Astrill VPN

Best for: people who specifically need reliable access from mainland China and are willing to pay a premium for a protocol built around that one job — not a general-purpose VPN recommendation, and not for anyone who wants their no-logs claim independently verified.

Pros

• StealthVPN, Astrill’s proprietary obfuscation protocol, is reported by multiple independent China-focused testers to reliably defeat the Great Firewall’s deep packet inspection — one 2026 test cites a 98% success rate, among the highest of any commercial VPN
• Runs on dedicated hardware rather than shared virtual servers
• App Guard offers granular per-application kill switch control on Windows, on top of the standard kill switch
• Split tunneling covers both specific apps and specific websites/domains, on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android
• P2P/torrenting supported with port forwarding on 200+ marked servers

Cons

• No independent no-logs or security audit exists, at all. Its no-logs claim is entirely self-reported, with no third party ever verifying it.
• Astrill’s own support page admits it retains connection time, IP address, device type, and the last 20 connection records for up to 30 days — a real (if temporary) logging practice, not a strict zero-log design
• Independent 2026 speed benchmarks put Astrill near the bottom of the field tested (19th of 22 providers, around 400 Mbps), and StealthVPN specifically showed 42-50% speed drops in another test — the obfuscation comes at a real cost, and dedicated hardware doesn’t fully offset it
• Expensive: $30/month with no discount, and even the 2-year rate ($12.50/mo, $300 total) is the priciest baseline of any VPN we’ve reviewed, with no free tier
• Marketing claims “unlimited devices” in one spot and “5 simultaneous connections” in the pricing details on the same page — we’re using the more specific number, but the inconsistency itself is a flag
• App Guard (the advanced kill switch) doesn’t work with the OpenWeb protocol and isn’t available on iOS or Android at all

Why It’s Here Despite the Trust Gap

Astrill is included for one specific, narrow reason: independent China-focused testers consistently rank its StealthVPN protocol among the most effective at defeating the Great Firewall, a use case where many well-audited VPNs have inconsistent or outright failing track records. Astrill itself markets directly to this use case, running a dedicated China-focused landing page separate from its main site, rather than treating China as a footnote. That’s a real, useful signal for someone specifically planning travel to or living in mainland China. It does not make Astrill a broadly trustworthy privacy product by our usual standard — there’s no independent verification of its no-logs claim, and its own documentation describes real (if time-limited) session logging. Treat this review as “best available option for a specific hard problem,” not a general recommendation.

Pricing

Astrill costs $30/month with no discount for month-to-month billing, dropping to $15/month on a 1-year term ($180 total) and $12.50/month on a 2-year term ($300 total, marketed against a $720 list price). There’s no free trial.

Protocols & Security Features

StealthVPN is Astrill’s own obfuscation protocol, designed specifically to disguise VPN traffic as regular HTTPS browsing and evade the kind of behavioral detection China’s firewall uses. OpenVPN, WireGuard, and a browsing-focused “OpenWeb” mode round out the protocol list. App Guard, an enhanced per-application kill switch for Windows, keeps running even when the main Astrill app isn’t open, though it doesn’t work with OpenWeb and has no iOS/Android equivalent. Split tunneling is available through separate Application Filter and Website Filter tools on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android.

Speed

Independent 2026 benchmarks are not kind to Astrill: one test placed it 19th of 22 providers at roughly 400 Mbps, and another measured 42-50% speed drops specifically on StealthVPN compared to a no-VPN baseline. Dedicated (non-shared) server hardware is a genuine architectural plus, but the obfuscation layer that makes StealthVPN effective against censorship appears to come with a real, measurable speed cost.

Jurisdiction

Astrill operates under the legal entity Veloxee Corp., registered in Vaduz, Liechtenstein — a small European jurisdiction outside the EU with no mandatory data-retention law for VPN providers. Some third-party sources describe Astrill as Seychelles-based, which appears to be outdated or incorrect; the company’s own current Terms of Service name Liechtenstein.

Our Rating

Rating: 5.1/10