 12 '19 at 06:34

Izzy

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The kaki87 site used to work great but now appears to be broken? All my searches show apps that have both ads and/or in-app purchases. – spcsLrg Aug 21 '22 at 10:49
No idea. I take all my apps from F-Droid, so I don't have that search issue. In the F-Droid client you can simply configure not to show apps with specific anti-features, so no need for 3rd party search tools ;) – Izzy Aug 22 '22 at 18:41

xavier_fakerat · Answer 2 · 2019-06-13T14:03:26.063

Not sure with native Google Playstore, but you could use Yalp or a fork of Yalp, Aurora (F-droid link), it has many search filters e.g for ads, gratis, number of downloads etc..

Aurora Store is an alternate ( FOSS client) to Google's Play Store, with an elegant design, using Aurora you can download apps, update existing apps, search for apps, get details about in-app trackers and much more.

Select the filter and tap apply, your search results will match your criteria.

^{Filters in Aurora (click image for larger variant)}

^{Disclaimer I am not affiliated with Aurora, but I use it as a replacement to Google play store client}

Acknowledgements

Xda thread

Note that Aurora is also available at F-Droid :) – Izzy Jun 12 '19 at 06:38 — Izzy, Jun 12 '19 at 06:38

jake n · Answer 3 · 2023-06-24T02:08:52.853

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With App Finder, you can filter for apps without ads (and many other criteria). Also, in the result list it is indicated for each app if it contains ads.

It has 2,380,000 apps indexed currently, much more than playsearch.kaki87.net and reallyfreeapps.com. Also, there are more filters available, and more information is shown in the result list.

Available from Google Play here.

For more information see the thread on XDA, and here.

Disclosure: I am from Skyica LLC, the developer of App Finder

edited Jun 24 '23 at 02:08

answered Sep 28 '22 at 22:23

jake n

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Thanks Jake. AppQuery looks very promising! Is it offered in the spirit of generosity and giving, or does it have a profit-based revenue model? Also, do you intend to release it on F-Droid too? – End Anti-Semitic Hate Sep 29 '22 at 06:21
I has a profit-based revenue model, however there is a free tier, and I'll try to make it affordable to everyone. Also note that for the database alone a 32-GB-RAM cloud server must be paid, and crawling is expensive also. – jake n Sep 29 '22 at 11:39
Thanks for the update Jake. I've been thinking about starting a project (completely unrelated to your project) that involves a fair amount of crawling. I wasn't expecting the actual crawling to be very expensive, but based on your comment, perhaps I need to revisit the potential cost. What is making the crawling expensive for your project? – End Anti-Semitic Hate Sep 29 '22 at 21:14
crawling 1.5 mio pages (*2 + something for "similar apps"+"more from developer") each day or every few days takes some resources you have to pay in the cloud, or you must buy and run your own servers. – jake n Sep 29 '22 at 23:53
AppQuery is now available worldwide, has data for all countries, and the number of apps has increased from 1.5 to 2.2 million – jake n Dec 24 '22 at 20:01

score 3 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 07 '21 at 10:46

3

I developed an app (and web) called reallyfreeapps for Android to look at apps and games with no ads and no IAP. You can take a look at https://reallyfreeapps.com

edited Sep 07 '21 at 10:46

End Anti-Semitic Hate

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answered Sep 06 '21 at 11:39

user2794430

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I ran into apps which appear in the search results but have been removed from the play store. e.g. Piano Lessons 2021 on https://reallyfreeapps.com/?search=piano – jayvdb Dec 12 '21 at 00:56

How to search for Android apps without ads?

4 Answers4