Which vpn provider

Adam Hardy is a former assistant editor at Forbes Advisor, where he covered small business and tech. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder, specializing in the gig economy and entrepreneurship. Finance and other publications. Jacob Roach is a writer and technology enthusiast. He specializes in computing and small business software, lending his experience to sites like Digital Trends, Business Insider, and Cloudwards.

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Read more. Best Of. Featured Partners. Learn More On Privateinternetaccess. Private Internet Access. Our ratings take into account each service's pricing and features along with each platforms overall usability.

Dedicated IP Address Yes. Encryption AES Why We Picked It. Affordable Massive server network Offers dedicated IP add-on 10 simultaneous connections. However, you can save quite a bit with a multi-year plan if you plan on using your VPN for a long time CyberGhost offers a generous day refund period, so you can try out the system for yourself without having to commit.

Dedicated IP add-on day refund period Affordable, especially with a multi-year plan Easy to use. Torguard VPN. TorGuard provides several different privacy features and services, which are packaged into separate subscription tiers based on how you intend to use them: An anonymous VPN plan A business VPN plan A streaming VPN plan And a host of encrypted email services with their own varying subscription tiers We paid the most attention to the anonymous VPN plan, which offers more than enough features to keep you protected for everyday use.

Confusing free trial policy Short money-back guarantee Limited server locations. Built-in malware and ad blocker Dedicated IP address add-on Easy to use. Dedicated IP Address No. Unlimited Encryption AES Inexpensive Unlimited simultaneous connections. Lacks unique features No dedicated IP add-on. Dedicated IP address available Tailored business tier Strong privacy features. Wonky device configuration Pricy device upgrades and add-ons Low number of servers.

Multiple unique features Unlimited simultaneous connections Easy to use. No dedicated IP address Limited server locations. Learn More Read Forbes' Review. Who Should Use It: Those who are looking for security while on a tight budget. Solid free version Affordable basic tier Unlimited number of simultaneously connected devices. Lacks insight into server count Limited business functionality. Hotspot Shield. Extensively rated VPN Bundled with an antivirus, spam call blocker and password manager.

Information provided on Forbes Advisor is for educational purposes only. Your financial situation is unique and the products and services we review may not be right for your circumstances. We do not offer financial advice, advisory or brokerage services, nor do we recommend or advise individuals or to buy or sell particular stocks or securities.

Performance information may have changed since the time of publication. In fact, there are so many stories about VPNs not being true to their claims that we can list only a sample:. Knowing who is behind your VPN is a big step toward trusting them. Some VPNs offer great service or pricing but little to no insight into who exactly is handling them. Considering the explosion of companies offering VPN services and the trivial nature of setting one up as a scam , having a public-facing leadership team—especially one with a long history of actively fighting for online privacy and security—is the most concrete way a company can build trust.

We think the privacy promises of people with ties to an intelligence collection agency should be considered with some skepticism. Another major factor we looked for: published security audits conducted by reputable third parties, which are much more common than they have been in the recent past. Additionally, the auditors themselves are limited by time and sometimes are contracted to look only at certain aspects of a VPN.

However, software companies and service providers that are willing to engage with third-party auditors to review their code and implementation—and make the results public—do send a signal of trust. For this guide, we insisted that our VPN picks have published third-party security audits of their core product—their server and back-end infrastructure, rather than just their apps and web-browser extensions. Although audits for apps and extensions are a nice supplement, apps and extensions can be independently dissected by any security researcher with a smartphone or web browser.

Some VPNs have had no-log audits conducted in order to show that they are living up to their privacy promises. And even if companies intend to stick to their promises, they may be inadvertently failing to secure the data they are entrusted with protecting. Although the move toward transparency with no-log audits is a positive one, competition makes it mandatory that such audits be paired with security audits that can help find vulnerabilities so that companies can patch or mitigate them.

If you penny-pinch on privacy and security services, you may end up without privacy or security. Some VPN reviewers focus on VPNs that are offshore, believing in the privacy benefits of these localities and trying to stay away from the so-called Fourteen Eyes countries —the 14 countries, including the United States, that actively share intelligence data gathered from internet monitoring. But depending on the location, that same lack of regulation can leave people unprotected against fraudulent marketing, which is a major trade-off.

There are three common scenarios in which other parties would be able to quickly link your online habits. In fact, government requests for data have included asking ISPs for accounts linked to other accounts—if Google knows which VPN you use and that there are multiple accounts on your computer, it knows that your accounts are linked, as does anybody else it shares that data with.

People in the US who believe that offshore VPNs will protect their identities in the case of criminal activity will be disappointed to learn that the US government actually has mutual legal assistance treaties with dozens of countries throughout the world.

In , we added four, and then in we considered one more. The minimum: recent, published back-end security audits by a reputable third-party firm; public-facing leadership.

The best: comprehensive, published white-box aka open-box security audits by a reputable third-party firm conducted annually; transparency reports; a bug-bounty program or a coordinated vulnerability-disclosure program.

We thoroughly reviewed all audits, paying close attention to how comprehensive they were and what they included. We also factored in which companies had public-facing leadership or ownership. We looked for audits by third-party firms, prioritizing those that assessed the overall security of a VPN provider.

The minimum: marketing copy consistent with the privacy policy and the terms of service. The best: easy-to-read policies; companies located in countries with strong consumer protections; no third-party trackers on the website.

The VPNs we chose said they logged minimal information. We asked companies about their internal security and privacy standards, and how they would respond to requests for information, in order to gauge the trustworthiness of their statements on logging. For a VPN service, this can feel somewhat contradictory to the larger promises made in website copy probably written by the same marketing team making use of these trackers.

Despite our extensive testing, we know that VPNs work differently in different locations and on different computers and networks. A trial or a free version of a VPN can allow you to test out several of them risk-free to see if any are a better fit for your specific circumstance.

In lieu of a free trial or tier, we recommend trying out a new VPN for a month before committing to buying it for a full year. The more servers a network has at each of its locations, the more likely you are to have a speedy connection. And a VPN with a wide variety of server locations can help you geoshift your location without losing connectivity or allow you to log on to a less-congested part of the world.

However, VPNs tend to be slower at peak times even on the most robust networks due to limited bandwidth in and out of an area. We built our requirements based on interviews with experts and recommendations PDF put out by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. We recommend the open-source WireGuard protocol, a new lightweight protocol that is gaining prominence. It now has Windows and macOS support and is integrated into the Linux kernel, which required additional security review.

Although AES bit encryption is fine for most purposes , we prefer services that default to the more-secure bit encryption and still offer good performance. The best: customizable rules allowing you to activate a kill switch on startup or on specific networks. Without a kill switch, if your Wi-Fi drops or another connectivity issue occurs, your VPN stops securing the connection.

A two-connection limit is likely sufficient for most individuals, but five or more connections offer flexibility for couples, families, or people with many devices.

The minimum: email support, with responses sent within 24 business hours; robust help section. The best: email, chat support during business hours, quick response to weekend tickets. An extensive help section on the website can resolve many problems.

Although we consider online-chat support to be the gold standard, quick and clear responses to emails can be equally helpful. After going through the above criteria in , we narrowed our initial list down to just four services that met our requirements: IVPN , Mullvad , Surfshark , and TunnelBear.

We signed up for each one of those services and dug deeper into their policies, technology, and performance on a custom-built gaming PC, a MacBook Pro, an iPhone, and a Pixel phone. Multi-threaded testing, according to a white paper by OTI , has a higher tolerance for background packet losses and can obfuscate deficiencies in the network, so it tends to be more forgiving than other tests.

From Portland, Oregon, we ran the VPN-enabled test using eight different server locations per service:. For services that offered automatic location selection—a feature designed to give you the best speed possible—we also ran the tests on whichever location the VPN software chose. We ran the full series of tests with each location during three time periods that we chose to see whether internet rush hours drastically reduced performance:.

Additionally, we tested the apps over video calls to see if any service caused frozen screens, slowdowns, or dropped connections. We also evaluated the interface and experience of the desktop and mobile apps of all the top-performing services. We looked at the payment process, how easy each app was to set up and connect, and what options were available in the settings pane. We contacted each of our finalists with simple questions about their service and troubleshooting. VPN companies provide technical support through email, online ticketing systems, or live chat, but some chat options are not available outside of business hours.

Our response times to support inquiries ranged from immediate chat responses to two days. We reached out to these finalists for more information about their operations to judge their trustworthiness and transparency, and we spoke to two by phone and one over email. Mullvad is a secure VPN that provided a seamless experience during our testing: It was easy to set up, and it hummed along so quietly in the background that we would often forget that it was even turned on.

The company excelled in signals of transparency and trust, and in our testing the service was easy to use and delivered some of the fastest speeds of any VPN we tried. Dedicated apps for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS make Mullvad simple to set up on a variety of devices even if you have little technical knowledge.

Mullvad has also been the most consistent in conducting audits regularly, about once a year. In November and December , Mullvad underwent its latest security audit , a process that is key for improving trust in an opaque industry.

Conducted by cybersecurity consulting firm Cure53, the most recent infrastructure audit took five testers a total of 22 person-days to complete. In evaluating Mullvad, the auditors spotted 12 vulnerabilities, implementation issues, and other findings: two of high severity, two of medium severity, four of low severity, and four informational. Neither audit found any issues of critical severity, and both companies addressed the security issues quickly.

Many VPN services put their marketing promises front and center while keeping the specifics of those promises out of sight in a cryptic privacy policy, if they mention them at all. Mullvad keeps its policies comprehensive and transparent, and those policies generally indicate that it minimizes the data it collects at every step.

The privacy policy states that the company does not collect or store activity logs of any kind. Both Mullvad and IVPN may not even collect an email address during sign-up, depending on how you choose to pay. Mullvad typically stores only the account number and the time remaining on an account, plus a few other configuration details.

The stored data includes whether customers are making payments via PayPal, Stripe, Swish , or bank wire, or if they send an email or report a problem additional information for other types of payments is described in various policy pages on the site. Mullvad stores transaction IDs and email addresses for PayPal transactions but deletes them after six months.

Mullvad also collects very little data on its website visitors, and all of the cookies that may track you on the Mullvad website expire when you close the browser window. In contrast, IVPN uses a self-hosted web-analytics service called Matomo and collects data on your browser user-agent, language, screen resolution, referring website, and IP address, though it does discard the last piece of the IP address. Research from The Markup shows that other VPNs have far more advertising and other third-party trackers on their sites.

Mullvad has fairly readable terms of service, including details about what kinds of information the company collects and how it uses that information. As we discuss in the section on trusting a VPN , using a VPN service beholden to US laws provides for some level of consumer protection, but some people argue that services outside the US—like Mullvad in Sweden—are less likely to be swept up in US-government data-collection efforts.

Free trials are rare in this category, but we like that Mullvad offers a day money-back guarantee so you can see if the server speeds and connections work for you. For a trusted VPN to be worthwhile, its network has to be useful, which generally means offering fast connection speeds and a wide variety of locations to connect through.

During non-rush-hour traffic, Mullvad averaged We recommend using WireGuard for better security and faster speed. We like that Mullvad lays out its security standards clearly ; although IVPN meets our standards, that company is less technical in its descriptions. It's evidently aimed at the more advanced user. The apps are hugely configurable and have a wide range of protocols, DNS protection, and also supports torrenting on most servers.

However, if you're a bit of a newbie, the amount of customization might throw you off, in which case we'd recommend going for a service like ExpressVPN. In our streaming testing, Hide. Finally, it's also got some excellent privacy credentials - although it hasn't yet undertaken a security audit. Overall, it's a great choice, especially if you like to tinker with your software.

Sign up now on the Hide. With servers in countries, HMA boasts the widest network of any VPN on this list, and with apps for plenty of devices you'll have plenty of options here. However, those servers are spread a little thin, and we'd like to see each location populated with more than just a few.

HMA has recently undertaken a no-logging audit by VerSprite, which has been passed — although we're not entirely sure of the true scope of this, and the final report isn't available to the public to inspect. Still, though, that's good news. But P2P is allowed, so torrenting is still on the table. Overall, it's a good VPN that it might be worth taking a look at.

Sign up now on the HMA website. VyprVPN is a useful service that has a lot going for it. A standout of our VyprVPN review is its watertight no-logging policy, which has also been publicly audited. This is a great start if you're after a VPN to keep your info private. Plus, with 30 simultaneous connections, you won't be limited to picking just a few of your devices. In our tests it performed well in the UK, but in the US it didn't come close to making the most of our ultra-fast line.

Still, it does provide usable speeds, and if you don't have top tier internet you're unlikely to notice the difference. Sign up now on VyprVPN's website. However, in our StrongVPN review we found out that it goes beyond the basics, offering some unique extra benefits while missing out on some more obvious others.

A really attractive feature is that you can have up to 12 devices running StrongVPN at once, which is more than enough to cover all of your devices and still have some left over. But this is balanced out by a lack of detail in the client, which doesn't include information in the server browser or DNS settings — and we also had some minor issues with the kill switch. Making a up a little for that is the affordable pricing, alongside the free GB of SugarSync storage, and as the storage provider is usually pretty expensive, this is a good deal.

However, StrongVPN have missed a trick here, as if you visit the homepage you simply won't see anything about this partnership until you check out the pricing plans.

Sign up now on the StrongVPN website. For those who've never used a VPN before — and perhaps are a little intimidated by the prospect — TunnelBear could be the perfect choice. You can start off with a limited free plan which admittedly only gives you MB of data a month , or upgrade to the full service which gives access to over 1, servers in 46 countries.

Check out the full TunnelBear review for more detail. Network performance is acceptable and prices are par for the course. However, the biggest draw is its comprehensive privacy policy and regular audits, which will appeal to you if you're looking for a VPN to genuinely keep your information safe. TunnelBear's simplicity, though, is also its downfall. While it's easy to use, so are ExpressVPN and most of the other top-rated providers, but once you get used to using them, you'll have the choice to explore in-depth options if you want to.

No such luck with TunnelBear, though, as there's a dearth of configuration. You've also got no choice but to run TunnelBear's client software — unless you use Linux — which may concern some privacy-minded users, and there's no option to set up TunnelBear connections on routers or other devices. Sign up now on the TunnelBear website. One of the best antivirus providers Bitdefender has launched a standalone VPN product.

Bitdefender VPN used to come bundled with the antivirus package, but now it's available on its own, and for a very reasonable price. However, that reliance on Hotspot Shield does mean Bitdefender doesn't have much control over its logging policy, and it's also impossible to manually set up as a router VPN , too. Bitdefender's app is about as simple as possible — which will be positive or negative depending on what kind of user you are.

That's it. The only close to unique feature is Bitdefender's autoconnect menu. You can set the VPN to activate if it detects P2P, banking, mature content, dating, and a number of other kinds of website, which may well be quite attractive. Beyond that, though, there's little in the way of features that would make you choose the service over those higher up this list. Read more in our full Bitdefender VPN review. Sign up now on the Bitdefender website. If you don't mind signing up for a massive five years, Ivacy is just about the cheapest VPN you can pick up.

Beyond that, Ivacy is a pretty decent VPN overall, and quite unlike Bitdefender, its apps are full to the brim with interesting additions. You can filter your servers for the best ones to use with any particular streaming provider, save your favorites, choose between a number of protocols, and the app even claims to scan downloaded files for viruses.

You'll also get a kill switch and split tunneling. However, there are a few usability issues that we weren't hugely impressed with.

Automatic server selection didn't often give us the server we'd usually choose, and Streaming Mode threw up a host of problems like hidden IP addresses and unswitchable servers. Plus, while we know it's cheap, we didn't appreciate being served ads in a commercial product. Overall though, you can't sniff at that price, and if that's your only concern, Ivacy might be for you. Sign up now on the Ivacy website. Choosing the best VPN for can be a tricky process — that's why we've put together this comprehensive guide.

As a middle ground, fan-favorite NordVPN is also useful. It offers serious security for a decent price, and has apps for tons of devices. When testing VPNs, we check every aspect that might be of concern. To begin with, we look at what personal details a service needs, and any essential features like encryption. Then we consider pricing, and whether money-back guarantees are on offer, and whether it works on other operating systems as a Mac VPN or Linux VPN as well as on Windows.

During the physical testing, we test speeds over a number of servers, check for DNS leaks, test kill switch functionality plus any and all other additional features, and measure connection time and if the apps crash. Finally, we review how easy the apps are to use, and test the services on desktop and mobile devices. Using a VPN is not illegal, and it's perfectly legitimate to want to protect your data and activity.

Having one on your computer and using it regularly in pursuit of watertight web security and location spoofing is in no way unlawful. However, using a VPN to hide illegal activity doesn't make you above the law, so downloading copyrighted material is still illegal even with a VPN.

However, in those cases it's well worth reading up on what you may or may not be permitted to use a VPN for, and consider if the very small risk is worth taking. The best VPN can make it look like you're located somewhere you're not.

It's a well-worn practice to evade online censorship, as is done in some countries, or to tap into US streaming services while in Europe or Asia. But there are some caveats. A VPN will give you more privacy, but not more security. If you end up on a website harboring malware, the VPN can't prevent you from being infected. You just need a proxy service that will make it look like you're in the right country.

There are many free proxy services available, but do your homework before choosing one — some are a bit dodgy. There are no guarantees that a particular service will evade geographical restrictions on a particular day. The most basic qualities you should look for are speed, privacy and ease of use.

These might seem like basic attributes, but in reality few providers have found a happy medium. Connection speed relies on having a wide range of well-maintained servers. This allows the VPN to provide excellent speed and bandwidth to everyone using its servers. Having excellent security is a fairly basic requirement, but hard to get right. If you're concerned about that, make sure your VPN has an airtight privacy policy, and a no-logging policy is even better.

Finally, although many users might be au fait with tech, more and more newbies are looking to start using VPNs. If that's you, it's definitely worth making sure that your provider has well-designed apps on all the devices you expect to use with the service. Naturally, free services are very popular products because everyone likes to save their money.