Astrill VPN Review
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Last Updated on Apr 04, 2024
What We Like
- Five Eyes non-member: Since Astrill VPN is based in the Seychelles Islands, the company won’t ever have to hand over our personal data to the government, as these islands aren’t part of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes or 14 Eyes surveillance alliances.
- Kill switch: Even if Astrill VPN got disconnected somehow, automatically, it would shut down all of our web activity, closing our browsers so that we stay private, a solid Plan B.
- Multi-hop: On top of that, they encrypted all of our data multiple times through a number of servers, and when it comes to encryption, we say the more, the merrier.
What We Don't Like
- Expensive month or six-month plans: Astrill positions itself as a premium VPN, and with that comes premium pricing. It costs $30 per month, which is several times more expensive than most VPNs. Even with a two-year subscription, it still costs $12.50 monthly on average.
- Only five simultaneous connections: We could only connect five devices to Astrill VPN at the same time, which may not be enough for some people, as the average household has 11 connected devices, this may not be enough for the whole family.
- No browser extensions: Although Astrill VPN has apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Linux, Androids and even routers, there are no browser extensions, so you’ll always have to download an app, which will take up more space on your device.
Bottom Line
Astrill VPN is a decent VPN, but it’s nowhere near the ‘premium’ status it’s advertising. Its expensive monthly fees, limit of five devices per subscription, and logging policy that records more than most VPNs do make it less than appealing as a VPN solution.Astrill isn’t very well-known compared to the top VPNs on the market, and we think we know the reason. Its subscription options cost more than the competition. To date, it’s one of the most expensive VPNs we’ve tested, costing up to $30 per month. At least it’s worth it, right? Well, not so fast. Some VPNs are worth the money despite being more expensive than others, so we tested Astrill VPN to find out if that’s the case. Before even buying a subscription from this VPN, we strongly recommend that you read our review to find out if it’s worth the premium price.
What Astrill Logs
| Connection Times | Yes |
|---|---|
| IP address | Yes |
| Websites visited | No |
| Device type | Yes |
| App version | Yes |
Are Astrill Alternatives Worth a Look?
One thing we can tell you right off the bat is that while Astrill VPN is a decent option, it doesn’t have the best prices. For a one-year plan, for example, it charges $180 – three times as much as the industry average, which is $60 or about $5 per month. It’s not a budget VPN, so if you’re looking for something more wallet-friendly, here are three other options to consider:
Video Review
Astrill VPN is a relatively small VPN network based in the Seychelles Islands. Is their server network in 60 countries good enough for you?
Explore More VPNs: If Astrill isn’t making an impression, be sure to read our other VPN reviews including CyberGhost, PureVPN, and Norton Secure.
Pros and Cons
When figuring out whether a VPN is worth it or not, we like to weigh the pros and cons against each other. And for Astrill, there were certainly a lot of convincing pros and a number of disappointing cons. Which one outweighed the other? See for yourself.
Pros
Everything has its roses and thorns, including Astrill VPN. Here are the roses.
- Five Eyes non-member: Since Astrill VPN is based in the Seychelles Islands, the company won’t ever have to hand over our personal data to the government, as these islands aren’t part of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes or 14 Eyes surveillance alliances.
- Kill switch: Even if Astrill VPN got disconnected somehow, automatically, it would shut down all of our web activity, closing our browsers so that we stay private, a solid Plan B.
- Some Netflix access: Netflix and VPNs are like oil and water, but some of Astrill VPN’s servers worked with Netflix; you’ll have to try this out on a case-by-case basis, as Netflix tries to block as many VPN servers as it can.1
- Encryption standards: To encrypt our web traffic and IP addresses, Astrill VPN uses OpenWeb, StealthVPN and Wireguard, solid encryption methods indeed.
- Multi-hop: On top of that, they encrypted all of our data multiple times through a number of servers, and when it comes to encryption, we say the more, the merrier.
- Dedicated IP address option: When we connected to Astrill VPN, we got a new IP address, replacing our devices’ private IP addresses. Since they were shared with other Astrill VPN-users, we didn’t have to worry about being tracked online, but wait: some email providers, and other websites, don’t like these shared IP addresses, so we liked that Astrill VPN offered us a dedicated IP address if we pleased. For more information, check out our page on Astrill VPN’s costs.
- Fast download and upload speeds: We didn’t see huge decreases in speed when we tested out Astrill VPN on our Windows Acer Aspire 5 or our Macbook Pro, although we did see some pretty large increases in latency, which we’ll go over below.
| Macbook Pro | Acer Aspire 5 (Windows 10) | |
|---|---|---|
| Ping without VPN (in ms) | 40 | 4 |
| Ping with VPN (in ms) | 162 | 196 |
| Ping Difference (avg-32%) | 305% | 4800% |
| Macbook Download Speed without VPN (in mbps) | 68 | 24.19 |
| Download Speed with VPN (in mbps) | 59 | 21.14 |
| Download Difference | 13.00% | 13% |
| Upload Speed without VPN (in mbps) | 54 | 22.32 |
| Upload Speed with VPN (in mbps) | 47 | 7.08 |
| Upload Difference | 13% | -68% |
- Decent prices with annual plan: The best cheap VPNs cost $10 to $12 per month if you buy a monthly plan. Astrill’s monthly plan was $30, so it definitely wasn’t cheap. However, if we signed up for a year, we would have gotten a $15 monthly average rate or had we signed up for two years, the rate would have gone down to $12.50 monthly. Astrill is still expensive, but the prices of the annual and two-year plans aren’t as obscene as the monthly plan.
| Term Length | One Month | One Year | Two Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost Per Month | $30 | $15 | $12.50 |
| Total Amount Billed | $30 | $180 | $300 |
| Yearly Savings | n/a | $180 | $180 |
FYI: Need a VPN for your business? Astrill VPN has options for businesses ranging from $8 to $9 per account per month for 10 to 200 accounts.
- Unlimited devices per subscription: Although we could only connect five devices to Astrill VPN at the exact same time, overall, we could connect as many devices as we want, which isn’t always the case; many VPNs only let us connect a finite amount of devices total.
Tip: Astrill VPN works with routers, so in order to get all of your web traffic hidden on all of your devices, it’s easier to just set up the VPN with the router that your devices are connected to. One and done!
- Unlimited server switches: We can’t be bogged down with limits on how many servers we can go on, which is why we were glad to see that Astrill VPN let us switch to as many different servers as our little hearts desired. From the U.S to Canada and back, we enjoyed watching Netflix on other countries’ servers, so long as our IP addresses weren’t blocked, that is. Who knew that Canada had so much programming we didn’t know about?
- Solid iOS and Android apps: The Astrill VPN app has a 4.2 on the Apple store and a 3.9 on the Google Play store. Even better, both apps came with unique subscriptions. The iOS plan would’ve connected one device to their VPN for either $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year, lower than their Standard plan subscriptions, while the Android app was completely free for one device, although servers were limited. That may put Astrill VPN up there with the best VPNs for Android!
- Free trial: Testing out so many VPNs, we don’t like to sign up for long-term contracts, when we can avoid it, and free trials are even better. Although we ended up signing up for a month and more, we loved that we could try out Astrill VPN for free for a week without even having to put in our credit card. Typically, about 15 percent of users of a free trial that doesn’t require a credit card end up signing up for a service compared to 50 that do require credit cards,2 so we feel good that Astrill VPN isn’t trying to trick us into paying for a service we didn’t know we signed up for.
- Split tunneling: Sometimes, we don’t want to encrypt all of our web traffic, especially since using a VPN always slows down our browsing speeds. When we wanted to encrypt our email browser but use a public network on some innocent Buzzfeed pursuing, we routed the email through Astrill VPN’s server, but kept Buzzfeed public to lower our bandwidth. Easy as pie!
- No DNS or WebRTC leaks: When we tested out Astrill VPN for DNS or WebRTC leaks, which essentially translates to whether or not it showed our Internet Service Provider our domain names, or websites visited, or private IP addresses, we found no leaks on either Mac or Windows, keeping our web activity safe and sound.
- Torrenting: When Netflix didn’t cut it, we turned to torrenting, keeping Astrill VPN connected so that our downloads could remain for our eyes only.
Cons
Okay, perhaps you’re thinking Astrill VPN isn’t so bad after all, but here are some of the downsides we encountered. Top of the list is the price, but it wasn’t our only complaint.
- Expensive month or six-month plans: For those who don’t want to commit to a year, Astrill VPN is one of the more expensive options around, costing $30 a month. That is after a series of price increases these past few years. We actually thought Astrill VPN would make its subscriptions more affordable (from $20 per month when we first saw it), but the prices only keep going up. For comparison, most VPNs these days are working to bring their price down as VPN technology becomes easier to implement.
- Logging policy: We had a huge problem with Astrill VPN’s privacy policy. Although they didn’t keep track of the actual websites we visited while connected, which would’ve defeated the purpose of the VPN in the first place, they did keep a bunch of our information, such as our connection times, device type, app version, and most concerningly, IP address. That’s a big no-no in our book. Although the information is deleted after our VPN session is over, it’s hard to trust a VPN that knows your real IP address, even if just for a short moment.
- Latency: Although the download and upload speeds didn’t change much when we connected to Astrill VPN, the same couldn’t be said for latency, also called ping. On our Mac, we saw latency increase by over 300 percent, while it increased by a gigantic 4,800 percent on Windows. It’s safe to say that Astrill VPN is also not one of the best VPNs for gamers, as latency is their Achilles heel.
- Only five simultaneous connections: We could only connect five devices to Astrill VPN at the same time, which may not be enough for some people, as the average household has 11 connected devices,3 this may not be enough for the whole family.
- No browser extensions: Although Astrill VPN has apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Linux, Androids and even routers, there are no browser extensions, so you’ll always have to download an app, which will take up more space on your device.
Recap
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Headquartered in Seychelles Islands, non-member of Five Eyes | Only available in 60 countries |
| Kill switch | Tracks IP addresses |
| Works with torrenting | Shared IP addresses |
| Split tunneling | Netflix only works on some servers |
| Multi-hop encryption | Latency on Mac and Windows |
| Unlimited server switches | Not the most affordable options |
| Unlimited devices per subscription | Only 5 simultaneous connections per subscription |
| 7-day free trial | No browser extensions |
Overall, Astrill VPN can be a decent VPN choice, but it really depends on what you’re looking for. Confused? We’ll break it down for you as neatly as possible.
Get Astrill VPN if you’d like…
- Annual subscription: If you sign up for a year with Astrill VPN, you’ll pay only $15 a month or $180 a year, which is an easier pill to swallow than the $30 monthly price.
- Netflix and torrenting: Although they can’t guarantee that Netflix will work on all of Astrill VPN’s servers, it’s a good option for someone that wants to stream entertainment.
- Split tunneling: Lower bandwidth and access public and private networks simultaneously; it’s a win-win!
But don’t get Astrill VPN if you wanted…
- No logging of IP address: Although they’re deleted at the end of the VPN session, some people want their private IP address to remain private forever.
- Little latency: Although many factors affect latency, Astrill VPN is not a good option for gamers or anyone that wants to avoid latency.
- Cheap monthly prices: If you don’t sign up for a year, you’ll pay $30 a month for Astrill VPN, some of the highest prices on the VPN market today.
If Astrill VPN doesn’t seem like the choice for you, check out some of our other top picks in our NordVPN review or CyberGhost review. There is more than one way to skin a cat, after all!
FAQs
Still have questions? Below, we’ve answered some of the ones we hear the most about Astrill VPN.
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Does Astrill VPN work in China?
Yes, Astrill VPN works in China. The company doesn’t actually maintain any servers in China, but they have some in nearby Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. In addition, you should know that it is illegal to use a VPN in China.
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Where can I download Astrill VPN in China?
In China, you can download Astrill VPN by visiting the Astrill VPN homepage and selecting “Downloads.” In addition you can download the Astrill VPN app at the App Store and the Google Play store.
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How much does Astrill VPN cost?
An Astrill VPN one-month contract costs $20 a month. However, you can get six months for the discounted price of $15 a month, and a whole year for $10 a month.
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Is Astrill VPN free?
Astrill VPN is free, but only as a one-week free trial.
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Netflix. (2020). Watching TV shows and movies through a VPN.
help.netflix.com/en/node/114701 -
SlideShare. (2012). 2012 SaaS Conversions Benchmark.
slideshare.net/totango/2012-saa-s-conversions-benchmark -
Deloitte. (2020). Build it and they will embrace it: Consumers are preparing for 5G connectivity in the home and on the go.
deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/6457_Mobile-trends-survey/DI_Build-it-and-they-will-embrace-it.pdf
