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A feature-rich identity theft protection platform with additional security tools (antivirus, VPN, and password manager).
Updated January 16, 2025
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Aura is one of the best identity theft protection services on the market. It comes with essential credit monitoring and identity protection features, including triple-bureau monitoring, up to $1 million identity theft insurance per adult, and Social Security number monitoring.
And Aura also provides access to other security tools that keep your data safe. This includes an antivirus that secures your devices against malware, a VPN that protects your internet privacy, and a password manager that keeps your logins safe. Plus, it’s also great for families, as its family-dedicated subscription comes with parental controls and identity monitoring for kids.
The provider is a bit pricey, but the cost is worth it since it provides excellent value. Plus, it has a free 14-day trial, and it backs all long-term purchases with a 60-day refund.
Pro Tip: Don’t think your children’s identities can be stolen because they don’t have online presences or bank accounts? Think again. Children are among the most at-risk for identity theft, because the crime is unlikely to be discovered for years. Check these five sobering child identity theft statistics for more information.
Aura’s website is very simple to navigate.
Right away, Aura impressed us with its user-friendly website. Identity theft protection can be complex. Trust us, we’ve spent a lot of time on confusing sites trying to sort out just what companies are offering. Aura makes it easy to navigate its site and make well-informed decisions about what you need.
It helps that Aura keeps pricing simple. The company offers just three plans, and the names tell you exactly what you’re getting. There’s the Individual plan, which covers single individuals. The Couples plan covers two adults, aka couples. The Family plan covers – you guessed it – families. In this case, that means five adults and an unlimited number of children.
Oh, and one more thing. Aura also has an additional subscription called Kids. We don’t consider it to be a full plan, though, the way the Couples and Family plans are since it doesn’t include identity theft protection. It’s more of a toolset for parents, with child safety mechanisms (such as predator and cyberbullying alerts) and parental controls.
Here’s a complete overview of Aura’s pricing packages.
| Features | Individual | Couple | Family |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Antivirus Software | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| VPN | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 3-Bureau Credit Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Credit Lock | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Home Title Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Criminal Record Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Restoration Services | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Identity Verification Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Annual Credit Report | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Parental Controls | No | No | Yes |
| Child Safety Tools | No | No | Yes |
| Cost per Month | $15 per month | $29 per month | $50 per month |
| Cost per Year | $144 per year ($12 per month) | $264 per year ($22 per month) | $384 per year ($32 per month)Right off the bat, you may have noticed that Aura can be a bit pricey. Identity Guard, for instance, charges just $9 a month for an individual plan, a full 40 percent less. We prefer to think in terms of value, though, rather than pure numbers. When it comes to value, you’re going to do much better than Aura. For instance, Aura’s Family plan covers up to five adults. Not five family members; five adults. That’s enough to include a couple of grandparents and an aunt or uncle. Or use it to take care of your kids while they’re establishing their careers. As for kids under 18, Aura lets you protect an unlimited number of children’s Social Security numbers. Most identity protection services with family plans only cover two adults and a handful of children. Put simply, if you’ve got a larger family, Aura can actually save you money. |
Plus, Aura’s Family subscription comes with some unique parental controls you won’t find with other ID theft services. The parental controls allow you to monitor what your children are up to online, filter out content, and set screen time limits. And it also provides child safety tools, such as cyberbullying and predator alerts.
Don’t have children? Aura offers some benefits for you as well. The company understands that identity theft is closely tied to our online behaviors, so it offers some extras that help. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) secures your internet traffic, and also protects your privacy by hiding your real-time location. Meanwhile, antivirus software protects you from online scams and viruses, adding a further layer of protection to your identity.
In addition, Aura lets you protect up to 10 devices per user. That means if you’re on the Couple plan, you and your partner share a 20-device limit. If you’re on the Family plan, the number of devices you can protect depends on the number of registered users, not counting children. For example, 30 devices if there are three members, 40 devices for four members, and so on. We lead a pretty sophisticated digital existence, but even we can’t imagine needing more protection than that.
Finally, we also want to mention that Aura comes with a free 14-day trial, and also backs all long-term plans with a very generous 60-day money-back guarantee. So, you can basically test the service risk-free.
The purchasing process for Aura was a breeze. We selected the Individual plan, and then went about setting up our account.
Aura first asked us to provide our email address. Then, we entered our personal information, such as our names, addresses, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, and birth dates. If you care about your privacy and it’s your first time using an ID theft protection service, providing that much personal information might make you anxious. But take it from us – none of that is unusual. These services need to know about you if they’re going to keep you safe.
Signing up for Aura
It’s only at this point that you’re asked to pick your payment method: credit/debit card or PayPal. You’ve got a couple of choices in terms of payment plans. If you’re sure Aura is the right protection service for you, you can purchase an annual plan. That saves you some money in the long run. Of course, it means paying the full price upfront, and that’s not for everyone. In addition, paying one month at a time allows you to test out the service and get comfortable with it before making a long-term commitment.
Pro Tip: Keep in mind that Aura has a 60-day money-back guarantee on all annual plans, so even if you’re not yet sure it’s the best choice, we recommend springing for the annual plan for the savings.
Once you’ve purchased your plan, you’ll move on to the easy setup process.
Aura’s Dashboard
Dashboard controls can be intimidating at first because they give you so much control. If you’re a novice at protecting your identity, you may not know the ins and outs of keeping yourself safe, and learning them can be overwhelming. Ultimately, though, the dashboard is refreshingly simple.
The first tile was, as labeled, our credit profile. We clicked on ‘activate’ and started the setup process. Aura started by asking us for information that only we would know, information specifically drawn from our credit file — things like past addresses and approximate payments we made to specific loans in our past. We liked that they were being cautious about verifying our identity. Once that process was complete, Aura officially activated our credit monitoring and began to configure our credit profile.
Configuration took a bit of time – a full half hour, in fact. To be fair, Aura has to connect with the credit bureaus and compile a tremendous amount of information. In fact, Aura warned us the configuration can sometimes take a few hours. Half an hour seemed like a win, but maybe that’s what the company was after?
Pro Tip: You should always keep an eye on your credit files — go over them at least once a year. Consumer Reports estimates that about 1 in 3 people has significant errors in their files that can lead to diminished credit scores.2
We were immediately impressed with Aura’s credit monitoring features. The company kept an eye on all three of our credit files – Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Why do you need three? Because if an identity thief tries to take out a line of credit in your name, it might ping one service but not all of them.
Aside from keeping an eye on your credit, Aura also gives you the ability to lock it down. You should always keep this function engaged unless you’re actively applying for a loan or shopping around for a mortgage.
What is a credit lock? It essentially makes it impossible for a lender to access a credit file — in Aura’s case, your Experian file — when it’s engaged. This means a thief looking to open a line of credit in your name will immediately be stopped in their tracks. This is a really powerful tool against fraud, and one we recommend to everyone concerned about keeping their identity intact.
Pro Tip: There are two ways to block your credit file — a lock and a freeze. A lock can be instantly toggled on and off, while a freeze takes longer to set up and undo.3 You can have either set up by calling the major credit bureaus.
Aura also offers a credit score tracker, which shows your progress over time, and gives you information as to why your score is what it is. This is a great tool for anyone looking to re-establish their credit after a financial hardship or boost their credit to secure a loan at a lower interest rate.
Aura’s credit score tracker
The tracker is down at the bottom there. It doesn’t have any information in it yet, but after you use the service for a few months, you’ll see the dot move, plotting out your (hopefully) increasing score.
Moving on to the next tile, you’ll be able to link your accounts to Aura, which will then monitor them for suspicious activity, like large withdrawals or money being shuffled around. Aura uses Plaid — a third-party middleman which uses heavy-duty encryption to connect vendors to bank accounts — to connect to your accounts.
Aura uses Plaid to connect to your financial accounts
Once we selected our bank and entered our username and password, we were ready to go. Once connected, Aura monitored all our connected accounts for transactions beyond a certain threshold that we set.
FYI: We typically keep all of our transaction alerts at or around $300. That way we’ll know if serious money is moving, but we won’t be bombarded with alerts every time we buy lunch.
Setting Aura’s alert thresholds
The next tile gave us information about identity monitoring. Aura monitors everything from public records to new accounts opened in your name, to data broker sites, and even the dark web. The company even promises that it can get risky data removed from broker sites, which can significantly reduce your risk of identity theft.
To monitor for your identity, Aura uses the information you provided during the sign-up phase, but you can always add more information later on. In fact, we recommend that you do. Aura can only monitor what it knows, so you have to make sure to give Aura all the pertinent details about yourself.
Additional information Aura can monitor
We should point out that we’ve only come across one identity theft protection service that offers a list of services this comprehensive – Identity Guard. You can check out our Identity Guard review for more information, or you can compare these two companies head-to-head with our Aura vs. Identity Guard guide.
Ultimately, we found that Aura’s monitoring process works quite well. As soon as we had entered all our information, we got 23 notifications about places on the dark web listing our credentials.
Alerts from Aura
Before you start worrying about us too much, we should point out that most of these hits didn’t match us. There were a couple of additional entries that were so old they were no longer a danger to our identity. So Aura is certainly thorough – and that’s a good thing – but, you know, don’t freak out if you get 23 – or more – alerts about your own identity. Ultimately, we’d rather Aura be too cautious about our identity than not cautious enough.
Once you have Aura installed and set up, the software does the rest. You get regular alerts any time the service thinks there’s a problem with your identity. Aura goes a step further in protecting your identity by offering a set of proactive measures to make sure your personal information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Aura’s antivirus and VPN functions
Aura provides access to a really good antivirus for Windows, macOS, and Android. This is software that protects your devices from malware infections, which can compromise your personal and financial data.
The antivirus service provides comprehensive protection against all types of malware, including ransomware, adware, trojans, spyware, and rootkits. The antivirus program also provides real-time web protection, which means it blocks scam and phishing websites.
Aura also offers a VPN (Virtual Private Network) for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. This is an online app that encrypts your internet traffic, making it unreadable. This prevents hackers from intercepting your traffic and stealing your personal information.
On top of that, the VPN also hides your IP address (which reveals your location). Basically, you surf the web via the VPN, so only its IP address will be visible. This way, malicious actors won’t be able to track your IP address. What’s more, ad trackers won’t be able to associate it with your online preferences either.
We tested the VPN on our iPhone, and it worked pretty well. It provided us with smooth browsing speeds. Also, it passed all of our leak tests — this means it didn’t reveal our real IP and DNS addresses, so our browsing remained private. However, it didn’t really let us choose a server to connect to. It works if all you need is to conceal your browsing activity, but it doesn’t effectively provide other useful VPN features such as changing your device’s IP address location.
Aura’s VPN passed all of our leak tests.
Aura offers a strong, easy-to-use password manager, which secures your logins and helps you generate strong passwords.
Passwords are usually the point of attack for identity thieves because they can unlock additional personal information. As a result, it’s always a good idea to use a different password for every account you open. Your Netflix password shouldn’t match your banking password, for example, or your Amazon password.
Trouble is, none of us has the brain capacity to keep track of dozens of different passwords for the dozens of accounts we all maintain. A password manager solves the problem. You only have to remember one password – the one that opens the manager – and the manager does the rest.
Overall, we loved Aura. Their credit protections are comprehensive, their identity monitoring is robust, and their bonus features — the malware protection, the password manager, and the VPN — put them head and shoulders above many other identity theft protection services we’ve reviewed so far.
Just as important as the features Aura offers, though, is the fact that the company makes it easy to control our own identity protection. The website and app are designed to feel sleek and modern, a stark contrast to most identity theft services, with dashboards that feel like they were rolled out circa 1995. We find that the easier it is to navigate a company’s pages, the more likely we are to make the right decisions with respect to our security.
That said, Not every service is right for every customer. Be sure you breeze through our guide to this year’s best ID theft prevention products before making your final choice.
Yes, Aura monitors reports from TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian.
Yes, Aura keeps an eye on dark web marketplaces, chatrooms, and forums for your personally identifying information.
Yes, in our testing we found that Aura’s VPN worked well.
No, Aura’s VPN is not available for Chrome.
For individuals Aura costs $15 monthly. For couples, it’ll be $29 per month. For families of five or less, it costs $50 per month. And remember, you can save money if you pay one year in advance.
*The score you receive with Aura is provided for educational purposes to help you understand your credit. It is calculated using the information contained in your TransUnion or Experian credit file. Lenders use many different credit scoring systems, and the score you receive with Aura is not the same score used by lenders to evaluate your credit.
FTC. (2023). New FTC Data Show Consumers Reported Losing Nearly $8.8 Billion to Scams in 2022.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/02/new-ftc-data-show-consumers-reported-losing-nearly-88-billion-scams-2022
Fox, Michelle. (2021, Jun 11). A third of Americans found errors on their credit reports. Here’s how to fix those mistakes. CNBC.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/11/how-to-fix-those-mistakes-on-your-credit-report.html
Equifax FAQ. (2021). What's the difference between a credit report lock and a security freeze? Equifax.
https://www.equifax.com/personal/help/difference-security-freeze-credit-report-lock/
