Overall, much slower upload speeds are a staple of most VPN services. Still, it does fall short with upload speeds as their average dip is 96%.
These are awe-inspiring results, even factoring in the nature of IPSec.
In our test results, the average download speed drop was as low as 25%. Usually, IPSec speeds are better than OpenVPN (TCP). IPsec is another tunneling protocol option that you can find on their apps. TCP should be sufficient for most online activities and is much safer than UDP, so there's some value. Though the upload speed is much more reflective of the slow nature of TCP, and on average, reduces the speed by 86%. This isn't bad when some dedicated VPNs have dropped as high as 84%. On average, the impact on download speeds is a 60% drop-off. Still, Avira's Phantom VPN does flip the script to some degree here. As an upside, it does provide better connection reliability.
TCP is the only available OpenVPN option, which usually is considerably slower than UDP mode.
Then we compare them to our baseline speeds, which give us a rough idea of how a VPN performs on average. To work around this, we pick the same locations as with other VPN services and connect to them using all available tunneling protocols. One of the hardest things to review is VPN speeds – they are highly subjective and can vary. Speed and performance: Is Avira VPN fast?