The base plan, IPVanish Essential, costs $12.99 per month and comes with the VPN, an ad and tracker blocker, and a 3GB eSIM from aloSIM. This is almost 30% higher than the average monthly price of $10.30 among the VPNs I’ve tested, as you can see in the chart below. I would prefer to see more bundled features at this price point. NordVPN costs the same $12.99 and offers more advanced tools, including a password manager, a lightweight antivirus, and scam call protection.
The second tier, IPVanish Advanced, increases the price to $14.99 per month and includes all features from the Essential tier, plus a secure browser, 1TB of cloud storage through LiveDrive, file synchronization, live phone support, and a 5GB eSIM.
Note that we use the monthly price for evaluations, as this enables us to make apples-to-apples comparisons between services that might offer discounts when you subscribe for longer periods. Furthermore, we recommend starting out with a short-term contract with any VPN, at least until you’re sure it’s the right one for you. IPVanish’s value-to-feature ratio becomes more in line with the industry when you consider its heavily discounted annual subscriptions. However, keep in mind that you’re trading flexibility by opting for a long-term plan.
The annual Essential plan is $39.99 per year ($3.33 per month) as of this writing and renews at $89.99 after the promotion. The Advanced plan is $53.88 for the first year ($4.49 per month) and renews at $109.99 per year. Note that if you clicked on an offer or ad for IPVanish, these two options might be all that you see. You also don’t get any information regarding renewal rates on this page, which can easily be mistaken for the main pricing and payment page. The screenshot below shows what this offer page looks like:
(Credit: PCMag/IPVanish)
The actual pricing page can be found here and appears as shown in the image below:
(Credit: PCMag/IPVanish)
This page provides more information about IPVanish’s plans, along with the option to subscribe to the two-year Essential plan for $52.56 (renewing at $89.99) or the Advanced plan for $78.96 (renewing at $109.99). If you just click through the plans and subscribe, then you’ll likely never see the note about renewal rates. You must either manually visit the rate renewal page, which contains the details, or scroll down to the FAQs on the pricing page and expand the “How much does IPVanish cost?” question. The lack of immediate transparency regarding the listing for the plan itself, as well as the absence of this detail from the payment portal, can lead to an unexpected and expensive surprise after your promotional period is over. I’d like to see IPVanish be more up front about its subscription renewal model.
You can technically get a free trial for IPVanish by signing up for a two-year plan on Android or iOS. Doing so will grant you a seven-day trial, but you must provide a payment method to receive it. All IPVanish plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can get a full refund if the service isn’t the right fit.
You can pay for the service with any major credit card or Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal. If you’re looking to use bitcoin, prepaid gift cards, or some other anonymous method of payment, you’re out of luck here. IVPN and Mullvad both allow you to pay for subscriptions anonymously by sending cash directly to their respective headquarters.
