Switching VPN countries did nothing to what Air France charged. Its own website quoted the same New York to Paris fare in eight countries, within about $3 once converted to dollars. The aggregator Skyscanner told a different story.
Here’s how the test worked. Testers searched two long-haul routes from a Windows PC in Europe, connecting NordVPN to a new country before every search and using a fresh private window each time. They left each site on the country version and currency it chose. Every fare was a one-week economy round trip for one adult, leaving about six weeks out, converted to dollars at the European Central Bank’s reference rates from the same week.
New York to Paris
Air France’s top and bottom countries sat $2.60 apart, which is currency rounding. Its Turkish site never switched currency and showed the same USD 358 as the American one. Skyscanner spread wider: Thailand at $670.93 for the cheapest nonstop, Indonesia at $704.04, a gap of $33. Indonesia was the only market above the US.
Los Angeles to Tokyo
Thailand won again, with Zipair at $813.17, $36 or 4.2% under the US fare. Japan, the airline’s home market, was the dearest of all eight. Then ANA reversed the order. The US was cheapest at $1,041, and every other country cost more, Indonesia by 7.4%. Think of it like shopping at two supermarkets: the cheaper one for milk may be the dearer one for bread.
Mexico and India stayed within roughly 2% of the US price either way, so a VPN there won’t reliably save anything. Turkey’s Skyscanner site threw up a bot check on both routes, so it went unpriced.
The Thai fare, followed to checkout
Skyscanner listed Air France’s Paris nonstop at ฿23,721 through MakeMyTrip, against ฿23,925 direct from Air France and KLM. The summary read THB 23,720.21, about $711, under the $717 on the US site. But the saving had strings. A ฿1,219 discount code, worth about $37, did much of the work, and the fare was Light economy with no cabin or checked bag. Adding a 7 kg cabin bag at ฿307.93 pushed the total to about $720.60, above the US price.
MakeMyTrip also called it a special fare, with the ticket issued up to seven hours after payment. The form asked for passport details and a phone number preset to Thailand (+66), which can be changed. Testing stopped before payment, so whether it takes a foreign card is unknown.
Practical upshot
Search from home first, without a VPN, and note what the fare includes. Rerun the same route and dates elsewhere, convert everything to one currency, and check the total with bags before paying. Foreign transaction fees of up to 3% on many cards could wipe out most of a 4% gain. Using a VPN to compare prices is legal in the US, the UK and the EU, but it can breach a booking site’s terms.
Which VPN
Speed did not change any fare, so choose on coverage and extras. Measured against a 190.36 Mbps baseline, NordVPN’s Mexican server reached 178.08 Mbps and its Mumbai server 170.95 Mbps. It connected in all nine countries tested, though it sometimes failed to connect while another VPN app was installed. ExpressVPN switched fastest, one to two seconds, with its Mexican server at 147.51 Mbps and a UK-based India option at 182.82 Mbps. Proton VPN’s NetShield blocked 126 of 135 ads and trackers, 93%, against 76% for NordVPN and 71% for ExpressVPN, but its Mexican servers averaged just 76.78 Mbps.
