I watched hours of Tubi and Pluto TV to see which free streaming service has more ads — and one has twice as many

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Streaming is only getting more and more expensive these days (RIP my budget), so I'm always looking for an excuse to shout out free streaming services to help you save without skimping on all your favorite shows and movies. Of course, the one downside to all that "free" content is you have to sit through ad breaks. But honestly, since Netflix, Disney+, and all the rest of the best streaming services put their ad-free tiers behind a paywall, having to suffer through a few ads is pretty much par for the course these days. It's practically become cable 2.0.Granted, some free streaming services are more annoying than others when it comes to bombarding you with ads. But which one is the worst offender? I decided to get to the bottom of that question by timing the ad breaks on two of our favorite free streaming services: Tubi and Pluto TV. I had a hunch which one would have more, but even I didn't expect Pluto TV to run ads twice as long as Tubi.It was genuinely starting to piss me off, and then an ad popped up less than 5 minutes before the credits rolled on a movie and I lost it, y'all. I mean, it's hard to argue with free — especially these days — but come on! Do these platforms have to make it so obvious that they're milking our attention spans for all their worth?That wasn't the only discovery I found, too. Turns out the number of ads each platform serves depends on the kinds of shows and movies you're watching. Read on to learn about my methodology and what I found. Do you have a preferred free streaming platform? Which ones should I compare next? Let us know in the comments!