Avast VPN vs CyberGhost: Which wins?

Can’t pick which Virtual Private Network (VPN) to use? Too many options and you don’t know where to start? We tested two top VPNs, Avast Secureline VPN and CyberGhost, to find out which is the best.

One of the major reasons people decide to purchase a VPN subscription is to overcome the regional locks applied to some streaming content. While each provider’s ability to bypass geo-restrictions is important, there are many other differentiating features among VPNs.

We’ve created a quick summary comparison of Avast VPN vs CyberGhost VPN, so you can see basic features, pricing, and other important information. We’ll also explain what each of these features does so that you can decide if you need them or not.

Avast VPN vs CyberGhost Highlights

Pricing and Discounts

CyberGhost offers big discounts on its two-year plan, plus an additional two free months. Taken together this means you only need to pay the equivalent of $2.19 a month. This makes it one of the cheapest VPNs available.

By contrast, a three-year Avast plan costs the equivalent of $4.39 a month. This is twice the price of CyberGhost and requires you to subscribe for an extra year.

If you’re more interested in a short-term plan, CyberGhost has six-month subscriptions available for the equivalent of $6.99 a month, or one-month subscriptions for $12.99 a month. The shortest Avast subscription lasts a year, though it’s reasonably priced at the equivalent of $4.59 a month.

Both of these services include a money-back guarantee, with Avast offering 30 days, and CyberGhost offering 45 days. This means you can try them out for a month (or a month and a half in the case of CyberGhost) and get your money back if you’re not impressed.

Best Deal for Avast VPN:45% discount on one-year plan, and 46% discount on two and three-year plans.

Best Deal for CyberGhost:83% discount on two-year plan plus two extra months.

Features

Both Avast VPN and CyberGhost are supported on a range of operating systems and devices, with specialty apps as well as a Linux system installer. CyberGhost has many free features that come with a security suite including a password manager and other pieces of software to monitor your privacy in real-time.

One of the big differences is that CyberGhost offers split tunneling while Avast VPN does not. In effect, this enables you to specify certain programs or websites to automatically bypass the VPN. This can be useful for certain services that will not allow you to connect if they detect you are running through a VPN.

Avast VPN allows slightly more devices simultaneously connected at 10 compared to CyberGhost’s seven, but they are both above the industry average of five.

Both come with what is known as a VPN kill switch, a feature that cuts off your internet connection if your VPN connection drops out. Also known as an Internet Kill Switch, or Network Lock, it helps ensure that the main reasons you got a VPN to begin with—security, privacy, and anonymity—remain even if your VPN were to go down.

Streaming and unblocking

Avast VPN has many conflicting reports about what it can access. It does not have many servers or many locations. When streaming services like Netflix ban a server or IP range, Avast VPN does not have many alternatives to go with. There are some users who report success accessing all of Netflix’s library and others who have not been able to access it for several years. Netflix in particular is known as being very proactive in banning people using VPNs to access its catalog from overseas.

CyberGhost can access many more services due to its much larger offering in terms of total servers and the number of locations. It even has servers labeled with the streaming platforms that they work best with.

In our tests, CyberGhost was also able to access a higher number of other country’s Netflix libraries. If the VPN works with Netflix but not a specific regional library of your choosing, then it’ll just redirect you to the American library.

China

Neither work in China. The majority of VPNs do not get around the Great Firewall of China.

Some users have reported that CyberGhost can be configured so that it works in China. You should note that the Great Firewall blocks access to the VPN websites themselves, meaning that you’ll have to subscribe to and install CyberGhost before getting to China.

CyberGhost suggests you set the configuration to L2TP protocol to get the best performance but can’t guarantee it will work.

Setup and interface

Both desktop versions are slick and easy to navigate. Clear visual design and color coding make it easy to see the main features and the status of the VPN. Settings can be changed on a different page, and advanced settings are kept separate. This can help make it less likely you’ll accidentally adjust something when clicking around.

Both offer mobile apps with the main features easily accessible, including generally one-touch access to turn major features on and off.

Servers and performance

There’s no comparison here: CyberGhost has a much larger network than Avast VPN, including coverage in more countries and vastly more servers in total.

So what does this mean for you as an end-user? Because users are spread amongst a larger quantity of locations, there’s less congestion on the network. This gives you the best performance with low latency and a high-speed connection.

In our most recent speed tests, CyberGhost achieved an average download speed of 296 Mbps. This is very quick and places CyberGhost in the top 5 fastest VPNs on the market. Avast SecureLine VPN, by contrast, achieved a global average of 34.7 Mbps.

Below, you’ll find a list of every country where these VPNs have servers:

CyberGhost has servers all over the world and is present in three times as many countries as Avast VPN. This means a better chance you will not be affected by IP bans, server bans, or similar when using CyberGhost. It is also more likely that you will get a server closer to where you live, improving speed and lowering latency.

Security

While both VPNs use the OpenVPN protocol, CyberGhost also uses IKEv2 and WireGuard with Avast only using this on Apple’s operating systems. Both use 256-bit AES encryption, which given current technology (and allowing for future advancements) is practically impenetrable. This essentially scrambles your data using a cipher, meaning anyone looking in can only see meaningless, jumbled data.

256-bit AES is the current gold standard for encryption, and is used by governments and intelligence services worldwide. The higher the number, the higher the possible combinations of numbers needed to try and unveil a single encryption key. With 256-bit AES you’re looking at 115 quattuorvigintillion possibilities.

Both products offer a kill switch on every platform. A kill switch stops all data transferal whenever you lose connection suddenly, ensuring you never browse without protection. Additionally, these VPNs both use private DNS servers, meaning no third party ever has access to your web history.

If you are browsing the internet and the VPN gets disconnected, then the kill switch ensures that your real IP address is not easily viewed by the bad guys. The way it works is that if the switch is set to on, no data packets can be sent in or out via the internet connection unless the VPN is enabled.

Privacy

Both services are located in Europe and both implement the GDPR through national legislation. Avast says that it has cooperated with law enforcement in the past in response to legal requests by providing data.

Avast states that it keeps limited logs of your activity and claims that none of it can be used to identify you. They claim that this data is needed to monitor server performance and related issues and is deleted every 30 days.

CyberGhost does keep limited logs but this is in line with most VPNs that use limited logging to keep track of basic data regarding enforcement of their device connection policies. As such, whichever of these services you use, you’ll be nearly completely anonymous online.

If you’d like even greater privacy, you can sign up for CyberGhost with a throwaway email address and pay with cryptocurrency. Note that CyberGhost only uses RAM-only servers in its network. These are unable to store data long-term, and ensure that CyberGhost couldn’t store logs of user data even if it wanted to.

Configuration

These VPNs use shared address allocation. This system allows everyone connected to the same VPN server to use the same, shared IP address. This makes it more difficult to trace online activity back to a single user, improving your privacy.

CyberGhost allows you to add a dedicated IP address for an additional charge. This isn’t an option for Avast VPN users.

Customer service

CyberGhost has a live chat feature that enables you to ask questions directly to the support team for simple items. More in-depth issues are better suited to the website’s contact form, which is an email-based ticket system.

Avast has some premium support that you have to pay for, otherwise, it mainly relies on its phone support. It is also possible to use its website to make inquiries through a ticketing system.

That said, there might be times when users can’t access live chat (if they’re in China, for instance). With this in mind, we sent both services three questions over email. You’ll find the average response time below, as well as whether our question was answered or not:

These services had a similar average email response time. Replies were easy to follow, and both VPNs provided step-by-step guides to configuring their apps for use in China. If live chat is unavailable for any reason, email support is a perfectly viable alternative.

The winner

CyberGhost

Apr 2024

CyberGhost and Avast both have some good features. However, CyberGhost is the clear winner of our comparison.

Avast does win in one category, it allows more simultaneous connections with ten to CyberGhost’s seven. Security and privacy are good from both providers, with AES-256 encryption, a kill switch, and private DNS available with both VPNs.

Where CyberGhost excels is in speed, number of servers and server locations. It far outperforms Avast in these categories giving users much more choice and a more reliable service.

CyberGhost also has the edge in customer service, offering a live chat feature allowing users to get help and information from support staff easily.

Methodology: How we compare VPNs

We conducted a number of tests when comparing Avast VPN and CyberGhost. Here are some of the things we looked at:

• Servers – A large selection of servers is important, especially during busy periods. We test that both VPNs have a good choice and that servers are reliable and can stay connected.
• Speed – We test both VPNs with popular activities that need high speeds, such as gaming, torrents, and streaming. Only the one that can handle anything thrown at it will be recommended.
• Safety – We look for a number of different tools designed to protect user safety and privacy. These include; 256-bit encryption, a network kill switch, a no-logs policy, and a variety of VPN protocols.
• Usability – Apps should work on popular operating systems like IOS, Android, macOS, Linux, and Windows. We look for which is the most user-friendly and easiest to use.
• Value – Subscription cost is just the beginning of our value assessment. We also compare the money-back guarantee periods, simultaneous device connections, and more.

For more information, read our complete VPN testing methodology.

Avast VPN vs CyberGhost: FAQs