Proton (Yearly)
NordVPN (2-Year)
Windscribe (Pro, Yearly)
Hundreds of VPNs are at your disposal. They all want you to believe they're the best VPN you can buy. All of them claim the biggest network or a no-logging policy. And they all promise your internet traffic is safe on the network of servers they've rented. Only some of them are telling the truth.
VPNs are only growing in popularity due to age-verification laws in the UK and in several states in the US. Even if you don't want a VPN, you might need one. If you're hesitant, I get it. VPN providers have been deep in murky waters for years, constantly caught lying about their practices, handing over user data that was never supposed to be logged, and serving as safe havens for large cybercriminal organizations.
I wanted to find the VPN services that actually work; the ones that keep their promises even in the face of potential prosecution, and the ones that have a proven track record of reliable performance. Some of the picks in this guide aren't conventional, and some of the services I suggest you avoid might be controversial. But these are the top VPNs I'd use day-to-day.
Read our other VPN guides, including how to set up a VPN on your router and how to use a VPN to watch Netflix when you travel abroad.
Update September 2026: We’ve added Bitdefender VPN Premium and added more information on what VPNs are used for.
What Does a VPN Do? And How Does It Work?
VPN stands for virtual private network. A VPN provides a tunnel through which all of your internet traffic passes. Instead of connecting to your internet service provider's servers, you connect to a VPN's server before connecting to the broader internet. Because most VPN services operate this way, your browsing data isn't stored, essentially making you anonymous online.
The linchpin in this system is a VPN protocol. Today, nearly all internet traffic is encrypted, but that encryption happens only after you've established a connection with a website. A VPN protocol encrypts traffic before it reaches the VPN server, adding extra security on untrusted networks like public Wi-Fi at a coffee shop or airport. It doesn't help much on your personal network unless there is an intruder.
What Are VPNs Used For?
Although VPNs are often marketed as security tools, they serve a better purpose for privacy and bypassing geo-restrictions. By anonymizing your traffic through a VPN server, your browsing can't be traced back to you. The internet is full of cookies, and you might be surprised by how much of your traffic online is tracked via browser fingerprinting. That includes hiding what sites you visit (and what you do on those sites) from your internet service provider (ISP).
By routing your traffic through a server in another location, you can also bypass geo-restrictions online, such as the content libraries available in different countries on Netflix or checking product availability in other regions of the world.
VPNs can also be important when connecting to public Wi-Fi. If you're doing anything remotely sensitive on your computer at a coffee shop, a VPN is a good idea to protect your personal data.
How Much Do VPNs Cost?
VPN prices vary widely, but most providers cost around $10 per month for a monthly plan. Pricing changes if you buy several months at once, and it gets even more complicated with full security suites, such as those offered by Nord Security and Proton.
Most prominent VPN services offer multi-month or even multiyear discounts. These plans are often the best way to get your foot in the door, but some VPNs have recently faced class-action lawsuits over their auto-renewal practices. Although a handful of lawsuits have been filed, that doesn't mean these services necessarily engaged in illegal practices.
Free VPNs exist, as well, but you should avoid most of them. Some restrictive free plans from Proton and Windscribe are useful, but you should approach most free VPNs with skepticism.
VPN Terms and Features, Explained
You'll come across a few of these terms in this guide as you generally shop for a VPN. Here's what they mean.
Double-hop: Connecting to two (or more) VPN servers in succession. This provides an extra layer of privacy if someone traces your network path, but it will vastly reduce speeds.
Split tunneling: Allows you to choose which apps use the VPN tunnel. Useful if you want some apps (like your browser) to use the VPN tunnel but not others.
Kill switch: A security feature in VPNs that will disable your internet connection if the VPN connection drops. A kill switch can prevent internet traffic from leaking if the VPN fails.
IP and domain block list: A list of IP addresses or domain names that are blocked inside the VPN tunnel. Some VPNs offer Domain Name System (DNS) blocking, too, which can block ads served from particular DNS servers.
Static IP: Most VPNs assign you a random IP address, or even rotate the IP address while you’re connected. If you need external access to your network with a network-wide VPN, you'll need a static IP address.
Port forwarding: Allows you to forward a port on your private network, bypassing the VPN tunnel. Useful when you need external network access with a network-wide VPN, such as running a media server.
NetShield: A feature specific to Proton VPN that blocks ads and trackers while connected to the VPN. Other services, such as Windscribe and NordVPN, offer similar features.
Dark web monitoring: A feature available in some VPNs, such as NordVPN and ProtonVPN, that will monitor the dark web for your email address or other personal information. You'll be notified if the information shows up on the dark web or as part of a breach.
DAITA: A feature of Mullvad VPN that will introduce background noise to your connection, combating AI-assisted network analysis. Windscribe, NordVPN, and ProtonVPN offer similar features.
Are VPNs Illegal?
Short of a few exceptions, VPNs are legal around the world. That includes the US, UK, Canada, Australia, the EU, South Africa, and many countries in Central and South America. Places such as North Korea and Turkmenistan have VPN bans in place, but due to the extreme censorship in those countries, it's hard to verify what laws are on the books (and how they're enforced). You can probably guess the North Korean government's stance on bypassing censorship, though.
For everyone else, VPN legality only comes into play based on which VPN you use and what you use it for. Countries such as India and Russia call for compliance with the government, forcing providers like NordVPN to shut down servers in those regions. And, regardless of what country you're in, engaging in illegal activity while connected to a VPN is still illegal.
Proton (Yearly)
Proton (2 Year)
Proton (Monthly)
Proton VPN (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is the best VPN you can buy. Its Plus service was the fastest I tested across the US and UK. It has a generous free plan if you'd like to try it out first. The features are unmatched, and the pricing is excellent, especially if you bundle Proton VPN with the company's other software (Proton Unlimited). After testing all of these services, Proton is what I personally use now.
What sent Proton over the edge was its commitment to transparency. It has maintained a transparency report since 2017, undergone third-party audits annually since 2022, and open-sourced its applications five years ago. That last bit is huge, as bugs within the application can pose a security risk, and handing those applications over to the open-source community can surface those bugs much faster. There are no real compromises here, with features like split tunneling, port forwarding, and double-hop connections.
Proton is a rare example of a VPN service that gets it. Every VPN engages in the same marketing practices, touting their security, speed, and privacy. But Proton puts its money where its mouth is, all while offering a remarkably easy-to-use and feature-rich VPN application.
NordVPN (2-Year)
NordVPN (1-Year)
NordVPN (Monthly)
NordVPN has a long history, and it's one of the most prominent VPN services on the market. It comes with one of the largest VPN networks available, enough features to make Surfshark blush, and decent (though not the best) speeds. It's a little more expensive than I'd hoped for, but that's the price you pay for such an extensive network and feature set.
That feature set is where NordVPN stands apart. Its Basic plan will get you access to the VPN, but I recommend going with at least the Plus plan. It opens up an ad blocker and gives you access to one of the best password managers around, NordPass.
Nord backs up security and privacy credentials with independent audits of the company’s no-log policy and the service’s security. Like Proton, Nord lets you scale up your protection with encrypted cloud storage, but Nord leans further into security while Proton focuses on privacy-focused productivity. With NordVPN, you can upgrade to unlock NordProtect, an identity theft protection service, as well as Incogni to remove your data online.
These extras wouldn't mean much on their own, but the core of NordVPN is still an excellent VPN service. It's been on the bleeding edge of VPN security and features for years, and that hasn't changed.
Windscribe (Pro, Yearly)
Windscribe (Free)
You should generally avoid free VPNs, but Windscribe is one of the few worth considering. You get 10 GB of data across 10 server locations and unlimited connections, and you can even unlock more data if you refer friends or post on social media about Windscribe. There are a few similar offers from services like Proton, but Windscribe provides a pleasant on-ramp for subscribing.
If you do decide to pay, you can build your own plan. Unlimited data runs an extra $3 per month, and you can add server locations for an extra $1 per server per month. It's fantastic. Most people don't need VPN servers in Ghana, Cambodia, and Peru, so rather than charge for all those locations, you can pick out your locations piecemeal. If you want everything, that's available at a discounted rate, too.
The pricing model is what sets Windscribe apart, but it's an excellent VPN in its own right. It offers additional packet obfuscation to combat network analysis, and it's loaded with features like split tunneling and port forwarding. It's fast, too, dropping just 15.6 percent of my speed when connected in the US.
Like the other providers I've included, Windscribe has undergone a third-party audit. But unlike the other options, it's also been taken to court. Windscribe CEO Yegor Sak was personally charged with a crime in Greece in relation to a user's activity on Windscribe-operated servers, essentially tying activity on the network to Sak personally. It was dismissed. VPNs are subpoenaed all the time, but the fact that Windscribe wasn't able to produce logs even when the CEO of the company was facing criminal prosecution speaks volumes.
Windscribe added random hashed login in December 2025, which makes it possible to create an anonymous account. Windscribe doesn’t record the random hash, so if you lose it, you’ll also lose account access—but it can help to keep your identity private. This is similar to how Mullvad and IVPN handle accounts. Windscribe accepts cryptocurrency payments as well.
Any VPN worth its salt claims a no-logs policy, but almost all of them keep some logs. Those logs shouldn't have anything to do with your browsing data, and they should be anonymized, but most VPNs need to at least keep logs of information like your email and payment method. But not Mullvad.
Mullvad doesn't do multi-year subscriptions, referral links, or social sign-on. You generate an account number to sign up, and you add time to that account with the payment method of your choice, including a credit card, PayPal, crypto, or cold, hard cash (via mail). If you want to go through the hassle, you can stay fully anonymous in the eyes of Mullvad. If that wasn't enough, Mullvad even claims it was raided by Swedish police and still didn't produce logs.
It's not as fast as Proton, Windscribe, or Surfshark, but it's not bad, either—around a 24 percent drop in the US compared to 19 percent with Surfshark—and it lacks some features like port forwarding. But the pricing is good at roughly $6 a month, depending on exchange rates (Mullvad charges a flat €5 regardless of location).
Mullvad is on the cutting edge of privacy, too, building RAM-only servers starting in 2022 and introducing defense against AI-guided traffic analysis (DAITA) last year. DAITA protects against AI traffic analysis, introducing network noise and sending consistent packet sizes to obfuscate your encrypted traffic further.
While the built-in, free Bitdefender VPN is usable, it's too limited for what most people will want. The company's paid option, Bitdefender VPN Premium, gets you support for up to 10 devices, and it's plenty reliable and fast—without the data restrictions. Its biggest draw is its first-year price: it's only $30, which is a great value for a VPN like this. It goes up to $70 after the first year, though, which is a bit more expensive than ProtonVPN. But that first-year price comes out to just $2.92 per month, making it an especially good VPN for beginners to try.
Our VPN reviewer, Matthew Smith, was also impressed by the app experience, which is supported on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. It's clean, and all the important information is right up front—including the kill switch. A couple of platforms are missing, such as TVs and Linux, so be aware of that. So, while Bitdefender VPN Premium might not be the ultimate privacy tool, as it's missing some more of the advanced features, it's a user-friendly and dependable VPN with a killer first-year price. —Luke Larsen
ExpressVPN (2 Years)
ExpressVPN (Yearly)
ExpressVPN (Monthly)
ExpressVPN has had a rough few years, but it finally seems to be on solid footing. It was purchased a few years back for almost $1 billion by Kape Technologies, a firm that owns several VPNs, including CyberGhost and Private Internet Access. A revolving door of executives followed the sale, but ExpressVPN's leadership is solid enough now that it's worth recommending.
That's because the service itself hasn't degraded in the past few years. ExpressVPN is still insanely fast, packed with features, and dead-simple to use across desktop and mobile. It can go toe-to-toe with the top dogs, and it's always been able to. That hasn't changed.
However, I'm recommending it here due to recent changes ExpressVPN made to its membership options. Its core service is still intact, offering 10 simultaneous connections and full access to the ExpressVPN network. You can push higher, though, with the Advanced plan offering 12 connections and the Pro plan offering 14. The Advanced plan is best for most people, not only due to the higher connection limit but also because it comes with a password manager and 50 percent off one of ExpressVPN’s AirCove routers.
Surfshark: I've used Surfshark personally for a few years, and I'd still be using it if Proton didn't impress me so much. Surfshark is dead simple to use. It pops up and connects before swiftly getting out of my way so I can get on with my day. If you spring for a two-year plan, it's cheap. You can score over two years for around $54 with the Starter plan.
If you want to dig in deeper, you can. Surfshark is one of the most feature-rich VPNs I've used, sporting the basics like a double-hop connection and split tunneling, as well as an ad blocker and email masking. Like Proton, Surfshark offers other security tools like antivirus and dark web monitoring if you pick up a more expensive plan. Surfshark loses out just a bit when it comes to privacy, however. It has a no-logs policy, and it maintains a transparency report and a warrant canary, so it’s not bad in this regard. However, it doesn't have open-source applications, so you’ll need a bit more faith in Surfshark’s app security than with some other VPN services.
EventVPN: This is a free, ad-supported VPN from ExpressVPN. Ads and VPNs don't really mix, but EventVPN says it's able to offer a free service via Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) and Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), basically allowing it to serve ads without harvesting your personal data. The problem is the pervasiveness of ads. A banner lives at the top of the app at all times, and you'll need to sit through a 30-second ad each time you connect or disconnect; a big problem when some servers post unreasonably slow speeds. I'll admit EventVPN is a unique concept, but I see nothing better than ProtonVPN or Windscribe for a free VPN service. And when it comes to the inconvenience of sitting through ads, it's straight-up worse.
IVPN: This privacy-focused VPN provider is similar to Mullvad. It does not ask you to create an account with a username, password, and email, but instead generates a random ID, which you use to log in. That helps preserve your anonymity, since that information can’t be tied to your usage even if IVPN suffered a security incident. IVPN also accepts cryptocurrency payments (Bitcoin and Monero). Unlike Mullvad, IVPN offers one-year, two-year, and three-year plan options, as well as an unusual weekly option, which might be nice if you want a VPN while on vacation (IVPN standard is $2 per week). These can be more affordable than Mullvad’s monthly fee. However, IVPN lacks some privacy features you will find with Mullvad, such as RAM-less servers. IVPN scheduled a security audit for 2025, but as of January 2026, the results have not been posted. IVPN also has a tight two-device limit on the Standard plan. The Pro plan raises that to seven, but the Pro plan’s price is $10 per month, so it’s more expensive than Mullvad, which has a five-device limit. That remains true even if you go with a multi-year IVPN plan. Still, IVPN is a fine alternative if you want annual plan options. And while most VPN apps serve their purpose, I do think IVPN’s app is both more attractive and easier to use than Mullvad’s. —Matthew S. Smith
Private Internet Access (PIA): With its long history in the VPN space, PIA has maintained a track record of defending user privacy—even in the face of actual criminal activity. In 2016, a criminal complaint was filed in Florida against Preston Alexander McWaters for threats made online. McWaters was eventually convicted and sentenced to 42 months in prison. Investigators traced the online threats back to PIA's servers and subpoenaed the company. As the complaint reads, “A subpoena was sent to [Private Internet Access], and the only information they could provide is that the cluster of IP addresses being used was from the east coast of the United States.” According to the complaint, McWaters engaged in several other identifying activities, but PIA wasn't among them. Despite such a clear view of a VPN provider upholding its no-logging policy, PIA didn't impress me during my tests. It delivered the worst speeds out of any VPN I tested, with more than a 50 percent drop on the closest US server. (Windscribe, for context, only dropped 15.6 percent of my speed.)
MysteriumVPN: This is the go-to dVPN, or decentralized VPN, as far as I can tell. The concept of a decentralized VPN has existed for a while, but it's really gained traction over the last couple of years. The idea is to have a network of residential IP addresses that make up the network, routing your traffic through normal IP addresses to get around the increasingly common block lists for VPN servers. Mysterium accomplishes this network with MystNodes. It's a crypto node. People buy the node to earn crypto, and they're put into the Mysterium network. It's not inherently bad, but routing your traffic through a single residential IP is a little worrisome. Even without the decentralized kick, Mysterium was slow, and it doesn't maintain any sort of privacy materials, be it a third-party audit, warranty canary, or transparency report.
PrivadoVPN: A popular option to recommend as a free VPN, offering a decent free service, with a handful of full-speed servers and 10 GB of data per month. You'll have to suffer through four—yes, four—redirects begging you to pay for a subscription before signing up, but the free plan works. The problem is how new PrivadoVPN is. There's no transparency report or audit available, and although the speeds are decent, they aren't as good as Proton, Windscribe, or Surfshark. PrivadoVPN isn't bad, but it's hard to recommend when Proton and Windscribe exist with free plans that are equally as good.
You'll find dozens of free VPNs all claiming to protect your privacy. Most of them don't. There are plenty of VPNs I don’t recommend, but these are a few I've tested that are worth mentioning.
Hola is an infamous name in the VPN industry, but it's been close to a decade since its very public debacle. Hola is free, and it's able to stay free because it uses a peer-to-peer network. Hola also owns Bright Data (formerly Luminati), which is a data collection company. In 2015, Hola sold access to the network of its free users (via Luminati), which was used in a distributed denial-of-service attack on 8chan. It's been a decade since that incident, but Hola still operates in a similar way. If you don't pay, you could be used as an exit node in Bright Data's network, and the privacy policy makes it clear that Hola logs data about your usage, including your IP address, the pages you visit, and timestamps.
X-VPN is available on desktop, but it primarily shows up in results on the Apple App Store and Google Play, targeting mobile users with a free offering. X-VPN hasn't done anything explicitly wrong like Hola, but it has way too many inconsistencies to recommend. For starters, it uses a proprietary VPN protocol, which it obfuscates within the app. Proprietary protocols like NordVPN's NordLynx and ExpressVPN's Lightway are based on existing, open-source protocols. Further, X-VPN was highlighted in a Tech Transparency Project report about free VPNs with links to the Chinese government; X-VPN is based in Hong Kong. There's no smoking gun with X-VPN, but there doesn't need to be. The speeds aren't the best, the app lacks basic features like split tunneling, and the pricing for a paid plan is in line with top providers.
Functionally, a VPN should do two things: keep your internet speed reasonably fast, and actually protect your browsing data. That's where I focused my testing. Extra features, a comfy UI, and customization settings are great, but they don't matter if the core service is broken.
Speed testing requires spot-checking, as the time of day, the network you're connected to, and the specific VPN server you're using can all influence speeds. Because of that, I always set a baseline speed on my unprotected connection directly before recording results, and I ran the test three times across both US and UK servers. With those baseline drops, I spot-checked at different times of the day over the course of a week to see if the speed decrease was similar.
Security is a bit more involved. For starters, I checked for DNS, WebRTC, and IP leaks every time I connected to a server using Browser Leaks. I also ran brief tests sniffing my connection with Wireshark to ensure all of the packets being sent were secured with the VPN protocol in use.
On the privacy front, the top-recommended services included on this list have been independently audited, and they all maintain some sort of transparency report. In most cases, there's a proper report, but in others, such as Windscribe, that transparency is exposed through legal proceedings.
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