ExpressVPN vs PureVPN

These two share an address and very little else. Both are British Virgin Islands companies, outside every intelligence-sharing agreement, which is the box a lot of buyers check first — and it is a good illustration of why that box on its own decides nothing.

Two British Virgin Islands companies

ExpressVPN is Express Technologies Ltd., owned by Kape Technologies, which also sells two rival VPNs. PureVPN is GZ Systems Limited of Tortola, with the group run from Karachi. Same jurisdiction, entirely different companies behind it.

What separates them is what each has done when tested. In 2017 PureVPN supplied a customer's connection records to the FBI while advertising a no-logs policy. Its most recent assessment ran in February 2023 and the pages describing it no longer name the firm that carried it out.

ExpressVPN has no such episode, though its evidence is thinner than the marketing implies: the KPMG review covered the controls on a single day rather than over a period, and the apps are closed source and have not been examined since 2024. Between a narrow recent review and an unnamed older one following a real disclosure, the direction is not ambiguous.

Where the cheaper one recovers its margin

PureVPN's low rate covers twenty-seven months, and both port forwarding and a dedicated address are sold on top of the subscription. ExpressVPN's introductory rate covers twenty-eight months and then renews at roughly triple. Neither is what it appears to be at the point of sale, and PureVPN is still the cheaper of the two across most horizons.

ExpressVPN is the quicker connection by a clear margin. PureVPN's speed has not been measured on the bench used for the other entries here; the independent figure available puts it around a fifth slower than an unprotected connection, having been considerably worse two years before that.

Both ship obfuscation, a kill switch and split tunnelling. PureVPN adds IPv6 protection and streaming support, which ExpressVPN does not claim, and both offer television apps. Neither has multi-hop, and ExpressVPN's servers hold nothing on disk where PureVPN's do not run that way.

Which should you choose?

Choose ExpressVPN if speed matters and you want a company without a documented disclosure behind it, and you will diary the renewal date. Choose PureVPN if the two-year prepayment price is the deciding factor and you have read the 2017 case.

If the shared jurisdiction was the reason you shortlisted both, that is the thing to stop relying on — it did not prevent what happened in 2017.