AdGuard Review

AdGuard VPN

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AdGuard VPN, originally an ad blocker company, has ventured into the VPN market and offers a user-friendly interface with decent pricing and a good free plan. However, it faces challenges like inconsistent speed performance and limited access to streaming services like Netflix.

Rating

Rating

Good

Price

$11.99/mo

$2.08/mo

Pros

• User-friendly interface with a simple server selection process
• Offers a good free plan with up to 5GB of bandwidth per month
• Kill switch feature is on by default, enhancing security
• Reasonable pricing with discounts available using promo codes

Cons

• Inconsistent speed performance across different servers
• Limited ability to access streaming services like Netflix

AdGuard VPN is a brand new provider on the scene. As you probably can guess from the name, the company initially focused on making ad blockers before making the jump to VPNs. We took it through its paces to see if it has what it takes.

Overall, there’s a lot to like about AdGuard. The app works well, pricing is decent and it has a good free plan. However, there are also some issues that keep it from climbing the heights of our best VPN list, such as some speed issues and difficulty to access Netflix or other streaming services. Let’s go over everything that AdGuard VPN has to offer to see if it’s the right pick for you.

Features

Overall, AdGuard VPN does a good job of being a VPN. Though AdGuard VPN is a relatively new product, its parent company has, thanks to the AdGuard ad blocker, over 13 years of experience in the privacy market and over 35 million users. This shows in the usability of the interface, something that’s relatively rare among new VPNs.

Using AdGuard VPN is as simple as choosing a server from the list on the right and then clicking on the “connect” button on the left-hand panel. Connection speeds are fast, and the ninja — AdGuard’s mascot — will even change his stance to show you’re connected.

That’s pretty much all there is to it, which we like; there’s no need to complicate these things too much. The server list is well designed, too, with the three fastest ones — usually the closest, though not always — at the top and the rest arranged alphabetically below that.

There’s also a search button for servers, which you’ll likely need as there are no other filter options. Manually scrolling through the 65 locations AdGuard has a time of writing would become a chore without it. AdGuard boasts it has over 1,000 servers in those 65 locations, though note that you can’t choose individual servers yourself. The VPN does that for you, you only pick the location.

Operating Modes

However, AdGuard does overcomplicate one thing, namely its so-called operating modes. There are two: the general mode, which is what you use most of the time, and the selective mode, which is when you use what AdGuard calls exclusions. These are sites that you have selected that will make use of the VPN, while other traffic goes unprotected.

If you know a bit about VPNs, you’ll likely recognize this as split tunneling by another name, the ability to pick and choose which sites or apps will use the VPN connection and which won’t. Though it’s a handy feature, we don’t quite understand the song and dance AdGuard makes of it.

Using different “modes” and using words like “exclusions” makes it sound very impressive, but it confuses users more than it helps them. It just seems unnecessary and a bit silly, if we’re honest.

Effectively, the general or “Regular” mode, allows the VPN to work everywhere except for sites that the user adds to exceptions.

The Selective mode only works for sites that the user has specified. Since VPNs have so many use-cases, users may benefit from the selective mode in order to maintain regular connection speeds to most sites but pass through the VPN for specific activities (e.g., for streaming, torrents, accessing geo-blocked sites).

AdGuard Streaming

Finally, it should be noted that if you need a Netflix VPN, AdGuard is not it. Though it’s not completely useless in this regard, very few servers we tried could get through to Netflix, let alone other streaming services.  

Out of the 10 or so we tested, only one got through, which isn’t great. They claim that AdGuard VPN supports connecting to Netflix USA only, though it should be noted that AdGuard does not advertise as a Netflix buster. If you need one of those, check out our CyberGhost review. The company also claims that results are better with US sites like Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, HBO max, Sling TV, and others.

User Friendliness

As mentioned before, AdGuard is very easy to use, though the modes thing gets a bit confusing. Still, we like the single-button approach a lot and we wish more VPNs offered it. This focus on usability extends to other parts of the app, like the settings, which are all simple, one-click sliders.

One big thing AdGuard VPN has going for it is that its kill switch is on by default, as it should be. A kill switch is a vital feature which “kills” your internet connection if the VPN’s server fails for whatever reason. It’s important for just about anybody, yet for some reason many VPNs seem to regard it as optional and require users to toggle it for themselves. AdGuard gets points for this in our book.

Compatibility

Speaking of the app, AdGuard VPN has clients for Windows, Mac as well as apps for Android and iOS. It also features a web extension for Chrome-based browsers. It seems to behave in a pretty familiar fashion regardless of OS, so it’s not like you need to learn a new way of using it just because you switched to your phone.

Support

If you run into issues with AdGuard, you’ll be happy to know support is there. It seems the company would prefer you sort things out on your own, first, though, and offers a fairly large support center. However, we found that large sections seem to have been taken over more by marketing copy than actual troubleshooting.

Thankfully, you can also contact support via email at support@adguard-vpn.com. Replies come fairly quickly and instructions are clear, so it’s a solid experience overall.

Cost

AdGuard’s pricing is reasonable. It has just one plan — no tie-ins with the AdGuard ad blocker, oddly enough — that has three durations. As is normal with VPNs, the month-to-month plan is poor value, costing a penny less than $12 per month, which is a lot. However, the one-year and two-year options are pretty good.

At $47.88 per year, the one year plan is roughly ten bucks cheaper than most of the competition, who usually clock in around the $60 mark, and half the price of market leader ExpressVPN.

The biggest savings are with the two-year plan which costs just $71.76, or about $35 per year, though using our special AdGuard promo code it’s just $48.92 for the first 2-year term. This gives even Private Internet Access, one of the best cheap VPNs, a run for its money.

This discount is even bigger for readers of Addictive Tips: just enter ADDICTIVETIPS83 at checkout to get even better savings.

Note that these prices don’t change, either: if you renew your subscription, you pay the same price again, there are no shenanigans like with NordVPN, which doubles what you pay after the honeymoon is over.

Also, please note that while AdGuard VPN comes with the industry-standard 30-day money-back guarantee, this doesn’t apply to the monthly plan; you pay for that, that money is gone.

AdGuard’s Free Plan

AdGuard also has a decent free plan, which offers up to 5GB of bandwidth per month. All you  need to do is sign up with your email address and you get access to servers in 10 countries: eight in Europe — nine if you count the UK — and then three locations in the United States, namely Texas, Florida and New York.

However, AdGuard VPN does come with one more restriction on its free plan, namely that it caps speed at 20Mbps. In and of itself it’s not unreasonable, but it’s the only free VPN we know of that does this. Still, you play by the provider’s rules if you get a product for free.

Security & Privacy

When it comes to security and privacy, AdGuard VPN ticks all the right boxes, though no more than that. As it explains in its privacy policy, as a Cyprus-based company it needs to adhere to the rules of the GDPR, so that’s good news: the company can’t collect or sell your information.

Naturally, like any good VPN, AdGuard promises it does not log any of your information, though like all no-log policies we’re taking this at face value. AdGuard is nowhere near as transparent as Mullvad, say, which is moving toward letting users audit it themselves.

Speaking of audits, at time of writing AdGuard has not been vetted by any third parties, though we have a feeling that may change soon. It’s become a bit of a rite of passage for new VPNs to get a security firm to go over their policies.

The AdGuard VPN Protocol

When it comes to security, AdGuard has made the odd choice of developing its very own VPN protocol — the set of rules that a VPN needs to “talk” to other devices, like your browser or web servers.

By itself, this isn’t weird, plenty of other services have their own protocols, like ExpressVPN’s Lightway or NordVPN’s NordLynx, but what sets AdGuard apart is that it will not let you use any other protocol; it’s AdGuard or nothing.

We’re genuinely puzzled by this decision. Though the company goes into some detail — not as much as we’d like, to be honest — about how AdGuard works, we wish we’d get more than bland assurances.

On the linked page, AdGuard accuses other services of being “wishy-washy VPNs,” but we’re not sure why using a proven protocol like the excellent OpenVPN or WireGuard makes you some kind of wimp.

These two protocols have been proven time and again by other operators, security experts and a host of others and we’re not sure why AdGuard thinks they’re better than everybody else. Sure, they have 13 years of experience blocking ads, but there are older VPNs around that have no issue using OpenVPN.

Taken altogether, it’s a bit odd and leaves a weird taste in our mouths, if we’re honest, and we’d appreciate more openness from AdGuard about this decision. At time of writing, all we have is a reassurance that more protocols will be added in the near future. They also aim to make their protocol open-source to show how it may be an improvement over current standards, claiming that AdGuard’s VPN protocol is operational in countries like Iran and Russia with major internet censorship.

Speed

When it comes to speed, AdGuard is decent, though it won’t blow you away, either. Overall, performance was spotty, with servers clearly feeling the effects of overload. For example, testing North American servers in the middle of the night gave great results, while testing them during the day saw noticeable slowdowns.

Below an overview of tests we did from Cyprus on a base speed of 100Mbps at about 10 a.m.:

As you can see, these results are okay, except for the Canadian server, which is great, and the Japanese one, which is beyond terrible. That said, the UK and Cypriot servers are only doing okay, we’d expect servers that close to do much better.

It’s a shame AdGuard doesn’t let you use other protocols, it would be interesting to see how much of this slowdown is due to server load and how much to the protocol.

The Verdict

Overall, there’s a lot to like about AdGuard VPN, though it drops the ball in some important spots. As a result, it’s not storming the gates of market leaders like ExpressVPN and NordVPN, though we could definitely see it doing well among users that want an easy-to-use cheap (or free) VPN. If that’s you, then we recommend you check out our AdGuard Promo pricing page with our promo code active for even further savings.