ExpressVPN vs IPVanish

The number that decides this matchup is the one neither provider puts on the button

Both order pages lead with a per-month figure that applies only to the first term. Both then state, in smaller type on the same page, what happens afterwards — and afterwards is where the two plans separate. We read both pages on 5 September 2026. ExpressVPN's Basic plan quoted €2.49/mo, billed as €69.72 for the first 28 months, then autorenewing at €79.95 a year. IPVanish's Essential plan quoted $2.49/mo, billed as $59.76 for the first 2 years, then renewing yearly at $99.99.

The two currencies cannot be converted into each other honestly — a storefront quoting euros is not telling you the dollar price — so the comparable figure is each plan's multiple: how far the renewal sits above the rate that sold you. ExpressVPN's renewal works out at €6.66 a month, 2.7 times its intro rate. IPVanish's works out at $8.33 a month, 3.3 times its intro rate. The provider that wins the price row in the table above is the one whose price climbs further when the intro term ends.

Practical ruleCompare VPNs on the renewal rate divided by the intro rate, not on the intro rate. The intro rate tells you what the first term costs; the multiple tells you what the provider expects to charge you for staying.

This matters more than it looks, because both plans autorenew by default. If you buy either and forget about it, the first bill after the intro term is the one in the right-hand bars above. Both providers do also carry a 30-day money-back guarantee, which is a refund window on the purchase — not a cancellation reminder before renewal.

Neither entry price stayed put across the eight weeks we watched

We read both order pages every day. A provider's advertised price is not a fixed property of the product; it is a number on a page that changes without announcement, and the only way to know whether the deal in front of you is a good one is to have watched the same page for a while.

• →IPVanish held $2.19 for five weeks, then moved to $2.49 on 14 August 2026 — the same day its stated renewal went from $89.99 to $99.99. Across 47 captures in dollars it showed its own best price on 24 of them, so a shopper arriving at random had roughly even odds of seeing it.
• →ExpressVPN was noisier. Across 46 captures in euros it ran between €2.29 and €2.99, showed its own best price (€2.29) on only 6 days, and has sat at €2.49 since 30 July 2026. The provider that looks stable on a rate card was the less stable one on the page.
• →Both ended the window above where they started. Neither of the current prices is the cheapest that provider offered this summer, which is the opposite of what a countdown timer implies.
• →Three days are missing (19 July, 1–2 August) because no capture succeeded. A gap in our data is a gap, not a price change, and the chart holds the last known figure across it rather than inventing one.
• →One ExpressVPN day (5 August) is excluded because the storefront quoted US dollars instead of euros. That is a currency change, not a price change, and mixing the two would have manufactured a fake spike.

The Play listing settles two questions both marketing pages talk around

Every claim on this page so far has come from the providers. Google's app listing is one of the few places where a third party publishes facts about a VPN that the VPN cannot edit: the star average and the sample behind it, the install bucket, when the app was last shipped, and whether Google displays an Independent security review badge in the Data safety panel. We read both listings on the US storefront on 5 September 2026.

The badge row is the one worth sitting with, because it runs against the shape of the rest of this comparison. IPVanish — the cheaper provider, the one based in the United States, the one that loses the privacy row in the table above — is the one whose listing carries Google's Independent security review badge. ExpressVPN's does not. That does not make IPVanish the more private service, and it does not overturn the privacy scores: the badge is an opt-in, paid assessment of the app, and a provider with a long public audit history has less to gain from adding one. It is a reminder that a privacy score is a judgement and a badge is a fact, and the two answer different questions.

One more discrepancy is worth recording rather than smoothing over. On the day we read it, ExpressVPN's own Play listing described servers in 113 countries, while the figure the company publishes on its website — the one in the specification table above — is 105. Both numbers come from the same company on the same day. Country and server counts are vendor-declared everywhere they appear, including in our table, and no comparison site can verify them independently.

Jurisdiction is the only difference here that an update cannot change

Speed figures move with each release. Prices moved twice this summer. App ratings drift monthly. The structural difference between these two providers is the one that stays put: ExpressVPN is registered in the British Virgin Islands, IPVanish in the United States. Everything else in this comparison is a snapshot; this is the part that will read the same next year.

• →What it means in practice: a US-registered provider can receive US legal process directly, including instruments that arrive with a gag order. A BVI-registered one sits outside that system and outside the intelligence-sharing arrangements built around it.
• →What it does not mean: jurisdiction is not evidence that a provider logs anything. Both providers publish no-logs policies and both have had those policies examined by an outside auditor. A company with nothing recorded has nothing to hand over, wherever it is registered.
• →Why it still belongs in the decision: a no-logs policy is a promise plus an audit of that promise at a point in time. Jurisdiction is the thing that determines what happens if the promise ever fails. If your threat model includes a legal adversary, you are choosing between those two layers rather than relying on one.
• →Where it is irrelevant: if you are buying a VPN to watch a streaming library from another country or to avoid using an open café network unencrypted, this row should not decide your purchase. Speed, app quality and price should.

Practical ruleLet jurisdiction break the tie, not lead the decision. It matters most to the smallest group of buyers, and it is the only factor on this page that neither provider can improve with a software update.

Read together, the evidence points to different buyers, not a single winner

The specification table at the top of this page and the first-party evidence in this section disagree in one specific way, and the disagreement is the useful part. On the rate card, IPVanish is the cheaper provider. On our tracker, it is the one with the steeper renewal and the one that raised both its entry price and its renewal price on the same day in August. Neither reading is wrong; they describe different stretches of time.

If you buy either, the 30-day money-back guarantee is the part to actually use: install the app, run it on your own line at the hour you normally stream, and decide from that rather than from anyone's benchmark, ours included. Our figures come from a wired gigabit connection in one location, and the only network that matters for your decision is yours.