Guardian Firewall

A firewall first, with a VPN around it

Guardian Firewall is a privacy app built around a firewall that blocks tracking connections, with a VPN tunnel carrying all traffic through the company's servers. The pricing page's own tagline is "Intelligent Firewall. Powerful VPN. Absolute Privacy." The tracker blocking is the point of the product rather than an add-on: the homepage says the firewall "blocks unwanted connections to location trackers, mail trackers, generic data trackers, and other online nuisances", and a banner says Guardian VPN is now available with eero Plus. On who can buy it: the pricing page shows prices in US dollars with sign-up by e-mail and payment by card, and the service policies page says customers can also subscribe "through the App Store, Play Store, directly or through an OEM partner". The pricing page lists apps for iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, FireOS and AndroidTV. The site does not name any country where the service is unavailable or say which currencies the app stores charge in.

Who runs it, and what the audits covered

The site's footer reads "© 2019 - 2026 Guardian Firewall", and the site does not name the company behind it or say where it is based or incorporated. The blog post on the audit is signed by Constantin Jacob, but the site does not give his role.

The site does not name an independent audit of its logging policy. What it does describe is a security audit of the app and its infrastructure by the security firm Assured (written Assured.se in the blog post). The service policies page says Guardian's "initial software security audit" took place in February 2024 and its "initial infrastructure security audit" in April 2024, links an API software audit and an infrastructure security audit, and says the company plans to repeat such audits "on at least an annual basis". A July 22, 2024 blog post says phase two of the Assured audit "focused on hardening the entire service internally to simulate what would happen given the assumption that our infrastructure had already been breached", and that the two phases mark "the end of the full audit of our services." These are security reviews of the software and servers as the provider describes them, not an audit of whether the service keeps logs.

The logging claims are the provider's own, and they are unusually detailed. The service policies page lists what it says it does not log: DNS traffic, network activity (except "blocked tracker" alerts for people who use the Alerts feature), individual bandwidth usage, originating IP addresses, account activity and connection metadata. It also says what does sit on the VPN servers. WireGuard or IKEv2 credentials are stored on each node's disk, but they are "ephemeral per VPN node" and can be reset from the app. Blocked-tracker alerts are marked for deletion once the device downloads them. A "Last Disconnect Time" timestamp stays on the node and is used to prune old credentials.

Account data, the provider states, is kept apart from the VPN servers. A Guardian Pro account stores an e-mail address and a payment reference to Stripe, but "is NOT stored on our VPN servers". App Store or Play Store subscribers are verified by a signed in-app purchase receipt with no e-mail required, and OEM partner users are known to Guardian only by an opaque identifier. The VPN servers, the page says, check a signed token that confirms payment without seeing personal data.

The firewall, the VPN and the extras

The firewall is what sets Guardian apart. The homepage shows its own running totals: 127B+ data trackers, 5B+ location trackers, 278M+ mail trackers and 116M+ page hijackers blocked. Those are the provider's figures. Safe browsing blocks "aggressive ads and web page hijackers", and an alerts screen lets users swipe up to see every blocked connection and filter it by type. The homepage also says users can grant permissions to specific apps, "knowing that any attempt to send data to unwanted trackers will be blocked", and it pitches the service against surveillance pricing by hiding location and browsing indicators.

The VPN uses IKEv2 or WireGuard, with AES-256 encryption according to the homepage. DNS leak protection is built in, and the homepage says the service can also use DNSFilter resolvers with the WireGuard protocol. The pricing page gives the network as 400+ servers in 40+ regions, and the locations page lists countries in Africa (Nigeria, South Africa), the Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, USA), Asia (Israel, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates), Oceania (Australia, New Zealand) and Europe, from Austria and Albania through to Ukraine and the United Kingdom. The site does not give server counts per country. It does not mention streaming services or torrenting.

Plans and prices

The pricing page shows two tiers, both in dollars:

• Essential: 9.99 dollars monthly or 99.99 dollars annually. It includes the firewall, the IKEv2 or WireGuard VPN, access to all servers, up to 5 devices and a "30 Day Refund Policy".
• Pro: 124.99 dollars per year. It adds real-time push notifications for blocked trackers, the ability to export VPN credentials to other platforms, extra blocklists chosen by Guardian, invites for up to 5 family members and access to DNSFilter for a home network.

The device allowance is stated two ways: the pricing page says Essential connects "up to 5 devices", while the homepage says "Subscriptions include access for up to 6 devices and Pro includes family sharing." The site shows no free plan, does not say whether the listed prices are introductory or what they renew at, and does not mention crypto or other anonymous payment. The footer links a status page and a contact form; the site does not describe support hours or channels.

What the site leaves open, and who it suits

The biggest open question is the company itself: the pages never name the operator, its owners or its legal home. There is no named audit of the logging policy; the Assured work is a security audit, which is useful but a different thing. The device limit differs between 5 and 6 depending on the page, the renewal terms are not stated, and there is nothing on streaming or torrenting.

Against that, Guardian publishes more about how its servers handle data than most small providers, including what it does keep and why, and it lets app store subscribers use the service without giving an e-mail address. It suits iPhone, Mac and Android users whose main goal is blocking trackers, mail pixels and page hijackers across apps, with a VPN as the delivery method. It suits less well someone choosing a VPN for streaming or torrenting, or who needs to know the company behind it.