Overall winner

NordVPN

Choosing between VPN services is a tough choice. Both VPNs offer solid security features, great privacy options, fast speeds, and access to a variety of streaming networks.

However, NordVPN beats out IPVanish. Although it’s pricier, it has better content unblocking features, better speed options, along with a handful of additional features that push it ahead.

If you’re still on the fence, you can test out either service risk-free and take advantage of the 30-day money-back guarantee.

NordVPN

IPVanish

1-month plan

$11.95 per month

$5.00 per month

3-month plan

No

$4.50 per month

1-year plan

$4.92 per month

$3.25 per month

2-year plan

$3.71 per month

No

When trying to find the best price, you’ll want to look at the total cost and the flexibility of the plans. The last thing you want is to be locked into a long-term contract when you only need to use a VPN for a few months while traveling.

Both NordVPN and IPVanish have flexible pricing plans. You’ll find monthly subscriptions, along with longer-term plans.

NordVPN offers one-month, one-year, two-year, and three-year plans, while IPVanish offers a one-month, three-month, and one-year plan.

Signing up for a long-term plan might seem a bit more expensive, but both plans also come with a 30-day money-back guarantee. So, you can test out the service to see if it’s right for you.

When looking at the cost between the two, IPVanish is a bit cheaper than NordVPN across every plan. The price difference between the two is the smallest when you’re paying for a month-by-month plan. The biggest discount is when you’re paying for IPVanish on a three-month or yearly basis.

However, even though IPVanish is cheaper, it’s not equipped with the same level of features. Including some must-have features for some users, like the ability to get around China’s firewall.

Winner: IPVanish

IPVanish wins on price, on every single plan. You can get a bigger discount when you pay upfront instead of monthly.

 

NordVPN

IPVanish

Windows

Yes

Yes

macOS

Yes

Yes

Linux

Yes

Yes

Connections

6

10

NordVPN and IPVanish both offer support for multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux. However, there are some big differences between the total feature sets.

For instance, NordVPN is better for Linux users since it offers a command-based installer. While IPVanish requires a manual configuration on Linux machines.

If you’re in a device-heavy household, then you’ll be happy to hear that IPVanish allows 10 devices to be connected at once, compare this to NordVPN, which only allows up to 6 simultaneous connections.

However, NordVPN comes equipped with extra features that the IPVanish VPN doesn’t have. For example, with NordVPN, you’ll find:

  • It can automatically scan for malware and block intrusive ads
  • You can configure the VPN to automatically connect whenever you connect to a wifi network
  • You can install a browser extension on both Chrome and Firefox browsers

Unfortunately, NordVPN doesn’t allow for split tunneling on every application, only when using the browser extension. Split tunneling is a process that allows you to split your network traffic.

This lets certain apps connect to the VPN while others will bypass the VPN. This can be useful if a certain app requires high-speed internet access, while the other can get by using a slower VPN connection.

Winner: NordVPN

NordVPN just barely nudges out IPVanish. Even though it doesn’t allow split tunneling on every platform its ad-blocking and automatic VPN connection sets it apart.

 

NordVPN

IPVanish

OpenVPN

Yes

Yes

IKEv2

Yes

Yes

L2TP

No

Yes

PPTP

No

Yes

Kill switch

Yes

Yes

Both VPNs offer you a wide selection of VPN protocols. IPVanish lets users connect via OpenVPN, IKEv2, L2TP, and PPTP protocols. While NordVPN supports, IKEv2, and OpenVPN protocols.

Both VPNs also provide AES-256 data encryption, which is impossible to encrypt and will ensure that your browsing is private and completely secure. Both providers also have features in place to prevent DNS leaks.

NordVPN also offers obfuscated VPN servers to help get around censorship restrictions in certain countries, this prevents them from finding out you’re using a VPN in the first place. IPVanish has a feature that allows you to scramble traffic when using OpenVPN, but it’s not as effective.

Both NordVPN and IPVanish have a kill switch. A kill switch will automatically drop the internet connection if your VPN drops out. This ensures the device you’re using to browse the internet won’t connect to your ISP without the protection of a VPN.

NordVPN has a kill switch for its iOS app but doesn’t currently support Android devices. The kill switch offered by NordVPN also allows you to apply it to certain applications while forgoing others.

There is one black spot on NordVPN’s privacy record. In 2018 they suffered a data breach where a hacker was able to penetrate one of NordVPNs 5000+ servers and expose the IP addresses of users who were connected to the server during that time.

NordVPN did cut ties with that server provider, but a lot of the damage remained, and it left users wondering how secure the VPN really is. On the other hand, they took additional steps to bolster their security following the breach, so moving forward, the security standards and protocols are higher.

Winner: IPVanish

Both providers are extremely secure, but the NordVPN data breach makes IPVanish the winner here.

 

NordVPN

IPVanish

Servers

5500+

1300+

Countries

59

55+

Which VPN provides the fastest connection speeds? This question can be a little difficult to answer since there are a variety of factors that can influence speeds. For example, the location you’re connecting from, the server location, the speed of your current broadband connection, the router you’re using, how many devices are connected to the network, and more.

Both NordVPN and IPVanish are very fast VPN providers. Depending on the time, day, and the other factors mentioned above, one VPN could be faster than the other.

However, NordVPN does offer more server locations, so you get access to geo-restricted content from a wider variety of countries, like Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Japan, and much more. Plus, NordVPN has almost a thousand more servers than IPVanish, which can mean higher speeds and greater reliability.

NordVPN also offers support for WireGuard. WireGuard is currently the fastest VPN protocol and continuously outperforms OpenVPN, which most other VPNs still utilize.

Overall, NordVPN achieves faster download speeds than IPVanish, plus it has a larger server network and can support more bandwidth. The ad-blocking feature of NordVPN can also improve speeds by preventing ads from loading, which saves on bandwidth.

Winner: NordVPN

Speed is tough to calculate, but NordVPN wins this round due to its larger server network and support for WireGuard.

 

NordVPN

IPVanish

Location

Panama

USA

Zero-logs policy?

Yes

Yes

Cryptocurrency

Yes

No

The ultimate goal of a VPN is to keep your online activity private from your ISP and the government. To achieve this all of your traffic will be rerouted through the VPN, so it’s crucial that you actually trust the VPN to protect your privacy.

NordVPN and IPVanish both have a zero logs policy. This means they don’t keep a record of your activity or connection logs. None of this information is stored on their servers, including your IP address.

Instead of relying on a single server, NordVPN uses a double VPN server setup for even higher security.

When you sign up to create an account with either NordVPN or IPVanish you will be required to input your email address. There are a variety of payment options including PayPal and credit card. However, you can also pay via Bitcoin for a completely anonymous transaction. NordVPN also accepts payment via a variety of altcoins including, Ethereum and Monero.

NordVPN does get a leg up because it’s based in Panama, which doesn’t require VPNs to maintain a log of user activity. IPVanish is based in Orlando, Florida, USA. Since it’s based in the United States it has a presence in the Fourteen Eyes and Enemies of the Internet. This does raise questions about the overall privacy of IPVanish.

Winner: NordVPN

NordVPN wins the privacy round due to being based in Panama and supporting multiple cryptocurrency payment options.

 

NordVPN

IPVanish

Netflix

Yes

Yes

BBC iPlayer

Yes

No

Hulu

Yes

No

Amazon Prime

Yes

No

Torrenting

Yes

No

China

Yes

No

NordVPN is known for its ability to bypass content blocking restrictions. IPVanish has a selection of regional streaming services that it can bypass, but it has difficulty getting around more strict geo-restrictions.

Plus, NordVPN can also unblock a wider range of services and can access a wider selection of Netflix libraries that are based in certain countries. Plus, it can unblock Hulu. IPVanish does have trouble unblocking Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer.

However, neither of these services succeeds in unblocking ABC when you’re in a different country. This isn’t really a failure on the part of either of the tools, but instead, it’s because ABC has very strong geo-blocking features that other networks don’t have.

Finally, we have torrenting. NordVPN offers P2P-specific servers for anonymous torrenting, while IPVanish does not.

China will always pose a problem to VPNs. The Great Firewall receives constant updates, which can render a lot of VPN functionality useless in regard to China

IPVanish is unlikely to work in China. However, users are still welcome to try the VPN to see if it’ll work.

On the other hand, NordVPN works flawlessly in China. The setup time will be longer than in other countries, but it’s one of the few VPNs that works in the country.

However, you’ll need to configure your VPN before entering the country since a lot of VPN websites are automatically blocked by the firewall.

Winner: NordVPN

NordVPN wins this round with its ability to unblock almost every network, plus its commitment to getting around the Great Chinese Firewall.