I recommend a combination of the following Safari extensions: Stop the Madness Pro, UnTrap for YouTube, and SponsorBlock.

Total cost was about the same as one month of ad free YouTube. Works beautifully.

I can finally enjoy YouTube again after giving up jailbreaking.

Making some shortcuts retrains muscle memory. I set a dedicated tab in Safari just for YouTube so it doesn’t clutter up my regular browsing.

I use Yattee to connect to a Invidious instance.

Third party YouTube frontends will not be accepted in the App Store. Maybe with sideloading this can change.

On iOS side loading is your best option. Search for Alt store and YouTube.

For simple free ad blocking, you can use Brave browser.

For paid options, there are Safari extensions (I haven't tried these but have read about them): Vinegar does ad blocking and there is also a SponsorBlock extension.

freetubeapp.io is my go to

I used YouTube iVanced (taken down though I think.) but I know there is also uYou plus. The telegram channel "zxcvbn's tweaked IPAs" hosts it along with a lot of other tweaked apps. If you don't have trollstore installed on your device, you'll have to use sideloadly to install it. YouTube is your friend for that part.

if you run iOS 15.1-17.0, trollstore should work. If you're fully up to date, search for sideloadly.

https://github.com/arichornlover/uYouEnhanced

Register a premium YouTube account in Pakistan via a VPN and pay only $2 a month.

LibreTube is pretty good. Although not sure if it's on iOS.

Only if you’re in the EU and Japan. We gotta support sideloading worldwide.

I mean, you could just pay YouTube for their services and get Premium.