Atlas VPN review: Free and Premium version

We have tried for you one of the most interesting free VPN services available on the market and its Premium incarnation with its lights and shadows.

Atlas VPN is a young service launched in January 2020.

After extensive testing and based on the experience gained by reviewing the market leading solutions, still present in our updated ranking of the best VPNs, we are ready to talk to you in depth about Atlas VPN.

How do we rate a VPN?

We let you know how we rate VPN services so you can better understand what we expect and why.

For us a free VPN service, to be valid, it must:

• do not sell browsing data;
• have sufficient navigation speed;
• maybe no newspapers.

For a paid service, we expect higher performance, so that it must necessarily offer:

• high connection security and be nologs;
• an adequate number of servers located around the world;
• adequate performance for streaming and downloading.

Differences between the free version of Atlas VPN and the Premium version

As we said, Atlas offers two services: a basic free service and a more comprehensive Premium service.

The basic service allows you to choose between 3 servers. It still offers the usual level of security but they are not servers optimized for streaming. Being a free service, the speed is obviously limited.

We like it because, unlike more well-known competitors, it doesn’t seem to sell free customer traffic to third parties. Also, allows a secure connection even in the basic version, maintaining a substantially nologs policy.

While the premium service offers:

• a much larger number of servers;
• servers dedicated to streaming;
• higher speed.

Is Atlas VPN secure?

The answer is yes. It is a service that offers a good level of security. It encrypts the data exchanged between client and server via a AES-256 bit algorithm military level, also for data transfer uses the SSL / TLS based encryption.

To date, the service uses IKEv2 security protocol; it is a solution that combines security and good performance. To learn more about VPN security protocols, we invite you to read our popular in-depth study: Security Protocols for VPNs.

From the point of view of leaks, we have carried out several tests and all of them have shown that no dangerous data loss occurs neither when connecting nor while using, and not even while downloading torrents. You are also safe from DNS leaks and therefore your IP never shows up.

As for logs, the service claims does not keep any data allowing to associate the traffic to the unique user, and this allows you to track your sessions (so it should be a no logs service). According to Atlas VPN, only the data used to identify the customers who made the purchase and the data necessary to improve applications, mobile and desktop is kept.

There is also the Kill Switch function which allows you to prevent browsing from continuing when the connection to the VPN server is interrupted. In this way, the IP and therefore the identity of the client is never exposed.

Plus, for those who care even more about safety, there’s comfort available. SafeSwap Servers which have a pool of IP addresses that constantly change as you browse, without dropping the connection. These are intended to provide another degree of security.

Is Atlas VPN useful for bypassing geoblocks?

The answer is that it depends; if you want to see the US version of Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney + with a full catalog, or access limited US services like HBO Now, then the Atlas VPN Premium version it will surely satisfy you. We didn’t experience any inconvenience and streaming was easy.

Unfortunately, by connecting to the Italian server which would also be optimized for streaming, the situation was not so rosy. Once connected to the server, we were unable to play the content on RaiPlay and Mediaset Play. Hope this is a momentary bug. Similar issues occurred while connecting to the Swiss server and attempting to view the RSI live.

As for the number of servers in the premium version of the service, the figures certainly do not call for miracles, but at least they are well distributed and we have not identified any fictitious servers.

This VPN is really easy to use

Use Atlas VPN it’s very simple, a few clicks are enough to download the executable on Windows and Mac from the service’s site, or the mobile version from the Play Store or the App Store. Once the client is installed, just launch it and click on the server you want to connect to. You can download them all from this download page.

The customer is really immediate. Even if it is not translated into Italian, it is easy to navigate and everything appears in order. In the settings, we would have preferred the presence of other options, such as the possibility of choosing the connection protocol or the security one. Atlas is a fairly young service, we hope these options will be added soon.

Atlas VPN does not restrict streaming and P2P

If you are looking for an economical solution, which allows you to enjoy P2P streaming and sharing with peace of mind then Atlas could be for you. Besides the streaming-optimized servers we have already discussed, there are no premium servers that limit P2P. In addition, according to the tests we carried out, no leaks occurred during P2P exchange via torrent.

How much does Atlas VPN Premium cost?

The basic version of Atlas is free, the premium version has the following costs:

The prices are very competitive. Obviously, the cheapest packages are the ones with a longer duration.

The costs are:

• for a single month of € 8.39;
• for 12 months, the total cost is 25 € (are € 2.09 per month);
• for 3 years the price is only € 41.97 (every month is € 1.17) – this is one of the cheapest services we have ever reviewed.

All offers have a right of withdrawal (and refund) within 30 days. You can access these offers by clicking on the offers page.

With just one offer, you can connect a infinite number of devices.

Conclusion

Atlas is a VPN that we recommend with a few clarifications: as we have seen it is very good for some and not so much for others, it depends on your needs.

The service is young, it is good from a security point of view, but it does not offer a lot of servers and the advanced settings are very limited. Thanks to the very low price, the value for money remains good.