10 Fastest VPNs Of 2024

Surfshark is the fastest VPN but isn’t the most consistent, and we had a lot of trouble maintaining a stable connection during use. However, when it worked, it produced the fastest results during testing. We only saw a 0.36% decrease in download speed on average compared to our speeds without a VPN. Although we did see a 54.8% increase in latency, it was still lower than some of its competitors, such as TunnelBear.

On top of the great speeds, you get a service with all the VPN features you could ask for, provided you use Android or Windows. Sadly, split tunneling is not available for macOS or iOS. Using Surfshark was mostly fine, when the connection wasn’t dropping. We were never blown away by its features, and its ability to unblock streaming services wasn’t stellar, only managing Netflix and Max during our testing. Still, its unlimited simultaneous connections and relatively affordable pricing make it one of the more tempting VPNs on the market, and its great speeds only add to that pedigree.

Learn more: Read our full Surfshark review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	Has pretty much everything you could want feature-wise, but split tunneling only being available on Android and Windows is a drawback.
Ease of Use	Interface is clean and pretty intuitive to navigate. The oppressively long connection time on Windows and annoying ads for Surfshark One make it hard to score it higher, however.
Value for Money	It’s relatively affordable, with the unlimited simultaneous connections in mind. Unfortunately, the performance issues and high month-to-month price compared with VPNs such as Mullvad or IVPN are a tough sell. It’s also frequently on sale.
Trustworthiness	Connection drops and being owned by Nord Security aren’t great for trusting a VPN to handle user data safely. That said, the company itself hasn’t done anything to make me rate it any lower.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

TunnelBear’s simple, adorable bear-themed interface charmed us from the moment we opened the app. The cute animations, alongside its free version with limited features, make the app a great starting point for users who aren’t the most tech-savvy but are looking to try out a VPN. In terms of speeds, the app does all right. We saw a 12.5% decrease in average download speed during testing. We did see the highest increase in latency while using TunnelBear, however. Its 67.55 ms of latency produced a gigantic 543.3% increase compared to our base 10.5 ms. Like VPN Unlimited, TunnelBear also gave us a staggering 86.3% drop in upload speed, which leaves us concerned about the service’s ability to work as a VPN for gaming or remote work.

As an app, TunnelBear works, but not always well. Its split tunneling feature changes functionality depending on which OS you’re using the service with. On Windows, it works like a normal split tunneling feature, allowing you to designate which websites or apps ought to be connected to separate from the VPN. However, the Android version can’t designate websites, only apps, and macOS and iOS don’t have split tunneling at all. It’s always a bad look when such a basic feature is so unevenly implemented across different platforms. For unblocking streaming services, TunnelBear performed poorly, only managing to unblock Max. The platform’s lack of Dedicated IP makes it unideal for business or remote work use, as well.

Overall, we like TunnelBear but wish it were a bit better in certain key areas, namely the implementation of its split tunneling feature. If you’re looking for a high-speed VPN, we don’t think TunnelBear is the best pick out there, but outside of that, we think the VPN is solid.

Learn more: Read our full TunnelBear review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	Split tunneling being so wonky across different operating systems is a drawback, even if the other features work fine.
Ease of Use	The bear animations are delightful, and they make the user experience much better overall than many of its competitors, which go for more of a generic mobile app vibe.
Value for Money	The free version is nice, but every VPN I looked at has either a free version or a free trial period of some sort that makes this less impressive than it would be otherwise. The speeds and features just aren’t there either.
Trustworthiness	The company has done a good job at being transparent with how and when it shares user data, but it’s still owned by McAfee.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

ExpressVPN is easily one of the most popular VPNs on this list, alongside the likes of NordVPN and Surfshark. As a product, it’s mostly unremarkable, as it doesn’t really do anything extraordinary in our opinion, and this includes its speeds. A 13.9% decrease in average download speed is far from the worst result on this list, but it isn’t spectacular. The same goes for its 17.4 ms of latency, which resulted in a 65.7% increase versus our latency without a VPN.

ExpressVPN has some things going for it, chiefly its extensive server network which includes over 100 countries. Its platform isn’t the most visually appealing, but that’s not necessarily important. As software, a VPN ought to be one of the least-noticeable apps on your device, quietly chugging along while you do what you need to do. If you’re paying more attention to a VPN, it’s likely due to a malfunction of some sort, which is never good. Thankfully, we did not encounter any connection issues or any other bugs while testing ExpressVPN. It even unblocked Hulu, Disney+ and Max, only missing out on Netflix of the four streaming services we tested.

One issue we did have with ExpressVPN was its cost. Its starting monthly price is among the highest of the VPNs we tested. While the one-year and six-month subscription plans do lower the cost slightly, it could be better, and we’re not certain ExpressVPN does enough to really justify the steep price tag. As the VPN market gets more and more homogenized, with providers adopting the same features and protocols, it gets a lot harder to justify paying so much for a VPN when its competition is doing the same or nearly the same but cheaper.

While being owned by Kape Technologies is bad enough in our eyes, ExpressVPN’s management under Kape since being bought in 2021 hasn’t been stellar. ExpressVPN lost around 12% to 20% of its global workforce in July 2023. Particularly affected were the company’s quality assurance and operations departments, two of the most critical to keeping the VPN running well. The cuts to these departments could make it more difficult, in journalist Michael Kan’s words, to “circumvent internet-blocking attempts from both government [sic] and providers such as Netflix.” Right now, ExpressVPN hasn’t had any noticeable decline in its quality as a product, but we’ll be paying close attention in case that changes.

Editor’s Note: It is worth mentioning that, despite their competitive prices and robust features, some in the cybersecurity community have reservations about CyberGhost, ExpressVPN and PIA, which are all owned by Kape Technologies. Formerly known as “Crossrider,” the company gained infamy for creating and operating a platform that was used for injecting adware. Kape Technologies has repeatedly stood by the integrity of its VPNs, but consumers should keep this information in mind if they are especially wary of privacy.

Learn more: Read our full ExpressVPN review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	No Dedicated IP for business and no WireGuard support is a bad look.
Ease of Use	Extremely easy to use for both beginners and experts alike.
Value for Money	It’s too expensive, and its performance is too mediocre for me to give it anything but bottom marks. If you’re looking to get more value out of your purchase, your money is better spent on a VPN that can do the same things for cheaper.
Trustworthiness	It’s unfortunately guilt by association, but I can’t bring myself to fully trust any Kape-owned product. The recent layoffs only make it harder to trust the service.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

During testing, CyberGhost clocked in at an average of 312.8 Mbps, resulting in a 5.7% decrease in download speed to go with a 42.4% increase in latency. These are solid numbers, and its ability to unblock Netflix, Hulu and Max is laudable.

Additionally, CyberGhost’s features work well, and its user interface is easy to understand and comes with a suite of interesting customization options, such as Smart Rules, which let you set your VPN to launch when opening certain apps such as Zoom. Given that its servers are located in 100 countries, it also boasts one of the larger server networks on the list.

Our main gripes with CyberGhost come from its price, free trial periods and trustworthiness. The prices by themselves are steep but fine. However, its free trial periods are insultingly short. You get seven days on iOS, three days on Android, and a mere 24 hours on Windows and Mac. The industry standard for free trials is about 30 days, with some mobile VPNs offering seven days. We’d love to see CyberGhost follow this model, as opposed to the minuscule trial periods on offer right now.

Editor’s Note: It is worth mentioning that, despite their competitive prices and robust features, some in the cybersecurity community have reservations about CyberGhost, ExpressVPN and PIA, which are all owned by Kape Technologies. Formerly known as “Crossrider,” the company gained infamy for creating and operating a platform that was used for injecting adware. Kape Technologies has repeatedly stood by the integrity of its VPNs, but consumers should keep this information in mind if they are especially wary of privacy.

Our trust issues extend beyond its association with Kape, however. As of late 2022, CyberGhost no longer supports first-party multifactor authentication, necessitating the use of third-party apps such as Google Authenticator. While the company’s 2022 no-logs policy audit is always nice to see, in 2023 researcher Ceri Coburn found a vulnerability that could lead to, according to his blog post, “full system compromise.” Although the bug was patched shortly after Coburn directly reported it to Kape Technologies, the researcher described the whole ordeal as “the worst disclosure experience [he’s] had to date.” This was due to the way that Kape and its bug bounty contractor Bugcrowd treated Coburn, writing him up for bad conduct because he went directly to Kape instead of going through Bugcrowd. Both companies have apologized for the incident. We’re glad the bug was patched as quickly as it was, but it was a pretty severe bug. An estimated three million users were potentially affected by it, and it’s not been that long since it was found and patched. With how recent the whole thing is, it’s hard for us to have much faith in CyberGhost.

Learn more: Read our full CyberGhost review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	Has most of what you’d expect from a good VPN, but I knocked off a point for the loss of multifactor authentication.
Ease of Use	Incredibly easy to use with great customization options.
Value for Money	It’s not significantly more expensive than its competitors, but the free trial periods are too short. I wouldn’t give them a shot as an individual consumer.
Trustworthiness	Though it’s through association with Kape, I can’t fully trust CyberGhost due to the company’s 2023 issues with a nasty Windows bug and how it was discovered.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

On top of being one of the best VPNs on the market, NordVPN provided fast, consistent speeds during our tests. We encountered no connection issues, and it was one of the few providers to unblock all four of Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Max. It gave us a 7.4% increase in average download speed with only a 14.3% increase in download latency. This effect on download speeds was impressive and made streaming and browsing the internet with Nord a breeze. Its other features, such as split tunneling and the kill switch, worked as expected as well.

As great as the service is though, it’s not without its flaws. For one, it’s pricey, and we’re not entirely sure the positives justify such a high price. NordVPN doesn’t really do anything noteworthy enough to set it apart from the cheaper month-to-month alternatives that do mostly the same things, such as Mullvad VPN.

On top of that, we still have some concerns about the 2018 data breach NordVPN and other providers suffered at the hands of an 8chan user. NordVPN specifically didn’t inform its users for six months after learning about the breach. Taking that long to tell users about a data breach is, in our view, unacceptable, especially for a company in the cybersecurity industry. Granted, it’s been nearly six years since that incident, and it’s not unreasonable to believe Nord has used that time to reinforce its server security and patch any vulnerabilities. But where user data and privacy are concerned, we don’t believe in giving companies second chances.

Learn more: Read our full NordVPN review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	Has every feature you’d want out of a quality VPN, several that you don’t want, and a few that you didn’t even know you wanted.
Ease of Use	Clean, simple user interface with understandable configuration options. It does force your browser to open a tab when signing in, which loses it a star here.
Value for Money	It’s got great features and speeds, but it’s just so expensive, and there are so many cheaper alternatives that are just as effective for most users. Double VPN is a plus, but it’s questionable whether any of the other unique features are really worth the extra cost.
Trustworthiness	The 2018 data breach still looms large for me. The breach by itself is a bad look, but keeping it quiet for six months is just untenable.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

While a bit pricey, Proton VPN is one of the best VPNs going today with a host of excellent features, a strong privacy track record and, of course, excellent speeds. During our speed testing, we measured a 4.6% decrease in average download speed with a 13.8% increase in latency, making it one of the best-performing VPNs on this list.

Proton VPN is a joy to use. The standard VPN features, including the internet kill switch and split tunneling, worked exactly as expected, and we even enjoyed using some of its more unique features such as Tor Over VPN, which lets users stack the privacy protection already afforded to them by a VPN on top of the Tor browser. In addition to that, Proton VPN is one of the few VPNs able to unblock Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Max. While most providers can unblock at least one or two of these, it’s rare for a provider to hit all four.

Proton VPN’s pricing is a concern for us, though. It is definitely not the frugal buyer’s choice, with a $9.99 per month monthly plan and a $5.99 per month annual plan, and we’re not sure if all the extra features are enough for the average user to really justify its cost. Still, if you’re serious about privacy and don’t mind paying a little extra for the peace of mind, Proton VPN is a great pick.

Learn more: Read our full Proton VPN review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	Proton has pretty much every feature I’d want from a VPN, including the one-click access to the Tor network.
Ease of Use	A very clean interface with easy-to-understand configuration settings.
Value for Money	Too pricey for me to feel comfortable rating it any higher, free version notwithstanding. I think it’s worth the money, but it’s still a lot of money.
Trustworthiness	Proton VPN is open source, and has a largely clean track record for privacy protection. Unfortunately, the company sharing Proton Mail data with Swiss authorities in 2021 keeps me from giving it full marks.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

TorGuard VPN isn’t a great fit for beginner users, but its wide range of customization options and dependable features gave it a high spot on our Best VPN list. Unfortunately, despite claiming unlimited speeds and bandwidth, the service lagged behind many of its competitors during speed tests. Actually, 258.5 Mbps isn’t a bad average download speed, but it’s still a 22% decrease in comparison with our average download speed without a VPN. Its 13.8 ms latency was better than some of the providers that placed higher on this list, only giving us a 31.4% increase in latency. Its upload speeds, however, were the worst of any provider we tested at a dismal 36.05 Mbps. This was a 90.7% decrease compared to our base upload speed of 388.2 Mbps without a VPN. A drop in performance that big makes it difficult for us to recommend TorGuard VPN for business use or for gaming.

Aside from that, TorGuard VPN works well enough on a basic level. Features function like they’re meant to, and we didn’t encounter any significant issues during testing, aside from its maze-like website and confusing pricing and plan options. Split tunneling, an internet kill switch and Dedicated IP are all there and all working like we’d want it to. It’s not the best for bypassing region locks on streaming services, however, only managing to unblock Netflix.

We do have a few problems with TorGuard VPN’s trustworthiness, however. Its privacy policy is as difficult to navigate as its website, and its no-logs policy has never been verified by independent audit. Being based out of the U.S. is another red flag in this regard. In addition to these concerns, there’s also the 2018 data breach that also plagues our ability to trust NordVPN. In brief, an 8chan user managed to successfully breach servers belonging to NordVPN, TorGuard VPN and Viking VPN. Of course, this was nearly six years ago as of this writing. It’s reasonable to assume that TorGuard has managed to fortify its server security and fix any potential vulnerabilities since that incident. We’re not 100% sure if any company claiming to offer safety and security to customers ought to be given the benefit of the doubt, but it’s ultimately up to individual users to decide how much grace they’re willing to give a company when trying out or purchasing its product.

Learn more: Read our full TorGuard VPN Review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	TorGuard has everything you could ever ask for and more, including an Anonymous Email plan. Across all its plans, it might be the most feature-rich VPN I’ve covered.
Ease of Use	When even just signing up for a VPN feels like navigating a tax form, it’s hard to not give that VPN bottom marks in the ease-of-use category.
Value for Money	TorGuard is far from the most affordable VPN out there, especially with its short seven-day free trial, but its treasure trove of features does provide more bang for your buck than some equivalently priced competitors.
Trustworthiness	It has the same trust issues for me as NordVPN, thanks to being part of the same data breach. It’s lower-rated in this category due to how vague the company’s privacy policy is.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

VPN Unlimited’s speeds are okay. Its 292.7 Mbps average download speed resulted in an 11.7% decrease compared to speeds without a VPN, and its 19.6 ms of latency resulted in an 86.7% increase compared to 10.5 ms without a VPN. What really concerned us was the service’s average upload speed.

Most providers had upload speeds roughly equivalent to their download speeds, but we saw a steep decline for VPN Unlimited. With an average upload speed of 74.88 Mbps, it’s one of the slowest on that side of the speed test spectrum, giving us a whopping 80.7% decrease in performance. For most users, upload speed won’t matter as much, since the majority of users take in more data than they send out, but if you work from home or are trying to use a VPN for gaming, this decline in performance is worth noting.

As a service, VPN Unlimited is fine. Its features work, and its speeds won’t bother most users. However, we did have some concerns with its affordability and trustworthiness. Despite the name, VPN Unlimited does not offer unlimited simultaneous connections, instead limiting users to five. On top of that, its offer of a lifetime subscription draws suspicion. In general, deals such as that are often too good to be true, and some users have reported having their lifetime subscriptions suspended due to inactivity, among other reasons. The company’s no-logs policy has never been audited by a third party, and, if you read its no-logs policy carefully, there is an implication that the provider does actually keep logs in some cases.

Overall, our feelings on VPN Unlimited are about as lukewarm as its speeds. It’s a fine service, though we wouldn’t trust that lifetime subscription.

Learn more: Read our full VPN Unlimited review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	It’s got a decent collection of expected features, with Dedicated IP being an add-on.
Ease of Use	The app itself is fine, but the setup and uninstall processes can be cumbersome, and the website’s layout is more difficult to navigate than it has any right being.
Value for Money	Any VPN that offers a lifetime subscription is immediately not trustworthy as far as value for your money goes, and the seven-day free trial is way too short, compared to other VPNs.
Trustworthiness	Any service that offers a lifetime subscription already makes me suspicious, but the fact that the company does keep logs in some situations despite claiming a no-logs policy is an easy way to be rated near the bottom.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

Private Internet Access’ (PIA’s) unlimited simultaneous connections and high number of server locations are both impressive, even if the product itself is nothing remarkable. Its speeds in particular are middling, with its 243.6 Mbps average download speed giving us a 26.5% decrease compared to our average speed sans VPN. It also gave us an 85.2% increase in latency, making it the second worst of all VPNs we tested.

PIA’s app overall works well, though the Windows app takes some getting used to. As is sometimes the case with VPNs, the Windows app is a carbon copy of the Android app, meaning it’s sized for mobile users. This can make it a little more difficult to navigate on desktop than we’d like, but the app does its job regardless. We encountered no major snags or bugs during testing.

PIA is far from perfect, of course. It’s fairly expensive, which can make it difficult to recommend in today’s VPN market, where providers are closer to even than ever in terms of features and performance. On top of that, some users reported having issues with customer service, though we did not have any such problems.

Editor’s Note: It is worth mentioning that, despite their competitive prices and robust features, some in the cybersecurity community have reservations about CyberGhost, ExpressVPN and PIA, which are all owned by Kape Technologies. Formerly known as “Crossrider,” the company gained infamy for creating and operating a platform that was used for injecting adware. Kape Technologies has repeatedly stood by the integrity of its VPNs, but consumers should keep this information in mind if they are especially wary of privacy.

Aside from being associated with Kape Technologies, PIA hasn’t really done much to warrant any trust issues. Its no-logs policy successfully passed an independent audit in 2022, and the only data breach or security vulnerability we could find that the company tied to was in 2015, and the vulnerability was swiftly patched. Still, Kape’s shadow looms large over PIA, and it makes us wary of fully trusting the service.

Learn more: Read our full Private Internet Access review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	It’s got everything you might want from a VPN, and the features work across all the apps I tested.
Ease of Use	The app itself is perfectly fine as a user interface, though it loses points for being such a small window by default on PC. If the Windows app’s interface was actually made for Windows, instead of being a copy of the mobile app’s interface, it’d rate higher.
Value for Money	While the longer-term plans are cheap, the monthly pricing is incredibly high for a VPN that doesn’t really do anything too spectacular.
Trustworthiness	It’s unfortunately guilt by association, but I can’t fully trust any Kape-owned product.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.

Despite a solid privacy protection track record, hide.me stumbles a bit in the performance category. Its lowest-performing 142 Mbps average download speed produced a 57% cut when compared to our average download speed without a VPN. Conversely, its 5.4 ms latency gave us a 48.6% decrease, the only provider to give us a latency decrease. Even more surprising is its average upload speed was actually the best of the providers we measured, clocking in at 365.5 Mbps and resulting in a 5.7% decrease compared to our average upload speed when not connected to a VPN. These traits make it a good VPN for gaming and remote work, even if its streaming performance might suffer from time to time.

While its speed puts it at the bottom of the list, hide.me was one of the most consistent VPNs we tested, with no connection drops and minimal lag when jumping from server to server. It comes with all the expected features of a good VPN too, including an internet kill switch and split tunneling, and these features worked well.

Of course, we’re big fans of the company’s commitment to privacy. It’s not uncommon to see VPN providers that have only adopted a no-logs policy once it became the industry standard to do so. However, hide.me is not an example of this, and its no-logs policy was part of company policy from the beginning. The provider’s peer-to-peer and anonymous payment support is another mark in its favor as a privacy-conscious organization, alongside its being located in Malaysia, outside of 14 Eyes countries such as the U.S.

Overall, slow speeds aside, we really enjoyed hide.me and believe anyone looking for a solid, privacy-focused VPN solution should definitely give it a shot.

Learn more: Read our full hide.me review.

Criteria	Expert’s Take	Rating
Standout Features	Has everything you could want from a VPN, alongside multi-hop and torrenting support.
Ease of Use	Has a small learning curve, but once you get past it, it’s incredibly intuitive.
Value for Money	Too expensive for how it performs to really justify any higher.
Trustworthiness	Good company location, solid privacy track record, good transparency. It’s not quite the gold standard of VPN privacy, but it’s up there.

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Note: Our expert scores are just one part of our overall Best VPN scoring rubric and might not be reflective of our final star rating for a VPN. Other criteria graded include customer service options, server counts and overall device performance.