AdGuard VPN Review (2026)

Quick answer

AdGuard VPN has not had an independent no-logs audit. Its no-logs claim is self-reported. It does have one independent assessment, a 2025 mobile-app security review tied to a Google Play badge, but that checks the Android app for vulnerabilities, not whether the company keeps logs. The two are easy to confuse and worth keeping apart. Beyond that, AdGuard VPN is the competent, simple VPN you would expect from a well-known ad-blocking company. It runs a proprietary protocol rather than OpenVPN or WireGuard, sits in EU Cyprus, and scores 2.88 in our matrix. It is a reasonable pick for an existing AdGuard user who wants a no-fuss VPN for everyday browsing, and the wrong pick if you need an audited no-logs record or the strongest protocols.

Has AdGuard VPN been audited?

This is the question the search data shows people asking, so here is the precise answer. AdGuard VPN has never published an independent audit of its no-logs claim. Reviewers who have looked say the same, that its apps and privacy policy have not been put through an external privacy audit, and AdGuard's own privacy policy contains no reference to one (vpnMentor; AdGuard VPN privacy policy).

There is one real independent assessment, and it is worth describing exactly because it is easy to oversell. In March 2025 AdGuard VPN's Android app passed a Mobile App Security Assessment by Leviathan Security Group and earned Google Play's 'independent security review' badge (AdGuard). That is a genuine security check of the app, performed by an outside firm. It is not a no-logs audit. It does not examine the servers, it does not verify what the company does or does not record, and no public findings report was released, only an attestation that the app meets Google's security requirements.

So when a reader asks 'is AdGuard VPN audited', the honest reply is that its software has had one security review, but its privacy promise has not been independently verified. The Google Play badge is a real thing being asked to stand in for a different, harder thing. The strongest providers publish recurring third-party no-logs audits precisely so the claim does not rest on trust. AdGuard does not, and a review that let the badge blur into a no-logs audit would be answering the wrong question.

What AdGuard VPN actually is

AdGuard VPN is the VPN arm of AdGuard, the long-running ad-blocking company. It launched in 2020 on a proprietary protocol the company wrote from scratch, designed to be fast and hard to detect (AdGuard). That is the headline technical fact, and it cuts both ways. The custom protocol can slip past some blocking, but AdGuard VPN does not offer OpenVPN or WireGuard, the open, audited standards most serious VPNs rely on, which means you are trusting a closed protocol rather than a peer-reviewed one (vpnMentor).

The rest is conventional and competent. It uses AES-256 encryption, covers Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, the major browsers, routers and TV platforms, and runs a freemium model with a free tier capped at 3 GB a month. Independent reviewer testing has found it clean of IP, DNS and WebRTC leaks. It is not built for heavy streaming or low-latency gaming, and its network is modest next to the mainstream giants.

Who owns AdGuard VPN and where it is based

AdGuard VPN is operated by AdGuard Software Limited, a company registered in Cyprus (AdGuard). Cyprus is in the European Union, so the service operates under GDPR and sits outside the Five, Nine and Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing alliances, which our jurisdiction data grades as a good position.

The origin is worth stating plainly because privacy-minded readers ask about it. AdGuard began in 2009 as an ad-blocking project in Moscow before the legal entity moved to Cyprus (Wikipedia). After Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine the company publicly opposed the war and relocated staff out of Russia. None of this is hidden, and the present jurisdiction is the EU one, but if a Russian founding is part of your threat model it belongs in the calculation alongside the Cyprus base rather than instead of it.

The no-logs policy, read closely

AdGuard states a no-logs policy, that it does not record the websites you visit or keep activity logs on its VPN servers (AdGuard VPN privacy policy). Read the policy rather than the headline and the picture is ordinary for a freemium VPN. It counts the volume of traffic on your account, stored without your location and kept for around 90 days, because it has to enforce the free tier's 3 GB limit. It holds the things any account needs, your email and payment details through its payment processors, and some anonymised in-app analytics.

That is a defensible design, not a red flag. The point is simply that all of it, the no-logs claim included, rests on AdGuard's own word, because no outside auditor has checked it. That is the thread running through this whole review, and it is why we weight a verified record above a stated one on our methodology page.

How AdGuard VPN scores in our matrix

AdGuard VPN scores 2.88 in our formula, last verified 21 January 2026. The shape of the number is familiar by now. It does the basics well, clean leak tests, broad platform coverage, a usable free tier, and it is held back by the things that matter most to a privacy buyer, the absent no-logs audit, a closed protocol in place of OpenVPN or WireGuard, a smaller network, and weak streaming. The free tier scores a little higher than the paid plan in our data because it asks less of the wallet for the same modest capability. Our rankings are formula-driven and never moved by commission.

Who should use AdGuard VPN

Use AdGuard VPN if you already trust and use AdGuard's ad blocker, you want a simple VPN for everyday browsing and casual privacy, and the proprietary protocol and self-reported no-logs policy do not trouble you. For that person it is a competent, leak-free tool with a genuinely useful free tier, and the EU jurisdiction is a real plus.

Choose something else if your reason for a VPN is to rely on a privacy claim under pressure, or if you want open, audited protocols. On our evidence, NordVPN leads on raw score and runs repeated independent audits, and Proton VPN pairs a top-tier score with an audited Swiss no-logs record and standard protocols. Both are disclosed affiliate partners, and that disclosure is the reason you can trust a ranking computed from evidence rather than from who pays us. You can weigh every provider we grade, AdGuard included, in our comparison tool.

The fair summary is that AdGuard VPN is a reasonable product wearing a badge that answers a smaller question than the one its searchers are asking. Judge it on the audit it does not have, not the one it nearly looks like it does.

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