Astrill Review

Key Takeaways: Astrill VPN Review

• Astrill VPN is an expensive VPN service with some powerful features, but it’s held back by privacy issues.
• Unfortunately, signing up with Astrill requires a phone number, and the VPN tracks users via device fingerprinting.
• Astrill is a good streaming VPN that can unblock all major streaming services.

Astrill is a Liechtenstein-based VPN service that has been operating since 2009. Many of Astrill’s features are geared towards users who travel frequently and require some way to bypass local internet restrictions and monitoring. Therefore, many expats and visitors in China rely on this VPN to connect with their loved ones. 

Astrill offers some powerful VPN functionality and a decent server network. Our recent tests have also shown that Astrill’s streaming performance has improved. 

However, when comparing Astrill with the best VPNs, we can see some flaws holding it back, particularly its expensive pricing. Additionally, there are still some privacy concerns when using this service. We’ll cover Astrill VPN’s pros and cons in detail below, but if you’re looking for the best alternative, see our NordVPN review.

Astrill Alternatives

Astrill VPN Review: Pros & Cons

Features

Astrill comes packed with some powerful functions grouped in an easy-to-use menu. You get plenty of standard VPN features, plus a few extras, mostly focused on privacy.

Notably, it lets you customize your connection to a greater degree than most other VPNs, though most users won’t ever need to touch those settings. Despite this freedom for customization, there’s still no way to set Astrill up to automatically connect on launch.

Astrill also comes with a proxy setting if you only want to get through school or workplace restrictions. We still recommend using the VPN protocols, but proxies can be useful when you need faster speeds and a new IP address, but no encryption. 

Kill Switch & Split Tunneling

Astrill’s basic features include an internet kill switch and split tunneling. The kill switch shuts off your connection if the VPN accidentally disconnects from a server. Cutting the connection prevents accidental data leaks.

Split tunneling lets you choose which apps use the VPN and which stay unprotected. It also works on a per-website basis, though you need to know the site’s IP address to add it to the list. 

A feature called “app guard” blocks apps from working if the VPN is disconnected. Should you add Microsoft Edge to the app guard list, you’ll only be able to launch the browser after connecting to a VPN server. Guarding an app can help you avoid accidentally browsing the web unprotected.

One smaller tool worth mentioning is Astrill’s GDPR compliance control panel, available in the paid member’s area. You can use this page to delete any of the anonymized logs Astrill records on your VPN usage. In its privacy policy, Astrill reserves the right to save details from your last 20 sessions.

It’s nice of Astrill to provide a tool that deletes these logs, but it would be a lot better for it not to keep them in the first place. As we’ll discuss in the Privacy section below, even anonymized logs can be used to identify your device if the right clues are present.

Paying Extra: Multi-Hop Servers & Dedicated IP Addresses

Along with the basic Astrill subscription, you can pay extra for “VIP service.” This add-on builds on Astrill’s reputation as a China VPN by adding exclusive servers, mostly in east Asia. You’re limited to 100GB of traffic per month on each VIP server without buying a second plan, which keeps the locations fast by limiting overcrowding.

VIP service also adds the multi-hop feature. With a multi-hop VPN, your internet traffic will go through two servers instead of a single one. The traffic is encrypted throughout the connections as well. In countries that engage in active governmental surveillance, multi-hop VPN is useful for improved security.

You can also purchase a dedicated IP address when using Astrill. This means only you have access to the IP address, avoiding the potential of the “bad neighbor effect” when you share IP addresses with other users. Dedicated IP addresses are also helpful for businesses or when making online payments (you can read more in our best VPN with dedicated IP addresses guide).

Astrill VPN Routers

Astrill states on its website that it sells pre-configured routers. It also includes an applet for controlling the router VPN directly instead of going through the router control panel, much like ExpressVPN Aircove.

If this is true, it would make Astrill far and away one of the best VPNs for routers. However, we can’t confirm that you can actually get routers with Astrill pre-installed, as neither the website nor the larger internet has any links for buying them. The applet does seem to be real, however, and makes Astrill one of the most user-friendly router VPNs.

Sharing Astrill VPN

Despite the words “unlimited simultaneous connections” appearing on the Astrill VPN website, you can only have five connections at once, and only one can be a router. The words are empty — unlike Surfshark, which really does allow unlimited devices to initiate a VPN connection at once. Read our Surfshark review to learn more.

Fortunately, Astrill has an advanced feature called “VPN sharing,” which turns your primary device into a hub, allowing any other devices connected to it to be protected. There aren’t any limits as to how many other computers or mobile devices can connect, so it’s technically unlimited, as long as the devices are in your household.

Astrill Features Overview

	Visit Astrill
General
Payment methods	PayPal, Credit card, Perfect Money, WeChat Pay, Direct Bank Transfers, Monero
Accepts cryptocurrency
Simultaneous connections	5
Supports split tunneling
Unlimited bandwidth
Free trial available
Refund period
Worldwide server amount	300+
Desktop OSes	Windows, MacOS, Linux
Mobile OSes	Android, iOS
Browser extensions
Can be installed on routers
Streaming
Can access Netflix US
Can access BBC iPlayer
Can access Hulu
Can access Amazon Prime Video
Security
Encryption types	256-AES, ChaCha20
VPN protocols available	OpenVPN, OpenWeb, StealthVPN, WireGuard
Enabled at device startup
Allows torrenting
No-logging policy
Passed DNS leak test
Killswitch available
Malware/ad blocker included
Support
Live Chat	24/7
Email support	24/7
Phone support
User forum
Knowledgebase

Pricing

At Cloudwards, we’ve reviewed many VPN services, and we can confidently say that Astrill is one of the most expensive VPNs available (read our best cheap VPN article if you want something more affordable).

Astrill VPN Price

One month of an Astrill subscription costs $30, more than twice the price of ExpressVPN’s monthly subscription. The annual plan goes for $15 monthly. As for the two-year subscription, expect to pay $12.50 per month.

Astrill VPN offers a private dedicated IP address at an extra $5 per month. You can also get “VIP access,” which grants faster speeds and multi-hop VPN functionality, costing $10 monthly. 

We agree that Astrill provides many powerful features, but its competitors have shipped with better for far cheaper. For example, NordVPN and Surfshark are popular VPNs that match or exceed Astrill VPN’s features. 

Astrill VPN Free Trial

The Astrill VPN seven-day free trial requires you to provide a phone number and email address to apply. Each phone number and email address can only get an Astrill free trial once.

If you successfully invite friends to get Astrill, you earn 30 days for free. The limit is four friends for a maximum of 120 extra days. However, you can only invite three friends each year.

Astrill accepts various payment methods like popular credit cards, PayPal, Perfect Money, WeChat Pay, AliPay, direct bank transfers, Bitcoin and Monero. You have to provide your phone number for Monero and Bitcoin, as mentioned on the checkout page.

Astrill Business VPN

Astrill offers a business plan for purchasing 10 or more VPN accounts in bulk. Not only is this a relatively cheap way to cover a whole business, but it also offers access controls so IT can manage employees’ VPN credentials.

Note that Astrill Business VPN is not a remote access VPN — you can’t use it to get on a protected business network from outside the office. It’s the same as a personal VPN, just bundled and centrally controlled. Pricing varies depending on how many accounts you need, but it starts at $9 per user per month for 10 accounts, or $1080 per year.

No Refunds or Money-Back Guarantee

Astrill does not offer refunds or money-back guarantees, according to its refund policy. The page recommends you purchase the $30 month-long plan if you want to try it. 

7-days money-back guarantee

One Month

• Unlimited GB
• 5
• Yes

1-month plan

$30/month

One Year

• Unlimited GB
• 5
• Yes

1-year plan

$15/month

$180 billed every year

Two Year

• Unlimited GB

2-year plan

$12.50/month

$300 billed every 2 years

Ease of Use

Although Astrill’s apps have a relatively simple layout, they suffer from an outdated and cramped design, especially on desktop. The Astrill desktop app is primarily black and white, barely occupying a corner of the screen.

Astrill’s desktop app is compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux, its mobile app works with iOS and Android, and it can be installed on Fire TV Stick. It’s also compatible with DD-WRT and Asus Merlin routers.

The Astrill VPN apps for PC and Android work very well, though we hope the VPN provider will update the Windows VPN client’s appearance. On the contrary, the Android app’s dark blue appearance stands out better. Both apps are responsive and easy to navigate, though the desktop app’s miniscule window will be a hindrance for some. 

Astrill VPN Desktop App

Astrill VPN’s Windows app is tiny and tethered to the taskbar. There’s a large connect button above the server list, and you can also see a simple graph showing the upload and download speeds. It also shows your internet traffic in real time. The client stays on top of the screen by default, though you can turn the setting off if you prefer.

The server list is a dropdown menu, and we’re glad it has a search bar to help with locating specific Astrill servers.

The settings menu is in the top-left corner. Adjusting settings only takes a few clicks, and we find the layout to be reasonably convenient.

Astrill VPN Mobile App

The Astrill Android app resembles the Windows app, but without a graph showing your internet traffic. You have the large connect button to start a VPN session with, the VPN protocols menu, server menu and account expiry date. The security features are located in the top-right corner.

Unfortunately, the server list on the mobile apps doesn’t have a search bar, forcing users to scroll through the list to find a server.

One special setting on the Astrill VPN app for Android is the “battery optimization” option, which is a shortcut to your phone’s battery settings. Users can disable the phone’s “battery saver” mode, which can sometimes shut down inactive apps; turning this off means the VPN app won’t close by accident.

The mobile apps have fewer features, lacking site-based split tunneling, DNS options, a kill switch and ad blocking, among others. 

Generally, we see Astrill VPN’s mobile apps as decent. However, they’ll need some optimization and reworking before they’re able to compete with top mobile apps like Surfshark’s and NordVPN’s.

Speed

Astrill’s servers offer either 1Gbit or 10Gbit connections; not many providers volunteer this information. All of our speed tests are performed using Ookla’s Speedtest website. Since our tester is in Kenya, the results may differ a little from those running speed tests in the U.S. or elsewhere.

Astrill VPN Speed Test Results

The download speeds tend to be quite stable, and we’re impressed with how close they are to the unprotected speeds. Sadly, the upload speeds are a different story. They were adversely affected by distance, especially on the Argentinian server.

The U.S. and U.K. servers we tested were 10Gbit servers, and the readings are beyond impressive. We highly recommend connecting to one if it’s available in the country you want.

The latency readings are also very high, making Astrill VPN unsuitable for competitive games where reaction time and speed are necessary to win (read our best VPN for gaming article if you need a low-latency VPN).

We believe that Astrill VPN has decent speeds, but distance will introduce speed drops and latency spikes. Therefore, the closer you are to a selected location, the better your connection will be. 

Security

We deem Astrill VPN safe when it comes to encryption and VPN protocols. We tested Astill for DNS leaks and found none, confirming that Astrill VPN’s tunneling protocols work well.

Astrill VPN offers four protocols: OpenWeb, WireGuard, StealthVPN and OpenVPN. All protocols use AES-256 encryption, apart from WireGuard, which uses ChaCha20.

Our VPN protocol article has detailed explanations for all of these, except for OpenWeb and StealthVPN. That’s because the OpenWeb protocol was developed by Astrill in 2009. It’s a “connectionless protocol” that lets users swap between Astrill VPN’s servers rapidly.

StealthVPN is another proprietary protocol developed by Astrill and inspired by OpenVPN. StealthVPN was designed for extra bypassing capability, as it adds more obfuscation to your internet traffic. Astrill VPN claims that StealthVPN can let your browser traffic go through deep packet inspection. The protocol also supports port forwarding to help with torrenting.

Apart from the proprietary protocols, Astrill offers the secure open-source OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols.

Additionally, you can modify each protocol’s ports or mode if it’s supported. For example, you can choose between UDP and TCP StealthVPN and adjust the internet MTU value. 

Finally, Astrill offers “smart mode,” which is a way to use the VPN without revealing the fact that you’re using a VPN. This is a good mode to enable if you need extra protection, for example, if you’re trying to access U.S. sites or apps from China or other restrictive countries.

Privacy

Astrill disappoints regarding privacy. When you register for an account and pay using cryptocurrencies, Astrill VPN collects your phone number for verification purposes. This also applies to the seven-day free trial.

The company states in its privacy policy that it has a no-logs policy and tries to keep as little personal information as possible, such as not storing your internet activity or browser traffic. 

However, the provider will track information such as device type, Astrill app you’re using, connection session duration IP address, and total number of transferred bytes. All of this will be purged after you disconnect. Astrill doesn’t sell or share personal information with other parties to protect user privacy.

Note that Astrill stores the last 20 connection records, including Astrill app version number, connection time, country, device type and more — information that could be used for device fingerprinting. This data helps prevent people from getting unlimited free trials, even when using a new email address or phone number.

Many premium VPNs will keep this information to help improve customer support and identify problems. Astrill can’t identify you using this data since it doesn’t contain personal information.

Streaming Performance

When we last looked at Astrill, we couldn’t unblock some streaming services, but the company seems to have learned from these mistakes. This time, we were able to unblock everything on our list.

Although Astrill is still not one of the best streaming VPN options, we’re surprised at how effective Astrill is at unblocking a number of streaming services. This even includes access to platforms for watching Chinese TV channels.

We did notice that, while we could unblock everything, the loading speeds were sometimes slower, such as on Hulu. You may have to refresh the page occasionally to log in, but it doesn’t usually take very long.

Can Astrill VPN Unblock Netflix?

Yes, Astrill can unblock Netflix easily. All you need to do is connect to the location you want to unblock and you can access your favorite shows.

Server Locations

Astrill VPN’s server locations are in 118 cities in 57 countries, with at least 300 total servers at the time of writing. For a VPN with a larger spread, consider reading our Private Internet Access (PIA) review.

The server network includes basic servers, P2P-optimized servers (the ones with a star next to them) and “supercharged” servers — also called “optimized” or “for China” servers. These servers are optimized for Chinese users, offering U.S. IP addresses.

Don’t get this confused with Astrill’s Chinese servers, which VPN users can connect with to get a Chinese IP address. Note that these are physical servers in China, which could be a security and privacy concern (read our best VPN for China guide for more on that). In short, it’s better to use a virtual server for China so that the government can’t access those servers.

You can only enable port forwarding on starred servers. 

Astrill’s VPN servers are all physically located in the listed locations, and no virtual servers are employed. If you’re interested, our physical vs virtual servers article can explain the differences.

After contacting customer support, we discovered that Astrill has physical servers in China, Russia and India. These are all security risks, as the governments in those countries have shown their willingness to seize the servers and persecute citizens for using them.

Customer Support

Astrill has various ways for users to get help. Live chat is the best option, and we generally received assistance within 10 minutes, but waiting times will depend on the queue. Email support will take longer, so expect to wait for several hours.

There’s an Astrill VPN wiki page that contains instructions on setting up the app on various devices. There are also tutorials for other functions, such as configuring OpenVPN. The website has an FAQ page for those who need quick answers. If you need a video, visit this video tutorials page for Astrill VPN.

While we like the live chat customer support, the FAQs and email support are still lackluster. In particular, the FAQs need to be updated more often because they seem to contain some outdated information.

The Verdict

Our current review shows that Astrill VPN’s features remain the same, but its streaming performance has improved tremendously. Otherwise, it offers the same menu, features and interface. It works in China, too, coming with China-optimized servers. However, Astrill’s pricing is outrageously high and there are still some serious privacy issues.

What do you think about Astrill VPN? Do you know of another VPN that works in China? Let us know in the comments section below. As always, thanks for reading. 

FAQ: Astrill VPN Review

• Is Astrill VPN Good?

  Astrill VPN is an above-average VPN that works in China, but it also suffers from privacy problems and outrageous pricing. However, the Astrill VPN features are solid — though nothing you can’t get from other top VPN providers.

• Is Astrill Better Than ExpressVPN?

  No. Astrill VPN is decent, but it can’t compare to ExpressVPN, especially when the latter has advanced features and remains user-friendly.

• Does Astrill VPN Work in China 2023?

  According to our sources in China, Astrill VPN is usually functional in the country. The VPN even offers “supercharged” servers for people in China.

• Does Astrill Work With Netflix?

  Yes, Astrill VPN works with Netflix. It easily unblocks Netflix and grants access to shows in foreign libraries, all loading without significant lag, buffering or delay.

• Is There an Astrill VPN Free Option?

  No, there is no free version of the Astrill VPN app. If you want a free VPN, there are a few trustworthy VPN providers that offer a free version; read our best free VPN guide for more information.