Avast SecureLine spent the past year rebuilding, and the version we tested in August 2026 is a different product. NordVPN still takes the comparison, but the margin has narrowed enough that the old verdict no longer holds. It wins five rounds, Avast VPN wins one, and two finish as draws. NordVPN is stronger on speed, country coverage, and a privacy policy an outside firm has actually checked.
Avast SecureLine VPN is cheaper to own past the first term, automates connections better than anything NordVPN offers, and now reaches enough countries for almost any use case. Here’s all you must know.
Avast SecureLine VPN vs NordVPN: Quick Comparison
| Avast SecureLine VPN | NordVPN 🏆 | |
| 📋 Our Current Ranking | TBD | #1 |
| 🔖 Prices | Starts at $3.99 monthly | Starts at $3.49 monthly |
| 💸 Money-Back Guarantee | 30 days | 30 days for all plans |
| 🆓 Free Version/Free Trial | No/60 days on Windows | No/3 days on Android |
| 📓 Logging/Jurisdiction | Connection metadata, not tied to users/Czechia | No logging/Panama |
| 📝 Third-Party Audits | None of the no-log policy | Deloitte, six times (February 2026 the last one) |
| 🔐 Protocols | WireGuard, Mimic, OpenVPN, IPSec (Mac) | NordLynx, OpenVPN, NordWhisper, IKEv2 |
| 🧬 Post-Quantum Encryption | Yes, as a toggle | Yes, with NordLynx |
| 🌐 Servers | 103, across 140+ locations | 9,500+ in 149 countries |
| 🔝 Specialty Servers | P2P, Double VPN, IP Rotation | Dedicated IP, Onion Over VPN, Obfuscated |
| ⛔ Ad Blocking | Yes, DNS-level | Yes, Threat Protection |
| 💾 RAM-Only Servers | No | Yes |
| 📺 Working With Netflix | Yes, all major catalogs | Yes, all major catalogs |
| 🔽 P2P Allowance | Yes, dedicated servers | Yes, all servers |
| 📱 Concurrent Connections | 10 | 10 |
Apps, Ease of Use, and Compatibility Compared
Neither client is the problem here, which is worth establishing before everything else on this page. NordVPN opens on a clickable map with the main tools beside it and a settings menu that gives each feature its own panel rather than burying everything in one list. Desktop and mobile behave identically.
Avast SecureLine redesigned its client this year, and the result installs in seconds. A single Connect button sits under a card showing the selected country and the virtual IP address you’ll be given, with a chevron that opens a searchable location list. Below it, a row of shortcuts covers the browser extension, device management, and a saved Anonymous browsing profile.
The Windows client was our favourite of its apps. Platform reach is where they part. Avast covers Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, with TV VPN apps expected by the end of September. There’s no Linux client, so a Linux desktop means a router setup or nothing at all. NordVPN handles every one of those, including a Linux GUI it open-sourced in late 2025. Connection allowances match at 10 devices each.
Winner: NordVPN ✅
Two good apps. One of them installs on more hardware, and that decides it until Avast’s TV clients arrive in September. Still a closer call than before.
Avast VPN is Cheaper Than NordVPN: Cost Compared
Avast prices three terms almost identically: $4.39 per month on the two- and three-year plans, $4.59 per month on the annual plan. Committing longer earns you nothing, which runs counter to how VPN pricing normally works and makes the three-year option pointless. The number to watch is the renewal.
| 3-Year Price | 2-Year Price | 1-Year Price | Renewal Price | |
| Avast VPN | $143.64 | $95.76 | $59.88 | $99.99/year |
| NordVPN | N/A | $94.23 | $65.88 | $139.09 |
The first term is close to a draw. NordVPN’s two-year plan totals $94.23 against Avast’s $95.76, a dollar and a half across two years. What happens afterwards is not close. Avast returns to $99.99 a year while NordVPN returns to $139.09, a $39 annual difference that arrives every year for as long as the subscription stays open.
NordVPN’s two-year Basic plan comes to $3.49 a month with 3 months free. A dollar adds Threat Protection Pro alongside NordPass, and the upper tiers add encrypted storage plus Coveron, its identity-protection service. Annual terms include 3 bonus months, with the NordVPN promo page listing whatever offer happens to be live.
Trials separate them too. Avast offers a 60-day free trial with $0 taken at checkout, a different thing from a refund window and a better way to test a VPN properly. Both providers then back the paid plans with 30 days of money-back cover.
Winner: Avast SecureLine VPN ✅
Fifty cents more per month up front, then $39 a year less from the renewal onward. The 60-day trial settles what’s left. Avast VPN takes it.
Security Comparison: NordVPN Has a Deeper Toolset
The overlap between these two got much larger this year.
Shared Ground
Five things now match:
- AES-256 encryption, standard on both.
- Kill switch, dependable on each, with NordVPN’s advanced setting also refusing any traffic until a tunnel is up, and an app-level kill switch that Avast VPN lacks.
- WireGuard and OpenVPN. NordLynx is NordVPN’s in-house WireGuard variant, altered so that no session can be matched to an address at the server end.
- Split tunneling, added to Avast in 2026 on the same platforms NordVPN supports.
- Post-quantum encryption, a toggle in Avast’s advanced settings and an option on NordLynx
Where Separation Happens
Smart VPN Mode is Avast’s best idea. You set rules, and the VPN then activates on its own: public Wi-Fi, banking sites, shopping, sensitive content, or a torrent client opening. Trusted sites can be excluded so the tunnel stays off for domains you nominate. The rules apply to sites, not apps, so you can’t route one app outside the tunnel. IP Rotation is the other one NordVPN has no answer to.
It changes your address on a schedule to make tracking, blocklists, and dynamic pricing harder to apply, at some cost to connection stability. A setting to keep SecureLine active alongside a second VPN rounds out the unusual additions. Double VPN passes traffic through two servers in different countries so neither holds both ends of the picture, and both VPNs now offer it.
NordVPN uses preset pairs, less flexible than Surfshark’s user-selectable version and quicker for it. Threat Protection Pro filters ads, tracking scripts, and dangerous domains, checks files as they download, and covers all systems. It requires the Plus tier. Avast sells antivirus separately, fair enough given that antivirus is its actual business, and its DNS-level tracker blocker handles the lighter version of the job.
NordVPN piles on further: Meshnet joins as many as sixty devices you own into one private network, plus Dark Web Monitor, private DNS, NordWhisper for filtered connections, and RAM-only servers Avast has no equivalent of. Our NordVPN review covers the rest if you’re interested.
Winner: NordVPN ✅
More tools, and the ones only NordVPN has (Meshnet, Threat Protection, memory-only infrastructure) matter more than the ones only Avast has. Smart VPN Mode and IP Rotation keep this closer than it was.
Privacy and Logging: NordVPN Has the Audit Trail
Nothing about your IP, lookups, session times, or browsing is written down. Deloitte checked as much in February 2026, the sixth occasion since 2018, and Panamanian law demands no retention. Restarting a server empties it.
Avast’s VPN policy is more specific than most, and it gets misreported in both directions. Four things never reach Avast’s servers, and the policy says so plainly: your originating IP address, DNS queries, browsing history, and the files you move. On the questions that decide whether a VPN is doing its job, that’s the answer you want. What it does hold is connection metadata.
Connection events last 12 months, and server-side records covering the chosen location, protocol, and server IP address last 18 months. Avast’s stated position is that none of this is tied to individual users, which puts it outside what most people mean by a usage log. It’s still more than a strict zero-retention VPN keeps, and NordVPN keeps none. Verification is the missing piece.
NordVPN’s policy has been read by an outside firm six times. Avast never commissioned a no-logs audit, so its position rests on the policy text rather than on anyone independent having looked at the servers. In February 2024, the FTC fined Avast $16.5 million, as CNN reported, over its Jumpshot subsidiary selling granular browsing data to more than 100 clients between 2014 and 2020, including Google, Pepsi, and Home Depot.
Jumpshot closed in 2020, and the order bars Avast from reselling browsing data for ads while requiring an annual compliance audit. That’s a constraint, though not the same thing as a no-logs audit. Jurisdiction is mixed. Czechia sits outside the Five Eyes alliance, which helps. Avast belongs to Gen Digital, a US company, which doesn’t.
Winner: NordVPN ✅
One policy has been read by an outside firm six times. The other reads well and has never been checked. For a purchase made on privacy grounds, that difference is the whole round in this specific case.
NordVPN is Notably Faster Than Avast VPN: Speed Test
Nine measurements each, spread over three days from Southeastern Europe, taken on British, American, and Japanese servers with both clients set to whichever protocol they consider quickest. The unprotected internet speed measured 190.36 Mbps down and 19.37 Mbps up (below).
Here are the results.
| Download Speed Loss | Upload Speed Loss | |
| NordVPN | 7.8% | 5.5% |
| Avast SecureLine VPN | 22.5% | 20.5% |
London goes to Avast. It came back at 186.68 Mbps against NordVPN’s 184.73, with an upload edge as well and a ping of 47 ms against 60. That’s a 1.9% cost for encrypting the connection, and it’s the round’s most useful finding, because a nearby server is what most people connect to.
| UK (Download/Upload) | US (Download/Upload) | Japan (Download/Upload) | |
| NordVPN | 184.73/18.69 Mbps | 181.50/18.66 Mbps | 160.47/17.57 Mbps |
| Avast SecureLine VPN | 186.68/18.80 Mbps | 157.30/18.61 Mbps | 98.74/8.77 Mbps |
The two longer hops go the other way. Avast gave back 17.4% to Ashburn and 48.1% to Tokyo, where NordVPN gave back 4.7% to New York and 15.7% to Tokyo. Upload follows the same shape: both sit near 18.6 Mbps to London and the US, and Tokyo drops Avast to 8.77 Mbps while NordVPN holds 17.57 Mbps.
UK Speed Test Results:
US Speed Test Results:
Japan Speed Test Results:
Winner: NordVPN ✅
Avast is the quicker of the two to a nearby server, which covers a lot of everyday use. Anyone connecting through Asia will notice what it costs there.
P2P and Streaming: Both Handle the Job
This is the round that changed most.
Streaming
Avast dropped its streaming server category in the rebuild, which sounds worse than it is. The tuned locations it used to keep in Czechia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA are gone from the app, and the standard servers picked up the work: every major platform we tried opened normally, Netflix (major platforms) and BBC iPlayer included.
NordVPN keeps no dedicated streaming category, and it opened all major Netflix regions along with Hulu, Max, and iPlayer. A browser add-on falsifies location independently for services that double-check it, which is how free Super Bowl streams and Hulu outside the US stay reachable. Neither provider asks you to hunt for a special server any more, which is the direction the whole category has moved.
Torrenting
Avast VPN has dedicated torrenting servers, with a Smart Mode trigger that brings the tunnel up on its own when a torrent client opens.
Torrenting works on every NordVPN server, the standalone P2P category having been folded into the main network in 2026. Two routes to the same place: Avast points you at a category, NordVPN removes the need for one.
Winner: Draw 🤝
Both open the platforms most people pay for, and take torrents without complaint. But NordVPN reaches a few more Netflix regions if the library you need is an unusual one, but overall, they are incredibly close.
NordVPN Has More Server Locations Than Avast VPN
| NordVPN | Avast VPN | |
| Countries | 149 | 103 |
| RAM Servers | Yes | No |
| Specialty Servers | Dedicated IP, Onion Over VPN, Obfuscated | P2P, Double VPN, IP Rotation |
Avast tripled its country count this year, from 34 to 103 across more than 140 locations. That closes most of the holes the old lineup had across Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, which used to be the strongest argument against it. NordVPN reaches 46 more countries, and that still decides the round: the difference shows up when you need one specific address rather than a nearby one.
Variety has shifted rather than evened out. Avast swapped a streaming-only specialty list for P2P, Double VPN, and IP Rotation. NordVPN answers with a Tor route that reaches onion sites without any extra browser, obfuscated servers, and dedicated IPs sold on the side. Avast also writes to disk where NordVPN wipes on restart, one infrastructure difference that hasn’t moved.
Winner: NordVPN ✅
Forty-six more countries and a memory-only network. Avast’s 103 is enough for most of what people actually do with a VPN.
Bypassing Censorship: Both Work in China
Avast built Mimic for exactly this: a proprietary protocol that disguises VPN traffic where it’s blocked, and it connected us from China. NordVPN’s obfuscated servers over OpenVPN TCP connected from the mainland too, with NordWhisper handling the softer filtering on campus and office networks.
Both providers work in Turkey and Russia, where the blocking is less capable, and either will defeat a school firewall (it’s very easy, though).
Winner: Draw 🤝
Two working approaches to the same problem. NordVPN gives you a second one to fall back on if the first stops connecting, which is worth something in China specifically. Overall, both are very reliable, though.
Conclusion: NordVPN Beats Avast VPN Marginally
A while ago Avast lost every round. It now takes the price comparison outright and holds NordVPN to draws on streaming, torrenting, and censorship, a substantial year of work. NordVPN keeps the verdict on the things that cost the most to fix: 7.8% download loss against 22.5%, 46 more countries, RAM-only servers, and a no-logs policy Deloitte has checked six times.
Avast retains connection metadata for 12 months and has still never commissioned a no-logs audit, the reason to pick NordVPN if privacy is what you’re buying. If it isn’t, Avast is now the cheaper option to keep: $99.99 a year at renewal against $139.09, with 60 days to try it for free first.
Frequently Asked Questions
⚖️ Is Avast VPN better than NordVPN?
No, though the margin is much narrower than it was. NordVPN holds the overall verdict on measured speed, country coverage, and a privacy policy an outside firm has examined. Avast is the cheaper subscription to keep once the introductory term expires. The reader who should choose Avast is someone already paying for Avast antivirus, connecting mostly to nearby servers, and weighing renewal cost above audit history.
🆓 Does Avast VPN have a free trial?
Yes, 60 days with nothing taken at checkout. That's different from a money-back guarantee, which requires paying first and then requesting a refund. Both providers also offer a 30-day refund window on paid plans, so an Avast subscription can effectively be tested for 90 days before any money is committed.
🔀 Can Avast VPN and NordVPN be used at the same time?
Avast has a setting called "Enable Multiple Active VPNs" that allows SecureLine to stay connected while another VPN client is active. Avast warns it may affect stability or performance, and running two tunnels together compounds the speed cost of each. It's useful for testing rather than for daily use.
🐧 Does Avast VPN work on Linux?
No. Avast SecureLine covers Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, with TV apps expected by the end of September 2026. A Linux desktop needs the VPN configured at the router level instead. NordVPN has a Linux app with a graphical interface, open-sourced in late 2025.