NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN: Which VPN is better in Germany?

NordVPN and McAfee are two popular cybersecurity solutions. Each offers different perks and features, holding a different rank in the industry. However, their primary role is digital activity protection.

NordVPN has been a well-recognized VPN service provider in the industry for years. On the other hand, McAfee initially offered an anti-virus program, which later expanded into a Safe Connect VPN.

Is NordVPN better than McAfee, or does NordVPN work with McAfee are the common questions that we get asked by cybersecurity freaks frequently. Therefore, to answer these queries, we present a NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN guide, highlighting the pros and cons of both service providers in depth.

NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany: Quick Comparison

Here’s a quick comparison to evaluate NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany briefly:

Speed: NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany

The performance of a VPN largely depends on its speed. For NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany evaluation based on speed, it has been tested on different locations, including the US, the UK, and Lithuania. All available VPN protocols were tested for comparison.

The baseline speed taken for these tests was 460 Mbps for downloads and 470 for uploads.

We have recorded the test results in the table below:

From the results, it’s pretty evident that NordVPN performed significantly faster than McAfee VPN. Both the download and upload speeds of NordVPN were better than the competitor.

The entire NordVPN testing involved NordLynx, which is known to be the fastest protocol available. However, NordVPN’s upload speed is slower than the standard speed rate but much better than McAfee.

On the other hand, McAfee’s download speed is 30% slower than NordVPN’s on average. Compared with the baseline, a 65% decrease in speed has been observed. While the baseline decrease rate in the case of NordVPN is around 45%.

Furthermore, McAfee Safe Connect VPN works with the Catapult Hydra and doesn’t offer a range of tunnelling protocols to be selected.

Therefore, NordVPN is the top performer in both download and upload speeds. NordLynx works faster than Catapult Hydra in our testing. You can find out its speeds on multiple servers through the NordVPN speed test guide in Germany.

Winner : NordVPN

Server: NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany

Most users turn to VPNs for unblocking geo-restricted content from foreign countries. Server network coverage is extremely important for VPN connectivity and service delivery. The wider the server network, the more will be connection possibilities.

To judge NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN server connections, we have compiled the table next.

Factors	NordVPN	McAfee VPN
No. of Servers	6000	2000+
Server countries	61	50+
Physical Servers
Complete Server Ownership
RAM-only Servers

NordVPN has around 6000+ servers in 61 countries with comparatively larger server networks than 2000+ servers operated by McAfee VPN. NordVPN offers dedicated and P2P-optimized servers for torrenting in Germany. In addition, it brings RAM-only technology to avoid permanent storage of data on hard drives, which the McAfee VPN lacks.

On the other hand, McAfee Safe Connect VPN has 2000+ servers functioning in more than 50 locations, which is impressive, but we don’t find the network delivering exceptional work.

With the extra features and a larger server network, NordVPN becomes the clear winner of this NordVPN vs.McAfee test category.

Winner : NordVPN

Streaming: NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany

With frequent updates and bans on digital content, a large community of VPN users purchases these services to access the restricted streaming platforms in their region.

We knew our users would like to know about the performance of these two VPN services on streaming sites, so here we post our findings.

Streaming Platform	NordVPN	McAfee VPN
Netflix
Disney+
HBO Max
BBC iPlayer

To analyze the unblocking capabilities, these VPNs were tested on a couple of popular streaming channels, including Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, and BBC iPlayer. The results show the satisfactory performance of both VPNs overall.

As clear from the table, NordVPN could unblock Netflix in Germany and almost every streaming service tested. No issues were reported while accessing Netflix libraries in the US and other locations. Furthermore, no errors, bugs, glitches, or lags occurred when NordVPN was tested with HBO Max and several other streaming channels.

We could stream all our favorite content in Hd without delays.

NordVPN has a Smart Play feature that plays an important role in streaming.

In the meantime, McAfee Safe Connect VPN also showed good performance at streaming by unblocking all other channels with fast speeds and fine streaming quality. Although no buffering or delay was reported, it failed to provide access to HBO Max.

To conclude the streaming test results, both VPNs performed well by delivering quality streaming and fast speeds. In terms of performance, no lagging, buffering, or dropping signals were reported while testing the two service providers.

Comparing the two on the basis of unblocking capabilities, NordVPN takes the lead by providing access to almost every streaming service thrown at it. Whereas McAfee Safe Connect VPN couldn’t unblock most of the streaming service during testing.

Winner : NordVPN

Torrenting: NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany

Downloading media files or any other content genre is one of internet users’ most common daily activities. Some websites track visitors and restrict their services to ban people from particular regions.

This is where VPNs come into play and uplift such bans to provide ease of torrenting to users worldwide.

Though a few VPN service providers limit P2P traffic in regions where torrenting activities are considered illegal. Fortunately, not all VPNs behave the same by being restrictive, especially the two VPNs that we are reviewing in this post.

We have tried to compile torrenting-related services of both NordVPN and McAfee Safe Connect VPN in the table below:

Features	NordVPN	McAfee VPN
Torrenting permitted on all servers
P2P dedicated servers
Split tunnelling	Available on Android, Windows, and Android TV	Available on Android

Due to the super-fast download speeds, quick connectivity, P2P-optimised servers, free SOCKS5 proxy, and split tunnelling, NordVPN is known to be one of the best VPNs for torrenting.

This means that NordVPN is great for P2P downloads.

In contrast, McAfee Safe Connect VPN is a reasonable service for torrenting, but it lacks basic IP or DNS leak protection. Also, it has some loopholes in terms of security and privacy.

Other than standard torrenting, China has applied a mass censorship tool called the Great Firewall of China, which restricts access to content. Only a few services can bypass this strict online blockade.

Fortunately, NordVPN is amongst the VPN services that can work in China, owing to its obfuscated and the best onion over VPN in Germany the best onion over VPN in Germany onion over VPN servers. However, McAfee VPN has no such options and doesn’t work in China.

Winner : NordVPN

Privacy: Which is more secure in Germany?

NordVPN seems to be more secure than McAfee VPN in Germany.

Privacy maintenance is one critical aspect for VPN service users. With increasing online theft and data attacks, VPN customers are now becoming more concerned and protective of their digital presence than ever.

For a NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN privacy evaluation, we have organized the relevant information in the table next.

One of the factors that play a significant role in privacy preservation is jurisdiction. In the case of NordVPN, it has headquarters in Panama, which is safe from government spying and introspection. Moreover, NordVPN’s no-logs policy was tested multiple times, and it cleared them.

On top of this, NordVPN allows users to restrict the amount of personal information that is shared while purchasing the service deal anonymously using cryptocurrency payment mode or cash.

Whereas McAfee Safe Connect VPN is based in the United States, the founding country of the Five Eyes Alliance in Germany. In addition, its privacy policy contains some alarming content regarding data collection.

Winner : NordVPN

Infrastructure

All NordVPN servers use strong AES-256-bit encryption, one that is widely accepted as the security standard. Moreover, a big chunk of NordVPN servers uses RAM-only technology, indicating no data is stored on a hard disk, ensuring no long-term data collection.

Entire data is wiped off after every reboot session, leaving behind no trail. Therefore, NordVPN users enjoy complete anonymity with data safety.

While McAfee shares limited to insufficient information about the servers being used and the data security services that it offers.

Privacy

As discussed earlier, NordVPN is controlled from a safe zone, Panama, with no data collection or retention policies. Moreover, it’s not a member of any surveillance Alliance. Therefore, NordVPN doesn’t normally log data, and even if it records something like an email address, it has no legal permission or rights to share your information on the internet.

In contrast, McAfee has headquarters in the US, commonly known for weak and inadequate privacy protection principles. As the US is an active member of the 14-Eyes surveillance, you should expect data collection or exchange at some level.

Logging

NordVPN follows a strict no-logs policy in Germany, where none of your activities is logged or read. No matter which website you visit or which server you connect to, you do it freely, as it will never keep your logs.

On top of this, its no-logs policy had been audited twice, marking it safe for online use.

McAfee Safe Connect, in contrast, lacks a no-logs policy. It openly shares its intentions to keep the following logs:

• User IP address
• Internet Service Provider details
• Customer device information, such as hardware type, operating system, etc.
• Geo-location data and language preference
• URLs of the website’s user’s visit

McAfee doesn’t hide the fact that it shares customer data with third parties. Moreover, they comply with government or legal agency requests to grant logs. Additionally, if they get you biometric data, it may be kept for up three years.

Considering the privacy protection practices and principles of the two VPNs, we can see that NordVPN is undoubtedly the winner in this category.

Winner : NordVPN

Plans & Pricing: NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany

In this section, we compare the pricing strategy of NordVPN and McAfee VPN by assessing their subscription deals. We present our findings in the table below:

From the table, we can observe that NordVPN comes with three pricing plans, divided into monthly, yearly, and two-yearly payment packages. The standard subscription deal of NordVPN costs $11.99 monthly, $4.49 if you extend it to a year and $3.69 for two years of service provision.

NordVPN packages include malware protection and threat blocker without additional costs. It allows connecting up to 6 devices simultaneously to let users safeguard multiple devices at the same time and access different content on each.

NordVPN plans include two other packages: Plus and Complete. These two are a bit costlier than the standard deal but include extra features, such as a data breach scanner, password manager, and encrypted storage.

For a comparative analysis, we have listed the breakdown of the NordVPN prices below:

We can observe one thing in common here, the longer the subscription, the lesser the prices. This trend is almost similar to all VPNs.

On the other hand, McAfee Safe Connect VPN offers monthly and yearly subscription plans only. The monthly deal costs $7.99, and the yearly package is offered at $1.66. It doesn’t offer different packages with add-on features.

In terms of a money-back guarantee, both NordVPN and McAfee offer a 30-day timeline for customers to try the services and claim a refund if they want.

Overall, if we evaluate the pricing plans with the features offered, we can easily find the leader. Although McAfee charges lesser than NordVPN for the subscription, it offers fewer services and features to the customers. Whereas NordVPN comes with different plans, catering to various needs of users and providing advanced protection.

Therefore, we declare a tie in the pricing section as both VPNs have their plus points.

Winner : Both/Tie

Features Overview

Both NordVPN and McAfee offer standard protection features as provided by conventional VPN services. Features like kill switch and auto-connect are included in both VPNs.

However, this marks the end of McAfee Safe Connect VPN’s feature list. In contrast, NordVPN has a lot more to offer, ranging from malware scanners to Threat Protection and ad blockers to double VPN protection, it is equipped with exceptional security and privacy options.

Let us dig deep into the feature test for both the VPN ahead.

Specialized servers

NordVPN offers a range of specialized servers dedicated to performing different duties. The servers used for different cases include:

• P2P Servers: NordVPN offers these servers for torrenting purposes.
• Double VPN Servers: These servers transmit your data through two instead of one NordVPN server when connected, providing an extra layer of security. Double VPN Servers are also called multi-hop servers.
• Obfuscated Server: Such servers make it easier for the traffic to bypass the strictest of VPN barriers by making the VPN traffic appear as regular HTTPS traffic.
• Onion over VPN Servers: These servers ensure none of your online activity gets traced by first routing the traffic through a VPN server and then sending it through three Tor network nodes at the minimum.
• Dedicated IP: NordVPN lets you purchase servers by charging an additional amount. Dedicated IP servers assign you a unique IP address that remains constant.

McAfee VPN offers no special servers for any task. It lacks obfuscation, double VPN protection, and IP dedication.

Kill switch

A kill switch is an important feature that prevents data leakage by shutting off internet access to all your devices right when the VPN connection drops. Luckily, we have found a kill switch in both NordVPN and McAfee VPN.

NordVPN’s kill switch in Germany works perfectly fine with customization options to work with certain apps and websites. Whereas the McAfee Safe Connect VPN’s kill switch, known as Safe Reconnect, was not even found performing its basic operations. After turning on the kill switch, it didn’t connect to any servers.

Enable the kill switch and ensure staying secure at connection drops.

The same error message popped on the screen every time, which said something was not right and we must try again. Due to this glitch, the kill switch couldn’t get tested at all.

Other features

Other than the kill switch and specialized servers, there are more features that these two VPNs have. By observation, we could tell that NordVPN offers more features than McAfee VPN.

NordVPN Features

NordVPN offers a Dark Web monitor, which is our personal favorite, which alarms users about their personal data vulnerabilities. This feature searches and investigates the dark web to find any data associated with your email address to notify you immediately if it finds something.

Moreover, its threat protection scans the content you download, blocks trackers, ads, and malicious websites, and safeguards you from all bad hands.

Other than these, NordVPN brings Meshnet, which allows securing your device with a VPN and connecting it to your friends and coworkers’ devices.

McAfee Features

McAfee has a trusted networks option for whitelisting, which lets you choose the networks that are secure to use without a VPN. This may include home, school, or workplace networks.

TCP Override is another feature for McAfee Safe Connect VPN, which provides you with a much more stable connection for your unstable network connection. However, on testing the feature, no noticeable stability changes were observed after turning on the feature, indicating failure.

Evaluating the additional features, it is evident that NordVPN offers a bundle of more features than McAfee Safe Connect VPN. Interestingly, it not only offers several more options comparatively, but each also performs as supposed. However, this was unfortunately not the case with McAfee, as the features didn’t work in the testing as claimed.

Winner : NordVPN

Platforms, interface, and ease of use

NordVPN and McAfee are both compatible with Android, Windows, and iOS. McAfee doesn’t support Linux and Mac, whereas NordVPN extends support to both operating systems.

However, McAfee supports native Chromebook with the Chrome iOS app, which is not available in NordVPN. But to facilitate NordVPN Chrome users with Chrome compatibility, you only need an Android app.

We have recorded our findings in the table below:

NordVPN supports three browser extensions, such as Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, whereas McAfee VPN has no browser extension support. Additionally, NordVPN can be used on Android TV, Kodi, and Fire devices.

On the other hand, McAfee only works on traditional computers and mobile devices. Furthermore, McAfee allows 6 device connections simultaneously, whereas NordVPN allows 5 connections at once.

From the above information, we can clearly see that NordVPN offers support to more operating systems and device connections than McAfee VPN. On top of this, NordVPN offers browser extensions, which are missing in the case of McAfee VPN.

NordVPN supports a unique set of devices that are not commonly supported by VPNs, like Kodi in Germany, Smart TVs, Roku in Germany, etc. Therefore, NordVPN is the winner in terms of platforms. Making NordVPN the best ease of use VPN in Germany

Winner : NordVPN

We have analyzed the app compatibility and interface for this NordVPN vs. McAfee review ahead.

Desktop apps

NordVPN apps for macOS and Windows have high similarity. The interface contains an interactive world map in blue and grey color. You can easily connect to the server locations indicated on the map by clicking on the tiny blue dots.

On the left of the map, users get a country list, highlighting specialty servers and a toolbar to access extra features and settings. The interface is easy to use and navigate, displaying whatever you need to search instantly.

McAfee VPN has an overly simpler interface than NordVPN, which is easy to use yet functional. The home page of McAfee Safe Connect VPN has a big button prompting users to start protection.

After you click the “Start Protection” button, you get connected to a VPN server, where you can choose your desired location or let the VPN service choose the fastest server for you.

You can access the VPN Settings, including the kill switch by clicking on the left panel.

Mobile apps

Mobile apps of NordVPN are an exact copy of the desktop versions. Android and iOS apps house an interactive map, a country list, and specialized server options, along with a big button to enable connections.

Additionally, you can access the profile, notifications, and Meshnet by clicking on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. You can further access features, and app settings from the menu.

The McAfee mobile apps on Android and iOS are similar to their desktop app versions. You get a big protection button with options to choose your preferred location. Additional settings and features can be accessed by pressing on the menu in the upper right corner.

Customer support in Germany

Active and responsive customer service is an essential feature for a premium VPN provider. Fortunately, both NordVPN and McAfee have exceptional customer support service.

Factors	NordVPN	McAfee
Live Chat 24/7
Email Service
Tutorials, blogs, or guides
FAQs
Call Service

NordVPN comes with a 24/7 live chat, email support, and FAQs for users. Our favorite is the live chat service that connects clients with human agents in real time. Urgent issues like technical problems or failures can be resolved by consulting knowledgeable agents via the chat option.

If users are keen on fixing issues or finding solutions themselves, they can refer to a collection of articles and guides available on the official NordVPN website. You can get information related to configuration, setup, troubleshooting, etc. Furthermore, FAQs contain quick, helpful resources and solutions to user issues.

McAfee, in contrast, is linked to antivirus software; therefore, you find a different category of content on the webpage. You can use live chat, find informative guides, or explore FAQs to investigate your issue.

Winner : Both/Tie

FAQs – NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany

NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany– which one wins?

Features	NordVPN	McAfee VPN
Speed
Server
Streaming
Torrenting
Privacy
Pricing
Ease of use
Other Features
Customer Support

Our NordVPN vs. McAfee VPN in Germany is a complete review of the strengths and weaknesses of the two VPNs. From this analysis, we have found NordVPN to be the true industry leader, which is far better than McAfee VPN.

NordVPN defeats McAfee with blazing-fast speed, stable connectivity, a massive server network, feature-rich apps, and advanced security protection. While McAfee VPN offers minimum features that, don’t function properly. Moreover, it threatens users’ privacy by logging their data.

We suggest using NordVPN to secure your digital activities and data traffic with world-class protection. Experience expert-choice VPN security for all your devices with NordVPN.

Winner : NordVPN