Astrill VPN Review for 2026: Is Astrill VPN Good and Safe?

Astrill VPN is often the first option that comes to mind when discussing ways to bypass censorship in China. People are enthralled by its advanced protocols, security features, and apps for all devices. In our Astrill VPN review, we found it to be in quite a strange position. The provider packs enough firepower.

However, it comes at a ludicrous price that most users can’t afford. This, then, begs the question: Is Astrill VPN that good, and, more importantly, is it worth the extra cost? From what we found, the answer isn’t very positive.

While the VPN has many perks, its shortcomings are equally numerous. However, if you’ve set your eyes on this provider, it’s smart to read our full Astrill VPN review for 2026 before you splurge your money. We examined its features, prices, speed, security, privacy, and many other aspects.

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Astrill VPN Review: Brief Overview

💸 Starting price	$12 per month ($300 every 2 years)
🔖 Money-back guarantee	No
🌐 Protocols	OpenVPN, WireGuard, OpenWeb, Stealth
🥸 No-log policy	Yes
💾 Servers	3,000+ in 58 countries
⏸️ Double VPN/Multi-hop	Yes (paid additionally)
🦠 Malware/ad/tracker protection	Yes (no malware protection)
📺 Streaming and P2P	Allowed
💯 Third-party audits	No
💻 Supported platforms	Windows, iOS, Android, macOS, Linux, routers, and more
#️⃣ Simultaneous connections	5
☎️ Customer support	24/7 live chat, email, help center

Astrill VPN Pricing: Why is Astrill VPN so Expensive?

If you’re living paycheck to paycheck, forget about Astrill VPN. It’s costly for an average Joe. Worse yet, there’s no particular way to save on this provider. In our Astrill VPN review, we realized that, whichever way you look at it, you’ll spend an awful lot of money. For instance, the Astrill VPN monthly price is $30.

That’s the most expensive monthly plan we’ve seen. Commit for a year, and you’ll spend $15 per month or $180 every year. Do so for two years, and you’ll spend $12.50 per month or $300 biennially.  Despite the astronomical price, Astrill VPN is courageous enough to include extra features, such as private IPs and VIP add-ons.

Private IPs are dedicated IP addresses, while VIP add-ons provide faster speeds and Multi-hop in Asia. Each private IP address costs $5 per month, while a VIP add-on starts at $10 per month, including 100 GB of monthly data transfer. Each additional 100 GB costs $10 on top, increasing the price dramatically.

You may be wondering how Astrill VPN compares to other VPNs in terms of price.

In a recent comparison to NordVPN, that VPN was significantly cheaper and still emerged as the winner by a considerable margin. This implies that Astrill VPN’s value for money is poor, which isn’t surprising, considering its exorbitant price, multiple times higher than that of all other VPN services.

Payment Methods & Refunds

If you’re dead set on purchasing this VPN, we applaud you for your wealth. In that case, you can opt for a variety of payment methods, such as credit and debit cards, PayPal, or direct bank account payments. We failed to mention one more: Bitcoin.

Astrill VPN allows you to buy a VPN anonymously, which privacy geeks will appreciate. Please note that anonymous purchases aren’t unique to this VPN and are also available in other renowned VPNs, such as NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and PIA.

Now, what about a refund policy?

When you spend so much, Astrill should refund you if you’re unsatisfied. Sounds fair.

In our Astrill VPN review, we discovered that the provider doesn’t issue refunds. We had unknowingly spent our money on it, and when the time came to be reimbursed, we were shocked to see that this was impossible. Shame for our thirty quids that could’ve been invested elsewhere.

Astrill VPN Review: Compatibility & Ease of Use

Astrill VPN supports nearly every device and operating system, from Windows and macOS to Linux, iOS, and Android. We had no issue installing and using the provider on desktop and mobile devices. After digging deeper, we found a few unforgivable limitations at this price.

When a VPN costs this much, it should provide a native VPN app for the Fire TV Stick. It doesn’t. The same applies to Apple TV, equally popular for streaming. We praise Astrill VPN for its comprehensive Linux support and the inclusion of a graphical user interface (GUI), making it significantly more straightforward to use.

However, at this price, the company should’ve put in a bit more effort. Oh, we haven’t mentioned the allowance of five simultaneous connections.  Ease of use is the same as before—it’s terrible. Astrill VPN appears outdated, and the small desktop client, lacking a resize option, is cumbersome.

It’s also a bit buggy and far from polished, which, again, at this sky-high price, should be fixed as soon as possible. Astrill’s mobile apps are okay, to say the least, as they’re simplified, but we found NordVPN and ExpressVPN way more satisfying to use. It’s baffling how little effort Astrill VPN puts into the user experience.

Its apps look the same as they did more than a few years ago. This would be great if the initial design and functionality were spot on. Otherwise, it’s far from commendable. If you’re looking for the best in terms of ease of use, check out the comparison of iPhone VPN apps, for example.

Astrill VPN Security Features Review

While Astrill VPN’s apps lack polish and functionality, they somehow contain many advanced security features. You can notice them if you look carefully. During our Astrill VPN review for 2026, we tested all of them, so here’s our experience.

Astrill VPN Protocols

We tested over 100 VPNs, but this one has some of the most innovative protocols, such as OpenWeb, StealthVPN, WireGuard, and OpenVPN. WireGuard is a standard protocol nowadays, while OpenVPN is often used for its balance of speed and security. But Astrill VPN introduces two protocols for internet censorship.

OpenWeb and StealthVPN protocols are primarily focused on security, privacy, and bypassing deep packet inspection. Both protocols performed well in our review, especially in terms of security. Both use 256-bit encryption, for example. OpenWeb is unique because it’s a connectionless protocol.

This allows users to switch between servers quickly and establish a connection in under a second. StealthVPN is a popular protocol. Proton VPN also uses it. It operates in both TCP and UDP modes, masking your VPN traffic to make it appear as regular traffic. This allows users to combat censorship and preserve online freedom.

In our tests, all four protocols were safe, stable, and relatively fast, although with a few speed drops here and there. Most importantly, during this Astrill VPN review, it actually worked well for what it was designed: dodging censorship. This was especially the case with OpenWeb and Stealth, which we’ll discuss later.

VPN Sharing

When the device doesn’t support VPNs natively, the first solution is to set it up on a router. However, not many people know how to do this, and if they don’t, it can be dangerous because it may void their router’s warranty. For this reason, Astrill VPN came up with VPN Sharing, a perfect fix for inexperienced users.

In the test, it allowed us to share the VPN connection with other devices via a computer (macOS, Windows, and Linux). Astrill VPN provided us with an IP address for our non-VPN-supported device. The IP would be set as the gateway and DNS server. After that, we would connect to Astrill VPN and unblock content or enjoy privacy.

Smart Mode

We found this feature helpful for online banking and local shopping sites. Smart Mode disables the VPN for local websites for safe access without CAPTCHA and total blocks. Online banks, in particular, are notorious for blocking foreign IP addresses, so with Smart Mode, you can exclude their websites from the VPN.

Smart Mode, however, keeps the VPN turned ON for foreign sites. This means you can uninterruptedly access a foreign Netflix library while simultaneously using your bank account with the original IP address. Good news: it works on all five primary desktop and mobile platforms.

Smart Mode is enhanced with the Application Filter, which represents split tunnelling. It’s more like a manual version, where you can choose the domains you want to exclude from the VPN tunnel. If you find the Smart Mode unreliable, this one will scratch that itch. At least it did for us in the Astrill VPN review.

App Guard & Kill Switch

Testing Astrill VPN and its kill switch was fun during our review. We realised it’s among the best ones we’ve used. Its default kill switch does what it’s supposed to: block your online traffic if the VPN connection breaks. We intentionally sabotaged our VPN connection only for the kill switch to react immediately.

It’s a shame that the kill switch automatically disconnects, but doesn’t automatically reconnect to a server. You have to do it manually, which is tedious, because you’ll find yourself retrying a connection until it finally clicks and you succeed—a minor inconvenience. What’s App Guard, then?

It’s an improved version that can only be found on Windows, which allows you to do this for specific apps. If the VPN connection breaks, only the selected apps will be blocked, such as your torrent client, game, web browser, or whatever you’ve set up.

Astrill VPN Leak Test: Is Astrill VPN Safe Enough?

Yes, it’s safe. With so many features at hand, it would be shameful to see Astrill fall from grace. Besides, we haven’t mentioned its IP and DNS leak protection, which also protects your IPv6 address from leaking. That said, its all-around security is bulletproof, which we saw firsthand.

Not a single connection was unsuccessful. Not a speck of our data has leaked. We were in Belgrade at the time, and we used browserleaks.com for our tests. As you see in the screenshot, the test was negative, and no leaks were detected. Astrill VPN offers coverage in a few dozen countries, and we tested each one in our review.

We even disabled its kill switch and intentionally swapped multiple protocols to try to make Astrill VPN stumble. Guess what? It didn’t budge. It stood firmly, providing robust security that meets the highest standards.

Does Astrill VPN Store Logs?

Like recently tested Hide.me, Astrill VPN is registered in a privacy-friendly country. Have you heard of Seychelles? It’s a dreamy place that simultaneously makes for an ideal base for a VPN. With no data retention laws and government surveillance, it’s perfect for a privacy-focused service like Astrill.

Its no-log policy is pretty straightforward for the most part. The company doesn’t store logs of your IP address, DNS queries, browsing history, or other sensitive information. Some anonymised data is stored, including the amount of transferred bytes (used bandwidth), connection duration, connection time, and your country.

Astrill claims to use this information solely for customer support purposes to identify and resolve potential VPN-related issues. The data is wiped clean after 30 days, but users can also request manual deletion if they feel their data is at risk, which is unlikely. The company also claims not to sell or distribute stored data, which is a relief.

However, it’s worth pointing out that Astrill VPN’s no-log policy hasn’t undergone a single audit. This doesn’t mean it’s untrustworthy. It simply means that we have no third-party company that confirms Astrill VPN’s claims, unlike providers like NordVPN and Surfshark, but also many other, cheaper VPN services.

In our experience, VPNs in privacy-friendly, offshore jurisdictions consistently deliver in terms of privacy. As a result, we believe the company is genuine, as it has no scandals surrounding it, unlike some more popular names.

Astrill VPN Speed Tests: Is It Fast and Reliable?

Given the provider’s numerous protocols and settings, it’s easy to experiment and optimize its performance. In our Astrill VPN speed tests, we found the VPN to be enjoyable, but to claim it’s the fastest provider would be an exaggeration.

Before we move on, let’s quickly address our non-VPN speed test results:

We were in Belgrade at the time of testing, where we used a network with speeds of 50/10 Mbps. All Astrill VPN speed tests were conducted on our Windows 11 laptop, using a LAN connection and the WireGuard protocol as the fastest option.

We tested the provider for three consecutive days, using three server locations (UK, US, and JP), and observed the best results. So, here’s what we found. The first table displays download and upload speed losses on each server.

	United Kingdom	United States	Japan
📉 DL Speed Loss	14%	31%	63%
📉 UL Speed Loss	50%	37%	69%

Now, here’s the table that displays accurate speed test results from all locations:

	United Kingdom	United States	Japan
⬇️ Download Speed	45.20 Mbps	36.26 Mbps	24.71 Mbps
⬆️ Upload Speed	5.02 Mbps	6.33 Mbps	3.11 Mbps

Overall, it performs admirably, but Astrill VPN is not faster than ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and Private Internet Access. Considering we lost approximately 36% of our download speeds and 52% of our upload speeds, the results are average.

However, you must keep in mind that the UK server results were exemplary, so if you frequently use servers in your vicinity, you’ll get excellent results. Our speed test is more of a stress test that gauges a VPN’s ability to cope under the most challenging conditions. That said, it hasn’t exactly passed it with flying colors.

Is Astrill VPN Good for Streaming and Torrenting?

The speeds we measured in our Astrill VPN test were enough to enjoy some bandwidth-intensive activities. Is Astrill VPN the best VPN for gaming, though? Likely not. Streaming was a pleasant experience when it worked.

We’re not talking about high resolutions. We’re referring to its poor unblocking prowess. In our tests, it worked with BBC iPlayer and Netflix US, while other popular platforms gave this VPN a mini heart attack. For some reason, Astrill VPN struggles to unblock even ITV in Europe, unlike cheaper options.

We even tested OpenWeb and StealthVPN, but haven’t seen many improvements. Astrill VPN isn’t very reliable for streaming, so it’s best not to rely on it entirely. You’re better off with NordVPN, which also includes location spoofing via browser extensions for better results. Torrenting is another aspect of Astrill VPN that we tested.

Its download speeds were pretty great, with minimal losses when using European servers. All servers are P2P-friendly, so there aren’t any location restrictions. Astrill VPN also features port forwarding that you can implement. While not ideal for privacy, it usually speeds up torrent downloads slightly to squeeze out more performance.

Its setup is a bit complex, though, and the juice isn’t worth the squeeze if you’ve never used it. All in all, Astrill VPN’s streaming and torrenting prowess is okay, at best. Anonymous torrenting is possible, but streaming is somewhat of a letdown, especially at this, you’ll agree, outrageous price.

Astrill VPN Review: Server Locations

For a VPN that covers only 58 countries and over 3,000 servers, Astrill VPN performs remarkably well. Don’t get us wrong. This number of servers is by no means small, but its country spread is less impressive than its cheaper rivals. Take NordVPN or Proton VPN, which cover 130 countries. Astrill lags seriously.

On the brighter side, its servers possess all the noteworthy qualities. They use 10 Gbps ports, they’re based on RAM, and Astrill includes some of the largest dedicated IP databases among all VPNs. Interestingly, the server distribution is excellent, and with under 60 countries, Astrill managed to cover all continents.

You’ll find servers from Asian, American, European, Australian, and even African regions. While Indian servers aren’t on the list, Astrill at least includes a handful of Russian VPN servers with optional Russian private IPs.

Does Astrill VPN Work in China in 2026?

You’ve waited a long time for this test, haven’t you? Let us give you a clear answer. Astrill VPN works in China, and it performs better than its popular competitors. Is it the reason it’s so expensive? Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever the case, Astrill has figured out how to beat the Great Firewall.

OpenWeb and StealthVPN are easily deployed and can bypass the firewall effortlessly. In our review of Astrill VPN, we used OpenWeb more frequently, although StealthVPN’s obfuscation was also more than sufficient. Let’s not forget the VIP add-ons that users in China will like if they can afford them in the first place.

They’re expensive overall, but there’s Multi-hop, with improved speeds for gaming and streaming. Having tested this add-on, we must say that’s partially true, because Astrill VPN’s performance hasn’t improved dramatically, so it’s a half-gimmick. On the other hand, Astrill has a considerable portion of its server fleet in Asia.

By extension, this makes it a great VPN to use in Japan, China, Singapore, or any other Asian country, thanks to its extensive range of local servers, which provide improved and more reliable performance.

Customer Support: Is It Efficient?

Before we conclude our Astrill VPN review for 2026, it’s time to assess its support. We must say we’re speechless. The company’s support is among the best we’ve met. Its 24/7 live chat support responds swiftly, even if you decide to reach out at an unusual hour when everyone’s asleep like a hibernating grizzly bear.

Astrill’s support is friendly and cooperative. It’s always ready to jump in and help you out. The same applies to its email support, which is realized via a contact form. In this case, your inquiry will be tackled in a few hours, which is adequate if you’re not in a hurry and have a minor issue that can wait.

The provider includes how-to guides and FAQs, enabling you to explore the content and find solutions to problems independently. Astrill’s support is simple but highly efficient, which is always commendable.

Astrill VPN Review Conclusion: Should You Buy Astrill VPN?

At the end of this Astrill VPN test, we’d describe the provider as a sequence of ebbs and flows. It’s like riding a rollercoaster. One moment, you’re up; the next, you’re down. The cycle goes on until the ride finishes. Astrill VPN had its share of pride and shame, but in the end, the scales tipped neither way.

On one hand, the provider impresses with its security features, bypassing censorship, robust protocols, strong privacy, and timely support. On the other hand, it disappoints with streaming, middling performance, poor user experience, compatibility, and unreasonably high prices.

The VPN is good, but it’s not worth $12.50 per month. If you’re a massive fan of Astrill VPN and respect its strong suits, then by all means, spend your money on it. We’re pragmatic and believe that cheaper VPNs, such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN, offer more for a fraction of the cost, rendering Astrill VPN inferior.