$99.99/year buys a Brave VPN subscription. The same amount of money buys 28 months of ExpressVPN, 4 of them free. Brave doesn’t build what it charges for either, since Guardian operates the servers, writes the privacy policy, and commissions the audits. ExpressVPN won 7 of the 8 sections and lost none.
Privacy ended in a draw, earned by a Brave sign-up token that can’t be tied to connection, stronger than a written promise. Apps, price, features, speed, streaming, server coverage, and bypassing censorship went the other way.
Brave VPN vs ExpressVPN: All You Need To Know
| 🏆 ExpressVPN | Brave VPN | |
| Our Current Ranking 📋 | #3 | Unranked |
| Prices 🤑 | Starts at $2.99/mo | $99.99/year or $9.99/mo |
| Money-Back Guarantee 🪙 | 30 days on every plan | None |
| Free Version/Free Trial 🆓 | No/3 days on iOS and Android | No/7 days on all platforms |
| Logging/Jurisdiction 🕵️ | No activity or connection logs/British Virgin Islands | No activity or connection logs/USA (5 Eyes) |
| Independent Audits 📝 | KPMG, PwC, Cure53, plus a court test | Assured, software plus infrastructure and no-logs |
| Protocols 🌐 | Lightway, WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2 | WireGuard, IKEv2 |
| Post-Quantum Encryption 🧬 | Yes | No |
| Servers 🏠 | 113 countries, 214 locations | 300+ across 40+ regions |
| Specialty Servers ✅ | Dedicated IP in 29 locations | None |
| Ad Blocking ⛔ | Yes, Advanced Protection with parental controls | Yes, Brave Firewall at OS level |
| RAM-Only Servers 🛡️ | Yes | No, ephemeral credential store instead |
| Working With Netflix 📺 | Yes, 15+ catalogs | No |
| P2P Allowance ↔️ | Yes, on all servers | Yes, on all servers |
| Concurrent Connections 📟 | 10, rising to 14 on higher tiers | 10 |
Apps and Compatibility Comparison
Brave VPN covers Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. ExpressVPN adds a Linux client, routers, Fire TV Stick, and Apple TV, so it protects hardware Brave VPN can’t reach. The bigger difference is the front end. On desktop, Brave VPN is a toggle in the Brave browser’s address bar.
It protects the whole device: we connected, opened Edge, and the IP-checking site reported the VPN address, so traffic outside Brave is covered. What you can’t do from the browser is configure anything. Settings are only in the iOS and Android apps, and the kill switch is an iOS-only setting. Desktop subscribers have a connect button, a server list, and nothing else.
ExpressVPN’s client is identical on every platform: a connection button, a location list, and a settings panel that opens in its own window on desktop. Both are fine starting points if you’re new to VPNs. Only one of them lets you change a protocol. Device counts are 10 for Brave VPN and 10 for ExpressVPN Basic, increasing to 12 and 14 on higher plan tiers.
Winner: ExpressVPN ✅
More platforms, settings you can reach without picking up a phone, and a kill switch that works on more than iOS.
Price Comparison: Brave VPN vs ExpressVPN
Brave VPN sells 2 plans and no discounts. $9.99 monthly or $99.99 annually, both starting with a 3-day free trial that requires card details up front. The trial works as advertised, and better trial offers exist. What doesn’t exist is a refund policy. Once the trial converts, the year is spent. ExpressVPN has 3 tiers across 2 lengths. The two-year term adds 4 bonus months, so the bill covers 28 months.
| 2-Year Price | 1-Year Price | Monthly Price | Renewal Price | |
| ExpressVPN | $83.72 | $74.85 | $14.99 | $99.9/year |
| Brave VPN | N/A | $99.99 | $9.99 | $99.99/year |
Basic costs $2.99/mo, billed at $83.72 up front at an 80% discount. Advanced is $4.49/mo and Express Pro is $7.49/mo. Annual plans add 3 bonus months for a 15-month term at $4.99, $5.99, and $8.99. Over 28 months, ExpressVPN Basic costs $83.72 and Brave VPN costs $233.31. At renewal the two nearly meet, with ExpressVPN at $99.95 a year against Brave VPN’s $99.99.
Every ExpressVPN plan includes a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Winner: ExpressVPN ✅
A third of the cost across the first term, an identical price after it, and a refund window Brave VPN doesn’t offer.
Features Compared
The Short List of Shared Ground
Both use 256-bit encryption, and neither leaked an IP or DNS request in our leak tests. They offer an automatic kill switch, though Brave VPN’s works on iOS, while ExpressVPN’s covers all platforms. Both block ads and trackers too, by different methods. Brave Firewall filters at the operating system level, so every app benefits.
ExpressVPN’s Advanced Protection does the same job at the DNS layer and adds a parental control toggle for adult content.
What Only ExpressVPN Offers
Brave VPN has no advanced features. No split tunneling, no protocol selection, no dedicated IP, no Smart DNS, no multi-hop. ExpressVPN’s list:
- Lightway (Turbo). An in-house protocol on wolfSSL, independently audited, and faster than WireGuard on the same connection. Brave VPN gives you WireGuard with no way to change it.
- Post-quantum encryption. Protection against traffic captured now and decrypted once quantum hardware exists. Brave VPN has no equivalent.
- Keys. A password manager built into the mobile apps and the browser extension.
- Dedicated IP addresses. A private address assigned to a single subscriber, in 29 locations from $2.49/mo, useful against CAPTCHA walls and bank blocklists.
- Identity Defender. Breach alerts, theft insurance, credit scanning, and data broker removal, all covered in our ExpressVPN assessment. It works mainly in the US.
Split tunneling, RAM-based servers, private DNS, and perfect forward secrecy round out the ExpressVPN side, and Brave VPN doesn’t come close.
Winner: ExpressVPN ✅
Brave VPN has no split tunneling, protocol selection, dedicated IP, or multi-hop. ExpressVPN has all four, plus Lightway and post-quantum encryption.
Do Brave VPN and ExpressVPN Store Logs?
This is Brave VPN’s strongest section, and the reason it avoids a shutout.
Brave VPN’s Credential System
Brave Firewall + VPN is operated by Guardian, and the published data table is short. IP addresses are used to establish connections and aren’t logged. A pseudonymous user ID plus details of any triggered firewall rule are kept for 3 days. An email address supplied through support is kept for 12 months after the ticket closes. The interesting part is the sign-up.
Payment produces an anonymous token proving only that a subscription is active. Brave can confirm you’ve paid and can’t determine whether you ever connected, when, to which server, or what passed through. That’s a structural protection, which puts it ahead of most policies in this category.
Assured, a Swedish security firm, audited Brave VPN in February 2024 and the infrastructure in April 2024, then verified the no-logs claim later that year. Guardian published the reports and a transparency report covering legal requests.
ExpressVPN’s Position
ExpressVPN rules out 2 categories. No activity logs, so no browsing history, traffic destination, data content, or DNS queries. No connection logs either, meaning no IP address, no outgoing VPN IP, no timestamp, no session duration. It operates from the British Virgin Islands, which imposes no retention duty, and has been through more than 20 audits by KPMG, PwC, Cure53, and others.
KPMG handled most of its no-log policy audits. Turkish investigators seized one of its servers and recovered nothing. Brave VPN, meanwhile, answers to US law as a 5 Eyes member state, but that actually doesn’t do any damage.
Winner: Draw 🤝
ExpressVPN has the better jurisdiction and the deeper audit history. Brave VPN has an architecture that makes correlation impossible instead of merely forbidden. Those balance.
Speed Tests: Which Service Is Faster?
We tested from Serbia on a wired 50/10 Mbps connection, 3 times a day across 3 days, on UK, US, and Japanese servers, using Speedtest.net on a Windows 11 desktop. ExpressVPN ran on automatic protocol selection. Brave VPN offers no protocol choice, so it stayed on its default.
- DL Speed Without VPN: 52.56 Mbps
- UL Speed Without VPN: 10.04 Mbps
- Ping: 10 ms
- Testing Location: Serbia
Averaged retention rates:
| ExpressVPN | Brave VPN | |
| Download Speed Retention | 76% | 60% |
| Upload Speed Retention | 91% | 76% |
Per-location results:
| DL/UL Speed UK | DL/UL Speed US | DL/UL Speed Japan | |
| ExpressVPN | 46.25/9.53 Mbps | 42.04/9.34 Mbps | 32.06/8.65 Mbps |
| Brave VPN | 35.97/9.30 Mbps | 19.75/8.07 Mbps | 26.57/8.54 Mbps |
Uploads finished within 1.3 Mbps of each other everywhere, so Brave VPN holds up on that side. ExpressVPN was 29% faster to London, 113% faster to the US, and 21% faster to the Japanese location. Latency followed the same pattern, 301 ms against 406 ms on the Tokyo server. Brave also caps speed at 500 Mbps by its own admission, which matters on faster home connections than ours.
Winner: ExpressVPN ✅
Faster on all 3 downloads and lower latency throughout. Brave VPN’s US result is less than half of what ExpressVPN managed on the same connection.
Streaming and Torrenting
Streaming
Brave VPN failed this section. BBC iPlayer refused every UK location we tried, including from an incognito window and from Edge. Netflix rejected every foreign catalog. ESPN+ and Max did the same, and iOS and Android produced identical results. Brave doesn’t market the VPN as a streaming tool, and testing confirms why.
ExpressVPN opened 15+ Netflix catalogs along with BBC iPlayer, Max, and Disney+. Its extensions for Edge and Chrome spoof location separately from the tunnel, which is what gets the stricter platforms open.
Torrenting
Brave VPN recovers. P2P works on all of its servers, and downloading Linux Mint through the Croatian server produced solid transfer rates for me.
ExpressVPN also permits P2P everywhere, with the same result on nearby European servers. Neither includes port forwarding or a SOCKS5 proxy.
Winner: ExpressVPN ✅
Torrenting is a genuine draw. Streaming isn’t a contest, and that’s what decided my preference. Pick ExpressVPN over Brave VPN here.
Server Networks
ExpressVPN operates across 113 countries and 214 locations, which is smaller than what NordVPN and Private Internet Access maintain. It’s 10 times the size of Brave VPN’s. Brave VPN offers 300+ servers across 40+ regions. The placement is sensible, covering the locations most people ask for, and the omissions are large. There’s nothing in Argentina, almost nothing in Africa, and no Indian location.
Guardian operates only physical hardware it controls down to the bare metal, running its own hypervisor and virtual instances, and it refuses to deploy anywhere another party owns the hardware. ExpressVPN mixes physical and virtual VPN servers, which is how it reaches India, Turkey, and other places where hosting hardware invites additional attention.
Its infrastructure is RAM-only on 10 Gbps ports, and it expanded the network in July 2026. Brave VPN publishes a 500 Mbps throughput ceiling.
Winner: ExpressVPN ✅
90 more countries, and virtual locations in places Guardian’s hardware rule keeps it out of. That rule is defensible, but it leaves large parts of the map empty.
Bypassing Censorship
ExpressVPN applies obfuscation to every connection, disguising VPN traffic as ordinary HTTPS. In China, it worked about half the time during our testing, with OpenVPN TCP proving the most stable choice and Lightway better suited to normal conditions. Successful sessions handled browsing and social media.
Brave VPN didn’t connect in China at all. No protocol switch is available to try, since the app doesn’t expose one. Outside China, both perform normally. We checked the UAE, Qatar, Turkey, and India, and neither provider had connection trouble.
Winner: ExpressVPN ✅
Half the time beats none of the time. Neither belongs at the top of a China VPN shortlist, and ExpressVPN at least gives you a protocol to change.
Final Verdict: ExpressVPN Beats Brave VPN
Brave VPN is a reasonable product sold at an unreasonable price. Its credential system is the best privacy engineering here, the Firewall blocks trackers across the whole device, and torrenting works. Brave browser regulars who want privacy in one click will be satisfied, and our standalone Brave VPN assessment goes further into what it does well. The numbers point one way.
$233.31 against $83.72 over 28 months. 113 countries against roughly 20. 15 Netflix catalogs against none. Downloads 113% faster on the US server. A kill switch on every platform instead of one, protocol selection instead of none, and a refund window instead of nothing. ExpressVPN costs less and does more. The 30-day guarantee removes what little risk remains.
Try ExpressVPN for 30 Days Risk-Free
Frequently Asked Questions
🌐 Does Brave VPN protect traffic outside the Brave browser?
Yes. Despite launching from the browser's address bar, the connection covers the whole device. Testing confirmed this by connecting through Brave and then loading an IP-checking site in Edge, which reported the VPN address instead of the underlying one.
🔎 Is Brave VPN better than ExpressVPN?
No. ExpressVPN is faster on every server location tested, opens streaming platforms Brave VPN can't, covers roughly 90 more countries, and costs a third as much across a two-year term. Brave VPN's advantage is a sign-up system that prevents the company from linking a subscription to any connection.
🔴 Can Brave VPN unblock Netflix?
No. Every foreign Netflix catalog tested was rejected, along with BBC iPlayer, Max, and ESPN+, on desktop and both mobile platforms. Brave markets the service as device-wide privacy protection instead of a geo-unblocking tool, and the results match that positioning.
🛡️ Who actually operates Brave VPN?
Guardian, a privacy company acquired by DNSFilter in 2022, runs the infrastructure under a partnership with Brave Software. Guardian commissions the third-party audits, publishes them in full, and maintains a transparency report listing legal requests received and what was handed over.
💵 Does Brave VPN offer refunds?
No. The 7-day free trial is the only way to test the service, and card details are required before it starts. Once the trial converts to a paid plan, there's no money-back window, which contrasts with the 30 days ExpressVPN offers on every plan.
🧲 Which is the better choice for torrenting?
Either one works. Both allow P2P traffic on every server with no data caps, and transfer rates on nearby European locations were close in testing. Neither includes port forwarding or a SOCKS5 proxy, so the deciding factor is speed on distant servers, where ExpressVPN pulls ahead.