AdGuard VPN Assessment: Does The Fundamentals

AdGuard VPN is a freemium product that, like all VPNs, masks your identification by providing you with a special IP deal with and subsequently making you look like at a special location, and thus masking your web exercise.

Servers will be inside your individual nation, or will be in one other a part of the globe, which means you might be able to entry content material that isn’t out there regionally. For instance, in the event you set Adguard VPN to a USA server, you’ll be capable to see the broader vary of Netflix content material availability there, or watch stay TV that has been “geoblocked” in your location. 

Regardless of what you might think about, AdGuard VPN doesn’t block advertisements. The ad-blocking service, which the corporate has efficiently provided for a few years, stays separate and requires an extra subscription.

Whereas AdGuard has finished nothing mistaken right here, this might be made a little bit clearer on its web site, as some individuals could assume ad-blocking is included due to the title. Plus, AdGuard is kind of blissful to ship subscribers emails telling them what they haven’t bought, however can have for an extra price. 

Options

As a freemium product, you possibly can obtain AdGuard VPN and use it with out paying. Nonetheless, the free model is restricted. You’ll be able to solely use the free model for as much as 3GB of knowledge monthly – which is barely sufficient for an HD film, and it throttles your web pace at 20Mbps.

That’s enough for many issues, however if you’re paying for a a lot larger pace out of your supplier, it can irk to make use of a product that slows your web down. Typically, we’d all the time advise paying for a VPN, however you would possibly like to provide the free model a attempt earlier than deciding whether or not to subscribe.

From right here, subsequently, we’re wanting solely on the paid product.

AdGuard VPN is accessible for Home windows, Mac, iOS and Android as a standalone app, providing whole-system safety. Alternatively there’s a browser extension out there for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Opera. This limits the safety to your net looking, however as with so many ‘VPN’ extensions, AdGuard makes use of deceptive wording to make you assume it’s a VPN when it’s, in actual fact, only a proxy service which doesn’t encrypt your connection like a VPN.

Chris Merriman / Foundry

A paid AdGuard subscription covers you for as much as 5 simultaneous connections, however you possibly can set up the app / extension on as many gadgets as you want.

Android customers additionally get an additional function not out there to free customers: AdGuard’s DNS servers. These guarantee your individual ISP’s DNS isn’t used, which might reveal your exercise, and presumably your location. There’s even a alternative of filtered and unfiltered, in case you’re organising the app on a toddler’s machine and wish to defend them from grownup and different inappropriate content material when looking the net. There are different choices, too, corresponding to utilizing Google’s DNS, CloudFlare and extra.

Oddly, this isn’t in AdGuard VPN’s different apps.

There’s additionally an app particularly for Android/Google TV, which opens the door to streaming content material from overseas in your TV, nevertheless it’s a disgrace there isn’t an equal for Amazon Firesticks.

AdGuard notes that it isn’t capable of unblock content material from the NBC streaming service Peacock. NBC content material is notoriously troublesome to entry exterior the US, and makes many VPNs stumble, but when that’s a deal-breaker for you, it’s value understanding. It does, nevertheless, work with a number of the most important streamers – Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and HBO Max.

Chris Merriman / Foundry

On the draw back, for extra superior customers, the corporate has chosen to make use of a bespoke protocol, quite than the extra extensively used OpenVPN or WireGuard. That signifies that you received’t be capable to configure your router with AdGuard to protect your complete house community, or unblock streaming on gadgets that don’t assist VPNs corresponding to video games consoles and the Apple TV & Roku gadgets.

Chris Merriman / Foundry

One superior function is split-tunnelling. This lets you use each your common web connection and the VPN on the identical time. Utilizing a black- or white-list, you possibly can, for instance, set it to solely use the VPN for Netflix, or set it to make use of it for all the things besides the BBC. This can be a helpful function that provides to AdGuard VPN’s attraction and, though commonplace on the likes of ExpressVPN and NordVPN, it isn’t a given with each VPN supplier.

Privateness

When you’ve chosen from the 100+ servers in 44 international locations, AdGuard VPN has a kill swap. Which means that if it drops its connection, it can block web entry solely, quite than immediately expose your actual connection. Whereas we had been testing, we didn’t expertise any drops. 

Chris Merriman / Foundry

From a privateness perspective, AdGuard VPN has a no-logs coverage. That signifies that if the corporate was requested to offer details about who makes use of their service and when, they couldn’t, including to the extent of safety and anonymity provided. Sadly, this haven’t been independently checked, so on this one, now we have to take the corporate’s phrase for it that it actually doesn’t log something.

AdGuard’s jurisdiction is Cyprus, which means all knowledge is protected underneath European GDPR guidelines, providing higher safety than firms basing themselves in, for instance, the USA.

AdGuard VPN doesn’t provide the choice to run a “double VPN”, which companies corresponding to NordVPN do. That is the place your connection is routed to at least one server after which one other, so there’s even much less of an audit path and it prevents even essentially the most decided from monitoring you.

That’s not an enormous loss for most individuals, nevertheless, and such options can typically have a big effect on pace. The excellent news is that AdGuard does permit Bittorrent site visitors, so in the event you’re making an attempt to obtain, let’s assume, “delicate” information, you are able to do so anonymously. 

One factor that impressed us was that once we handed the account login to a colleague to run pace exams, AdGuard’s system noticed the login try from a special location and briefly locked the account. That is the primary time we’ve seen that occur and is a reassuring further layer of safety.

Efficiency

AdGuard didn’t leak our IP or DNS throughout our testing: the primary vital hurdle to clear for any VPN.

When it comes to unblocking, we had no points watching content material from the companies it claims to unblock, besides Prime Video. And it wouldn’t permit us to look at HBO Max or BBC iPlayer both.

AdGuard’s pace check outcomes had been lower than stellar. Utilizing a Gigabit connection within the Bay Space of the US, with a base connection pace of 773Mbps obtain and 945Mbps add, we discovered that utilizing AdGuard VPN considerably slows down your looking – listed below are the outcomes for 4 key servers:

• LA: 158 / 98
• NY: 78 / 57
• London: 96 / 55
• Tokyo: 8.5 / 9

Though you received’t really feel a noticeable slow-down on many house broadband connections beneath 100Mbps, in the event you’re fortunate to have Gigabit broadband, you will really feel the distinction. As we talked about, AdGuard VPN intentionally throttles the connection to its free prospects and these outcomes had been roughly as anticipated:

• New York: 21/10
• London: 21/22
• Turkey: 10/8

(We couldn’t check on the Tokyo/LA servers as these aren’t out there to free customers.)

Assuming that AdGuard doesn’t intentionally throttle its paid prospects, we are able to solely conclude that its efficiency isn’t that nice. Now that quick broadband connections have gotten widespread, AdGuard must optimise its protocol or enhance its infrastructure as a result of, proper now, it might probably’t compete with the most effective VPNs.

We additionally discovered an issue with the Home windows app. When waking the check laptop computer from sleep, Adguard VPN was unable to get well and required us to shut down this system and relaunch it. There may be an “Try and Get well” possibility, nevertheless it didn’t achieve a number of makes an attempt throughout our check and this turned very irritating. 

Value & Availability

VPNs are likely to run particular gives on a regular basis, notably in the event you’re ready to pay for a 12 months or two upfront. At time of overview AdGuard VPN was promoting a deal for at $2.99 monthly (approx. £2.52) for a two-year subscription. That is paid upfront, so prices $71.76 (round £60.50). Paying by the month is way more costly, at $11.99 (£10). 

Evaluate this to our present favorite, NordVPN, and it’s a couple of greenback monthly cheaper. NordVPN’s two-year plan prices $4.15 monthly, which is $99.63 upfront.

Nonetheless, on condition that NordVPN gives a a lot wider vary of extras – together with an adblocker(!) – and a lot better speeds, it makes AdGuard VPN look like poor worth, although it’s value including that Nord actually hikes its costs at renewal after your subscription ends. AdGuard doesn’t. 

Verdict

Finally, AdGuard VPN is troublesome to advocate. It doesn’t excel in any explicit space, and it prices as a lot as, or greater than, different extra succesful companies that provide higher speeds, extra apps, don’t completely use proprietary protocols and bundle ad-blocking for no further value.

When NordVPN, Surfshark and Cyberghost all embrace adblocking as commonplace, the truth that AdGuard doesn’t appears like an enormous personal purpose, particularly when the mixture of the 2 companies makes it costlier than these rivals.