McAfee VPN Vs. NordVPN

Have you noticed the trend of digital security companies throwing VPNs into their plans? Take McAfee, for example, a company famous for its antivirus software. McAfee includes its VPN in all its McAfee+ plans and sells it as a standalone product. But can this product compete with the likes of the best VPNs, such as NordVPN?

To find out, we put the two head-to-head by testing them over three months. It didn’t take long for us to declare NordVPN the winner. You can use it on more devices, there are more servers to access, and it includes more privacy features like multihop and kill switches for all devices. We also have some concerns with McAfee’s privacy policy. Let’s take a closer look at them side-by-side, and you’ll see what we mean.

A Key Similarity

McAfee’s VPN has just one thing in common with NordVPN.

To be fair, that one thing is pretty important – how the VPN handles your encryption.

Both McAfee VPN and NordVPN utilize AES-256 encryption, which is the same encryption the U.S. military employs in all its communications. Now, we value our privacy, but we probably don’t have any secrets as sensitive as the U.S. military’s. If they trust AES-256, we can trust AES-256. NordVPN also offers ChaCha20 as an alternative for its connections. It’s almost as secure as AES-256, but it offers faster speeds.

Both VPNs also offer a choice in deploying this encryption. The first is via OpenVPN – the gold standard in terms of protection. Introduced as open-source in 2001, it’s been subjected to rigorous testing by the online community for over 20 years. The other option is WireGuard. It’s also open source, and though it’s been around only since 2016, its security is impressive. Plus, it works faster than OpenVPN. We’re comfortable with either, and again, McAfee and NordVPN let us choose.

A Lot of Differences

This section will be a little longer as there are a lot of differences between McAfee VPN and NordVPN. To make it easier to follow, we’ve broken it down into sections. Let’s start with security features.

Security

As we said before, NordVPN and McAfee both utilize AES-256 encryption. Beyond that, they have little in common when it comes to security.

• Location: McAfee is headquartered in the U.S., in Texas, to be exact. It may seem counterintuitive, but a U.S. location is a problem for a VPN company. The U.S. is one of the principal members of Five Eyes. Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes are groups of countries that have agreed to share intelligence information with one another. That includes any information they may have gained from companies under their jurisdiction. In other words, if the F.B.I. or British intelligence should contact McAfee with a subpoena demanding to see your browsing history, McAfee must comply. NordVPN is located in Panama, and, you guessed it, Panama is not a member of these surveillance organizations.
• Privacy policy: McAfee’s location might not be such a big deal if it doesn’t keep logs of web activity when you’re connected to a VPN, and it seems that it doesn’t. It says as much on the website. However, without independent audits to back that claim, like NordVPN has, it’s a little harder to trust McAfee’s word. That’s especially true because it’s an antivirus company, and we know that antiviruses need to collect a ton of data to provide malware protection. It didn’t help that the only privacy policy we could find pertained only to the antivirus, not the VPN specifically.
• Multi-hop: NordVPN is always investing in new technology. That includes multi-hop. When you engage multi-hop, the company routes your internet connection through at least two separate servers. Each of those servers provides its own encryption, raising your security exponentially. Unfortunately, McAfee has not yet added a multi-hop option to its VPN.
• Obfuscation: This is another new technology that NordVPN uses. Obfuscated servers conceal the fact that you’re using a VPN at all. That can be useful in all sorts of situations, but it’s especially important for anyone using a VPN in a country where VPNs are illegal or subject to monitoring.
• Kill switch: A kill switch shuts down all your internet activity any time your VPN goes down. That way, your activities remain hidden even if you lose your VPN connection. NordVPN has a kill switch. In fact, most VPNs these days offer it, even McAfee. However, McAfee offers this feature for Windows devices only.

Convenience

A VPN’s first job is to keep you safe and your data secure. Let’s face it, though: If your VPN offers some bonus features, you’re not going to turn them down. Here again, NordVPN gets the best of McAfee for the most part.

• Servers: First, NordVPN offers more servers in more places than McAfee. NordVPN has an impressive network in 111 countries with a total of over 6,700 servers (and growing!). We know McAfee has at least 2,000 servers in 50 countries, but the final tally is a mystery to us and the customer service representative who had no idea either. Will you need all those servers? Not really, but a VPN with more servers often performs better and gives you more options to connect to.

• Streaming: We were busted using McAfee VPN when trying to stream movies and TV shows from other countries. However, NordVPN has obfuscated servers to disguise the fact that we’re using a VPN. So, we had no trouble watching content on Netflix, Hulu+, Disney+, and Max.
• Torrenting: McAfee does provide solid support for torrenting, including servers specifically devoted to peer-to-peer (P2P) connections. Of course, NordVPN does too. And because NordVPN offers more servers, it gives you more options wherever you may be in the globe. In fact, you’ll find NordVPN at the top of our list of best VPNs for torrenting.
• Split tunneling: Split tunneling lets you access the regular internet at the same time you’re using a VPN. That way you can assign sensitive tasks to the VPN and leave ordinary tasks like streaming music from Spotify unencrypted. Ultimately, split tunneling saves you bandwidth and results in faster speeds. McAfee does offer split tunneling for Android devices. If you use Windows, iOS, or Mac, though, you’re out of luck. On the other hand, NordVPN provides split tunneling across most operating systems.

Want a more complete sense of what these two VPNs offer? Check out our McAfee VPN review and our NordVPN review for lots more details.

Pricing

We’ve been pretty hard on McAfee up to this point, but we can report that the company does beat NordVPN when it comes to price.

For one thing, McAfee offers a free version of its VPN. There are some limitations to the free version. You can register only one device, and you’re limited to 250 GB of data per month. This can be a useful option, though, if you don’t use a VPN for an enormous amount of your online activities.

In addition, McAfee’s price for an annual subscription is almost $30 less than NordVPN’s. Per month, you’ll pay just $3.33, compared to $4.59 for NordVPN.

Price Comparison

Of course, that price difference comes with a caveat as well. At present, McAfee offers a one-year subscription only. If you’re looking to sign up for a single month of service, you have to choose NordVPN. In addition, NordVPN offers a two-year subscription, and its cost is actually pretty close to McAfee’s annual rate.

Bottom Line

Although it’s not perfect, NordVPN is basically unbeatable (so far). That’s why we rank it as our No. 1 VPN. It’s got the best security features on the market, such as AES-256 encryption, multi-hop technology, and an ironclad privacy policy. It also offers some great features, like access to 6,700 servers and reliable connections to Netflix and other streamers.

You will pay a little more for NordVPN than McAfee, though. The question, then, is whether you can live without all the extra bells and whistles in exchange for a lower price. McAfee’s lacking transparency with regards to its privacy policy is also a big thing to consider, especially if you’re buying a VPN to increase your online privacy.

As always, we encourage you to do your own due diligence. McAfee’s limited free trial and NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee are great for that. But if you ask us, NordVPN should be higher on your priority list than McAfee. Our tests confirm that it’s faster, more reliable, has more features, and a better purchase overall despite the slightly higher price.