VPNs, Compared
Some VPNs we’ve tested
EventVPN the new heat in the VPN world. A free, ad-supported VPN from ExpressVPN. Ads and VPNs don’t necessarily mix, but EventVPN says it can offer a free service with 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 proliferation of advertisements. The banner stays at the top of the app at all times, and you’ll need to sit through the ad for 30 seconds each time you connect or disconnect; the biggest problem is when some servers post unreasonably slow speeds. I’ll admit that EventVPN is a unique concept, but I don’t see anything better about it than ProtonVPN or Windscribe for a free VPN service. And when it comes to the distraction of sitting between ads, it gets worse.
Private Internet Access (PIA) has a long history in the VPN space, and has a track record of protecting users’ 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 [Private Internet Access] and the only information they could provide was that the pool of IP addresses used was from the east coast of the United States.” The McWaters were involved in several other identification activities, according to the complaint, but PIA was not among them. Despite such a clear vision of a VPN provider supporting its no-logging policy, PIA did not impress me during my testing. It’s less expensive than many of our top picks, and it delivers the worst speeds of any VPN I’ve tested, with more than a 50 percent drop in the nearest US server. (Windscribe, for context, only dropped 15.6 percent of my speed.)
MysteriumVPN dVPN is the go-to, or default VPN, as far as I know. The concept of VPN isolation has been around for a while, but it has really gained traction in the last few years. The idea is to have a network of static IP addresses that make up the network, directing your traffic through common IP addresses to get around the ever-expanding block lists of VPN servers. Mysterium creates this network with MystNodes. It is a crypto node. People buy a node to earn crypto, and are included in the Mysterium network. It’s not inherently bad, but routing your traffic through a single residential IP is a bit annoying. Even without the extended kick, Mysterium was slow, and it doesn’t keep any kind of secret stuff, be it a third-party test, a warranty canary, or a transparent report.
PrivadoVPN is one of the popular options to recommend as a free VPN. It offers a decent free service, with several full-speed servers and 10 GB of data per month. You’ll have to suffer through four—yes, four—redirects asking you to pay for a subscription before signing up, but the free plan works. The problem is how new PrivadoVPN is. There is no transparent report or audit available, and while the speeds are good, they are not as good as Proton, Windscribe, or Surfshark. PrivadoVPN isn’t bad, but it’s hard to recommend it when Proton and Windscript have equally good free plans.
VPNs to avoid
You’ll find plenty of free VPNs that all claim to protect your privacy. Most of them don’t. There are many VPNs that I don’t recommend, but these are the few I’ve tested that are worth mentioning.
Lead is a notorious name in the VPN industry, but it’s been close to a decade since it was publicly discussed. Hola is free, and can stay free because it uses a peer-to-peer network. Hola also owns Bright Data (formerly Luminati), a data collection company. In 2015, Hola sold access to its network of free users (via Luminati), which was used in a distributed denial-of-service attack on 8chan. It’s been ten years since that incident, but Hola still works the same way. If you don’t pay, you can be used as a gateway to the Bright Data network, and the privacy policy makes it clear that Hola records data about your usage, including your IP address, pages you visit, and time stamps.
IX-VPN it’s available on the desktop, but it’s more visible in the results of the Apple App Store and Google Play, which is aimed at mobile users with a free offer. IX-VPN hasn’t done anything as blatantly wrong as Hola, but it has a lot more conflicts to recommend. First, it uses a proprietary VPN protocol, which is confusing within the app. Proprietary protocols such as NordVPN’s NordLynx and ExpressVPN’s Lightway are based on existing, open-source protocols. In addition, X-VPN was highlighted in the Tech Transparency Project’s report on free VPNs with links to the Chinese government; IX-VPN is based in Hong Kong. There’s no smoking gun with X-VPN, but there doesn’t need to be. The speeds are not the best, the app lacks basic features like tunneling, and the price of the paid plan is in line with the top providers.
How We Test VPNs
Functionally, a VPN should do two things: keep your internet speed fast, and actually protect your browsing data. This is where I focus my research. Additional features, a nice UI, and customization settings are nice, but it doesn’t matter if the core service is broken.
Speed testing requires testing, as the time of day, the network you’re connected to, and the specific VPN server you’re using can all affect speed. As a result, I always set the base speed on my non-secure connection directly before recording results, and triple-checked both the US and UK servers. With those basic drops, I look at different times of the day during the week to see if the speed drops are the same.
Security is a bit involved. First, I checked for DNS, WebRTC, and IP leaks every time I connect to the server using Browser Leaks. I also ran short tests sniffing my connection with Wireshark to confirm that all packets being sent are protected by the VPN protocol being used.
On the privacy side, the most recommended services included in this list have been independently evaluated, and they all maintain some form of transparent reporting. In most cases, there is a proper report, but in others, like Windscribe, that disclosure is made through legal processes.
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