My subrsiption with surfshark is ending soon and I was wondering if there was something better around the same price. There are a lot of ads about many VPNs but a lot of them don’t look so “safe and private” as they want you to think so it’s hard to really figure it out. I don’t want to spend too much since I don’t use them very often but I kinda like the “change catalog of netflix” thing and to be safe while doing some “”“”“”“shady”“”“”" stuff
I use the free tier of Proton VPN primarily for travel. Probably the only free VPN I trust, but there is a paid version for faster speeds and more features.
I use Proton. May be a bit overkill for what you’re looking for if you want just a VPN - Proton includes email, a calendar, and cloud storage - all encrypted. Their VPN client supports port forwarding and split tunneling. They categorize their servers to show which are best for torrenting and/or streaming. Some of their servers also serve as end points for the TOR network.
With VPNS i usually vouch for two services: Mullvad and Proton.
Mullvad is a no-bullshit VPN as described before, it just works and it’s cheap as hell. It’ll let you do your netflix hopping, but for any skullduggery I believe they’re killing their port forwarding, so I wouldn’t really recommend it for that front. You’d be better off subscribing to a usenet index for that and then using mullvad on the side instead of ARRing.
Proton is amazing but only truly worth it if you’re using the suite-- Emails, drive, VPN, the whole 9 yards. It’s a bit costly but no one does it like them. They also have a solid free tier for the VPN if you’d like to try them. And they do port forwarding (as of this comment).
Haven’t tried expressVPN but I’ve heard lots of good things about their audits. I’d feel comfortable with them but I can’t give any pointers.
TL:DR: Mullvad for simplicity and price, Proton for features & using their Suite, something like Express for something that just does VPN and nothing else.
I steer clear of Nord & Surfshark for personal reasons. VPNS that do too much sponsor marketing outside of network/privacy communities strike me as suspicious IMO.
Yup I got the whole Proton suit mainly for email and calendar, but use the rest too for specific use-cases.
I also like that Proton has a few VPN servers with adblocker and tracking blocking built in, so you can use the default DNS and have the same settings as other users which helps with avoiding fingerprinting while still having an easy system wide adblocker and tracking blocker.
MullvadVPN is great. It’s a no-bullshit VPN.
I believe it does have an issue surrounding their disabling port forwarding, which becomes problematic if you try to torrent, or so I understood.
They are A+ on privacy and transparency, that being said.
They have recently removed support for port forwarding. That won’t stop a user being able to torrent but it will stop seeding and will affect discoverability and speed somewhat.
Has no negative impact on their privacy features
Thanks for the correction and adding more information! I’ve considered using it, hence my quick search and vague information about it.
Not being able to seed is a bit of a deal-breaker for me, but that’ll depend from one person to the other.
I have used ProtonVPN and ProtonMail for years now and I absolutely love their service.
Been using the proton ecosystem for a while. I trust their policies as much as anyone can and have been using their VPN for about two years, Always on for my PC and phone.
I had a few different ones (Surfshark, Mullvad, Vypr), but in the end I just really liked Proton the most. It is not the cheapest, but the UI of their software is easy, I can use it on all my devices (including fire stick), it works well with streaming services like Netflix and I recently upgraded to pay 2€ more per month and now I got a cloud drive of 500GB, some mail adresses and other stuff on top. I can recommend it because for me it just works flawlessly and the speed is good.
In terms of privacy, Mullvad VPN is the one that considered the most private by the community.
A. WireGuard.
B. Cross-platform.
C. No need for Email to register.
D. Let you pay with cash.
E. Don’t have affiliated videos amd commercials.
F. Support port-forwarding.G. Had no scandals over the past decade.
Stolen from Reddit - link to archive.org - to make sure that Reddit won’t make money out of it :3
E: unfortunately F is no longer true :/
F. is no longer true. They recently removed support for this after lots of people abused the feature.
ExpressVPN has been audited many times, and their servers are entirely based on RAM disks that get wiped as soon as your session ends. So I’d say they are a good choice, if you’re willing to pay.
Can anyone comment on NordVPN?
I’m a 4 year user, but will cancel. Their app in just non stop abusing my phone’s notification system to try and upsell their other products. This is MY phone, not their personal marketing billboard.
Mullvad is really good.
