Best VPN 2021

ProtonVPN is characterized by having extra protected servers in a special data center in Switzerland. Its peculiarity is that it is buried 1000 meters deep within a rock.

I cannot speak as to what cataclysms it can survive and whether it’s necessary to go at such length but, at the very least, it’s reliable. The fact that ProtonVPN owns these servers plays a much bigger role in reality because it prevents third-party access to the extra protected data.

Other locations are the same as those of different VPNs.

As for the speed, it depends on the location but is generally good.

The Swiss jurisdiction, although not perfect, is unlikely to cause any problem for the users. Additionally, the provider doesn’t keep logs.

More about ProtonVPN:

• Full ProtonVPN Review

Overview

The most expensive VPN on our Top 10 is Perfect Privacy. What do we get for its minimal price of $8.95 per month?

We get servers on a 1 Gbit channel (though this fact doesn’t guarantee high speeds and I’ll explain why later), standard VPN protocols, and only 26 countries available.

Doesn’t sound too impressive, does it? However, the service also offers NeuroRouting technology, IPv6 support, tracking protection, and port forwarding.

Features

• An undisclosed number of servers in 26 countries.
• AES-256 encryption.
• Hides the IP address.
• Advanced methods of providing security and privacy.
• Configuration on any device.

Perfect Privacy has 3 tariffs:

• $8.95 monthly on the 2-year subscription
• $9.99 monthly on the 12-month subscription
• $12.99 on the 1-month subscription

More than 60 payment methods are supported including cryptocurrency.

How does the price of Perfect Privacy compare to that of the other VPNs?

(the comparison is drawn to the same-length subscriptions of the other VPNs on our Top 10 list)

The most peculiar thing about Perfect Privacy is its advanced privacy features. There are a few of them: the use of VPN server cascading and its automatic routing that takes the maximum efficiency into account (NeuroRouting), Stealth VPN, port forwarding, etc.

And they are really powerful functions!

But there are certain weaknesses as well:

The provider claims that it rents servers on a 1 Gbit channel. However, it hardly assures high speeds. If 100 customers at once use such a server for torrents or video streaming, each of them will have a speed of no more than 10 Mbps. That’s why it’s not only the channel capacity but also the number of servers to distribute users between that is important.

Perfect Privacy doesn’t disclose the size of its technological infrastructure.

As to its software, its tests showed generally positive results. It’s a shame, though, that the full functionality is only available on desktops.

Therefore, this provider offers some advanced technologies but doesn’t quite reach the leaders’ level of technological infrastructure.

Virtual Private Network  is a virtual network created over the existing network (for example, Internet) with the aid of special software and that connects the other devices of the network via a virtual channel (tunnel). Access to this tunnel is either impossible from the parent network or administered by the settings of the virtual network.

VPN consists of at least two devices (primarily connected to the parent network) and one of them is usually a server.

The technology allows protecting transmitted data efficiently due to any encryption standard. The most popular in 2020 is AES-128/256. It’s used when maximum protection is required.

VPN technology can:

• Change your real IP address into a virtual one. The virtual IP address is the IP of the VPN server you use. All sites visited by a VPN user will see it.
• Bypassing blocked sites. In case some sites are blocked in your network or country, VPN will help to gain access to them. An encrypted tunnel leads not to the site you want to visit but to a VPN server. That’s why a network filter doesn’t identify a user visiting a blocked site and doesn’t block it.
• Data protection. 1/3 of Internet users say they stopped engaging in certain online activities because of privacy concerns. With a VPN, any inbound or outbound traffic, including the IPs of sites visited are protected. That’s possible because all data is encrypted and goes through the tunnel. Today’s encryption standards are unbreakable even by supercomputers.
• Bypassing geo-restrictions. Thanks to changing an IP, you can gain access to geo-restricted content, for example, unblocking Netflix for any region.
• Safe torrenting. It is no secret that torrenting is banned in many countries. A VPN can hide your network activities, including P2P connections.
• Creating independent private networks of any complexity.
• Providing connections between private networks, including other VPNs.

How to choose the best VPN?

You aren’t the first who asks this question. Users can’t understand on their own what VPN is the best. In fact, a user doesn’t even know what to look at and what to take into account. That’s why there are so many reviews on the network. ‘’Honest and unbiased’’.

So that we could answer this question, read the next two parts of this section.

Why isn’t free VPN included in your list?

Let’s compare the process of choosing a VPN and choosing a rental car. Let’s say that you have never done it before.

What will you start with?

The first thing that comes to your mind is going to a rental place and speaking with its consultants.The first thing that comes to your mind is going to a rental place and speaking with its consultants.

When we deal with VPN, that’s us, the authors of reviews. We have long-term experience of using different cars VPNs.

So, you will be asked what cars you prefer. You’ll answer: ‘’What’s the difference?’’ They say to you: ‘’In prices and opportunities’’. ‘’Really?''  - you’ll be offended, - ‘’I need a car for free!’’. You’ll be sent to the bus stop. And they will be right.

Now imagine a bus travel on dirt roads; it’s rush hour, and you are constantly shown different ads; the bus stops from time to time. There are few routes, and buses simply don’t go to many locations.

And now imagine you are going in a speedy comfortable sedan along a wide smooth road. You can arrive at any location; the speed is much higher; music is without ads.

The difference between a free and good paid VPN is the same. Using a free VPN, you are limited in speeds, choosing locations, you watch ads, minimum security or VPN simply doesn’t run when you need it.

So what means of transport VPN is better?

• fast;
• reliable and secure;
• convenient;
• anonymous;
• able to perform your unique tasks;

In reality, we haven’t found such free VPNs (to find out more, read what users say about free VPNs on Reddit).

What tasks does VPN perform?

When choosing an ideal VPN service, you have to define what tasks you need to perform.

Here is the list of all opportunities of VPN services:

1. Masking your geo-location (hiding your IP and DNS).

2. Data protection – encrypting and tunneling of information to bypass devices that can intercept it. (For example, in public Wi-Fi networks criminals can intercept your logins, passwords, and other sensitive information; your Internet Service Provider (ISP) probably collects and keeps information about all sites you visit; in some countries, the authorities can monitor your activities on the Internet).

3. Privacy Policy (No logs are kept on servers, no registration).

4. Unblocking sites on the Internet (Bypassing geo-restrictions and censorship).

5. Bypassing geo-restrictions of streaming services (For example, watching Kodi or US Netflix from other countries, and others.)

6. Anonymity when using torrents (P2P).

If you know about these opportunities, you can ask an exact question and make a decision. We’ll answer them one by one.

What VPN is the best for hiding IP address?

Masking IP address is the main opportunity of Virtual Private Network. But the best ones are those VPN providers who have developed apps to prevent:

• IP leaks (via WebRTC technology and IPv6).
• DNS leaks (via DNS requests from your computer to the DNS server of your Internet Service Provider and further to the network).
• leaks of your geo-location when a connection to a VPN server is dropped (Kill Switch technology).

The VPNs from our list hide the user’s IP to the maximum.

What VPN is the best for data protection?

Another major opportunity of VPNs is encrypting traffic. The best ones are those VPN providers which:Here is the list of all opportunities of VPN services:

• Encrypt data with the most advanced methods (As a rule, it’s AES encryption).
• Pass it via a VPN tunnel created based on the best technology (OpenVPN or IPsec).

In this guide, we collected VPNs only with AES-encryption and OpenVPN or IPsec tunneling protocols.

What VPNs are better for privacy?

The protection of clients’ personal data is not limited in masking IP addresses. It’s obvious that the VPNs at least know about your geo-location and what sites you visit. Good VPNs don’t have to keep this kind of information about you.

Unfortunately, we can’t directly influence it. In most cases, we have to trust everything we are promised. That’s why you need to carefully read the Terms of Service.

Besides, there are 2 factors that influence (but not directly) whether the service keeps logs about users’ activities or not.

Jurisdiction. Depending on the laws of the country where a VPN provider is registered, it may be obliged to collect and hide logs in a transparent or secret way. That’s why if confidentiality is important to you, we don’t recommend using VPN services located in 14 eyes.

Background of a VPN service. Mass media sometimes publish reports about VPNs that are suspected of compromising their users’ data. (Such services aren’t included in our VPN list.)

Important: Free services always collect and keep all possible information about you with the purpose of maximum efficiency of advertising or selling it to advertising networks and other third parties.

What VPN is the best for unblocking sites?

On the one hand, any VPN that hides your IP can bypass blocking. But in practice, there are 2 factors that are too much for some VPNs.

1. There are many resources containing blacklists of proxy servers and IP-addresses of free and some paid VPN providers.

2. Sites are often blocked by the authorities, and they use special devices to monitor connections to VPN and block them. There is such a problem, for example, in China and Egypt. It is more difficult to find a VPN that works in China, and similar countries (or doesn’t work, like GreenVPN).

To consider the 2 factors, you need to analyze hundreds of reviews left by users who faced problems with unblocking. We have done it instead of you, but we can’t guarantee that the situation won’t change while the review is published.

Is using VPN legal everywhere?

Millions of people and companies have been using VPN for many years. The technology itself is legal and used everywhere, but there are countries where it’s banned to use VPN for bypassing censorship, for example, in the UAE or China.

VPN plays an important role in many companies’ security, including state-owned ones, that’s why this technology is going to be developed and widely used, including the countries where VPN is ‘’banned’’.

In China, the UAE, Oman, Iran, and Russia you can also use VPN approved by the government, but you won’t see the ones with servers located abroad on the list.

In Egypt VPNs aren’t banned, they are technically blocked.

What is OpenVPN?

It seems that OpenVPN is the best protocol today. It’s implemеnted on the basis of OpenVPN software and many virtual networks are based on it. It’s commercial open-source software developed by James Yonan according to a free GPL license.

OpenVPN allows you to apply the latest encryption standards, three types of authenеntication, hardware acceleration, data contraction, it works with computers located out of NAT, supports TCP and UDP transport, and etc.

OpenVPN is easy to be launched on any port that allows masking it, for instance, for https traffic. Many VPN services using this protocol allow choosing TCP or UDP and a port that will be used to connect a device.

Thanks to an easy VPN setup and configuration of the server part, it’s considered that public VPN services based on OpenVPN are safer than the ones using other protocols that require more advanced skills.

What are the specialties of OpenVPN?

OpenVPN pros:

• High efficiency;
• While using VPN services, the highest possible number of locations is available (PPTP and L2TP can be not on all servers);
• Support of almost all data protection standards (encryption) as it applies the OpenSSL library. Further, we’ll tell about data encryption in details;
• An opportunity to be installed on most Internet-enabled devices (many routers have a built-in feature of OpenVPN support);
• Due to an open-source nature, all vulnerabilities are eliminated.;

OpenVPN cons:

• In most cases, additional software is required for its work (it is not built in Windows, macOS, or Linux. It’s not a disadvantage while using VPN services that offer their VPN apps with the built-in OpenVPN software.

Due to its easy setup, multitasking, flexibility, reliability and opportunity to create its own protocols, OpenVPN is a good choice for a modern VPN.

What is IPsec (IKEv2)?

IPsec is a set of protocols and authentication methods developed for data protection just at the dawn of the Internet. It is often used on the basis of the built-in functions of operating systems.

It has a lot of modifications. Today the IKEv2 protocol, which is IPSec with the definite set of key exchange algorithms according to Diffie-Hellman, is widespread.

IPsec/IKEv2  is considered to be fast, modern (developed in 2005, updated in 2014) and with correct configurations, it is a VPN protocol with good protection. It’s believed that IKEv2 doesn’t overload a processor too much that’s why it is good for mobile devices.

Still, a great number of parameters makes it is more difficult to configure the security of IPsec/IKE than of OpenVPN. It’s a hidden risk of using VPN with IPSec.

IPSec is available on all platforms even without additional software.

What are the specialties of IPsec?

IPsec pros:

• High efficiency;
• IPsec is available on all platforms without additional software;
• Support of modern encryption standards;
• Reliability;
• The processor is used efficiently.

IPsec cons:

• IKEv2 is not supported by iOS <9 versions, and IKEv1, which is supported by them, is considered to be out of date;
• Works only with UDP which can be blocked by an ISP/administrator;
• Doesn’t have an open source, so it’s not used for creating ‘’invisible’’ custom protocols.

Thus, IPsec is a modern multifunctional set of protocols applied in VPN as encryption and IKE key exchange algorithm technologies in the tunneling mode on the network level. It’s a non-commercial product that’s why it’s built in all operating systems. It’s efficient for a processor but used only with UDP.

IPSec is widespread on Apple devices.

What is PPTP?

PPTP is a standard VPN protocol of the Point-to-Point type which was developed by Microsoft and primarily used on PC and Android.

The distinctive feature of PPTP is its simplicity which is good for its speed and processor load.

It’s believed that PPTP is vulnerable. In 1999 it was hacked for 2 hours, and in 2019 it was for 23 hours. Even Microsoft recommends using another VPN protocol.

What are the specialties of  PPTP?

PPTP pros:

• Major distribution;
• High-speed performance;
• Low requirements for processors.

PPTP cons:

• Numerous vulnerabilities detected;
• Apple devices don’t support it.

The use of PPTP is reasonable when the data you transfer doesn’t require reliable protection. The protocol is fast and doesn’t require strong computational performance.

PPTP is not built in iOS and Mac that’s why it is not used for them.

What is L2TP?

One of the first protocols that were used for virtual private networks was L2TP. It’s based on PPTP and has no disadvantages as PPTP has. Still, the structure of L2TP is more complicated and it requires two simultaneous connections on different ports (one connection is managed by another which serves for data transmission. What is more, one of the ports is permanent, which makes L2TP easier to detect and block.

L2TP can work in the IP, ATM, Frame Relay and X.25 networks. It’s believed that the use of L2TP in commo VPNs of the client-server type is not reasonable as it doesn’t work at capacity and its efficiency and security are worse than it is with OpenVPN and IPsec/IKEv2.

L2TP doesn’t encrypt the data transferred that’s why it’s used along with IPsec. This increases the processor load and makes it hard to implement.

Two simultaneous ports and compatibility with IPSec require additional ways to protect the process of authentication and synchronization. That’s why it’s more vulnerable than other protocols.

What are the specialties of L2TP? (for a common VPN)

L2TP pros:

• Built in major operating systems;

L2TP cons:

• Requires more computational performance than OpenVPN or IKEv2;
• Uses two simultaneous connections on two different ports;
• Port used;
• Considered to be very secure.

The use of L2TP is reasonable when you need to implement a complicated structure of interaction of some networks and a client with each other or the Internet. It’s not recommended to use it for a common VPN because of the vulnerabilities detected.

WireGuard

WireGuard is a new protocol that has amazing capacity and simple configurations.

WireGuard as OpenVPN is a free commercial product published according to the GPL license. It was developed as OpenVPN and IPsec are too complicated for using them for a traditional client-server VPN.

The developers of WireGuard managed to implement the functionality in 4000 lines. OpenVPN and IPsec have 100 times more lines.

The distinctive feature of WireGuard is the operation in the Linux server. Combined with a simple code, it has fantastic speeds and minimal processor load.

Today the project is funded by Private Internet Access that is going to add this protocol in the future. ProtonVPN is also interested in developing it. WireGuard is also known on the higher level.)

Today such providers as Mullvad, AzireVPN, VPN.AC, IVPN, and WireVPN apply it.

What are the specialties of WireGuard?

WireGuard pros:

• High efficiency;
• Maximum speed;
• Simple in use.

Cons WireGuard:

• Rarely offered by;
• No final secure version which is proven.

As it is not widespread, WireGuard is considered to be invisible for most filters (for example, the Chinese firewall). Still, there is no final version of this protocol and its full security is not proven.