Best VPN services 2023: Top picks for speed, price, privacy, and more

It’s hard to select the best overall VPN. Some services are weaker on privacy, but are significantly easier to use with tons of features, while others could stand an interface redesign.

For many years we chose the best VPN based purely on privacy, but that is no longer the sole concern of most people when choosing a VPN. Privacy is important, to be sure, but so are performance, extra features, a wide country selection, and ease of use. ExpressVPN has it all, making it our top choice for VPNs. ExpressVPN is one of the fastest VPNs we’ve tested, and it has a very easy-to-use app. Its servers are all diskless, running everything in RAM—a welcome practice that’s become fairly standard these days. ExpressVPN also has wide device support, as well as a smart DNS feature for set-top boxes, consoles, and more.

It’s not the cheapest VPN out there, but you do get solid value for the price, and the service is regularly bringing in third-party auditors to bolster its privacy credentials.

Just like our top pick, NordVPN is also an excellent choice. Nord is arguably more feature-filled than ExpressVPN even, and the service is just one part of a larger suite of privacy- and security-focused products. The desktop app is very easy to use and offers a ton of different features including access to the TOR network over VPN, multi-hop VPNs, Meshnet, and a security suite complete with ad and malware blocking.

NordVPN has also gone a long way to bolster user trust with a now thrice independently verified no-logs policy and increased company transparency in recent years. The service also carries out vendor assessments and uses diskless servers for increased security. Their speeds are also outstanding, reaching an average of 73 percent of the base internet speed in our test across all servers. The only reason we placed them second is due to the price of the service, which is more expensive than ExpressVPN for a similar feature-set. Still, you can’t go wrong if you decide to go with NordVPN as your VPN of choice.

As Hotspot Shield is to speeds, so Mullvad is to privacy and anonymity. We’ve never seen another VPN that actively resists knowing who you are the way Mullvad does. Mullvad doesn’t ask for your email address, name, or anything else. Instead it assigns a random account number that acts as your identifier and login. Mullvad accepts payments using standard methods such as credit cards and PayPal, but you can also mail your payment in cash to remain as private as possible. Mullvad has a no-logging policy and doesn’t collect any identifying metadata from your usage.

Mullvad is also fast, ranking within our top five for speeds. Though oddly we did find that on Windows, Mullvad’s OpenVPN configuration was actually faster than its Wireguard implementation.

Coming in behind Mullvad is IVPN. This Gibraltar-based VPN recently moved to dumping email-based identifiers and going with randomly assigned account numbers instead. Similar to Mullvad, it accepts a variety of payment options for privacy including cash, as well as the standard credit cards, PayPal, and other options like Bitcoin and Monero. IVPN doesn’t rank as one of our fastest VPNs, but it does have acceptable speeds for most casual uses.

Another option is OVPN. This VPN doesn’t go to the levels that Mullvad and IVPN do, but it does only require a username and password to create an account. OVPN doesn’t require an email address, though you can add one as a backstop for account recovery should you forget your password. OVPN doesn’t rank in our top 10 for speeds, but it’s just outside the top performers at number 12.

While our pick for best overall VPN, ExpressVPN, boasts above-average speeds, Hotspot Shield is on another level. No other service comes close to hitting the speeds we’ve seen with this service. This isn’t just a one-off occurrence either; Hotspot Shield has consistently been at the top with speeds that are 12 to 15 percentage points above the competition. In our tests, Hotspot Shield maintained around 67 percent of the base speed. That’s substantially faster than you’ll see with most VPN services—though your experience may vary.

On the downside, Hotspot Shield doesn’t allow for a way to pay anonymously and its privacy policy may not sit well with some.

Still, Hotspot Shield has excellent speeds, it’s desktop application is very nice, and as a bonus it works with U.S. Netflix.

Private Internet Access (PIA) has been around for awhile and has demonstrated that it can continue to innovate and improve with each passing year. The latest version of PIA is no different. By updating their service to include unlimited simultaneous device connections it has improved upon a already solid VPN. But the real feature that stands out with PIA is its split-tunneling feature. While this is a common feature in most of the services on this list, PIA goes above and beyond. Not only does it allow users to pick and choose which apps they wish to run through the VPN, but it also allows them to designate IP addresses and DNS requests as well. It even comes with the option for an app-based kill switch, which will block traffic only on specific apps should the VPN connection break.

There are a few awkward interface issues and PIA isn’t the fastest service we’ve ever tested. But neither of these issues makes the service any less viable. Power users especially will love all of the tweaking that this app allows you to do with its extra features.

Torrents get a bad rap, and if we’re honest, that’s for good reason. Using torrents is the number one way to download pirated material including movies, TV shows, music, and games. But that’s not all there is to torrenting. It’s a very efficient way to download legitimate software such as Linux distributions and authorized content from sites such as BitTorrent Now.

Whatever your reasons, when it comes to torrenting, a VPN makes it easier—especially if the network you’re on blocks torrenting. There are many VPNs among our top picks that could be used for downloading torrents, but our preferred choice is AirVPN. This no-frills VPN has a reasonable number of servers and country locations, really good speeds, excellent network transparency, and a focus on user protection. The price is also right at about $58 a year.

If you want variety and options in the server locations from your VPN, then there are none better than CyberGhost VPN. It offers a staggering 9,000+ servers for users to connect to, which is more than twice as many as ExpressVPN. Unlike some competitors, these servers aren’t all concentrated in the U.S. or Europe, either. Their server spread totals 110 countries all across the world. The service even recommends optimized servers to users for various needs such as gaming, streaming, and torrenting. In our testing we found that some of the servers were faster than others, with servers located in Europe having excellent speeds and servers in Asia not fairing as well. But overall, the speeds are good enough to do most of what you want to do with a VPN—web browsing, streaming, etc.

CyberGhost also has a well-designed Windows app that is intuitive and easy to use, even when tweaking your settings. It lacks some of the power-user features that other VPNs on this list provide, but that shouldn’t be a deal breaker for the average user. Ultimately, CyberGhost is a straightforward and easy-to-use VPN service with an incredible number of server locations. For those who travel a lot or just need access to a diverse and vast server spread, CyberGhost is definitely worth consideration.

Power users and those concerned with optimizing anonymity will love Surfshark VPN’s unique multi-hop functionality. For those who might not be familiar with multi-hop, it allows you to route your traffic through more than one external server (i.e. connect to a server in Japan, but multi-hop through Singapore). This makes it more difficult to track your online activities and further obfuscates your actual location.

While many VPNs now offer multi-hop as a feature, Surfshark stands out by allowing users to either choose a predetermined route or create their own multi-hop route. Furthermore, Surfshark is working to implement its Nexus VPN network which will use a Dynamic Multi-Hop feature to automatically connect you to the fastest available entry and exit servers at any desired location. This should further optimize connection speeds across the board. So not only does Surfshark already have one of the best multi-hop features, but it is also set to improve by leaps and bounds in the near future.

No, a VPN connection itself does not protect you from malware and computer viruses. It does however encrypt your internet traffic and keep prying eyes from accessing your browsing history.

Some VPN services, such as Nord VPN, do however provide additional security features such as ad and malware blockers. Additionally, many antivirus suites now offer VPN services along with their security features. Although VPNs and antivirus software are used for different purposes, there is still a degree of overlap that makes using both tools together beneficial.

Most likely you will see a moderate speed decrease to your internet while using a VPN. This is mainly due to the process of your internet traffic being rerouted and encrypted through a VPN server before heading on to its destination. The amount of latency you will experience through this process is down to what country’s server you choose to proxy your traffic through. If you choose a server located on the other side of the world, then you will notice a much greater hit than if you were to connect to a server nearby in your same country.

Thankfully, most modern VPNs should have the infrastructure to maintain high-speed, secure data transfer rates. So it’s likely you can still browse and stream with no noticeable impact while using a reputable VPN like those listed above.

There is no set number of servers that make one VPN better than another. However, most major VPN providers offer between 3,000 to 5,000 servers. Also, we recommend avoiding any paid services whose providers have under 1,000 servers as this may be an indication that the company is not yet well established, meaning that there is a higher chance for reliability issues.

It is common for VPN providers to advertise the number of servers they have, but this is largely a marketing gimmick and doesn’t generally equate to the quality of the VPN provider itself. Things such as the spread of server locations and server quality are as important, if not more so, than the number of available servers.