this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2025
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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VPN Comparison 2.0 (lemmy.nz)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Charger8232@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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VPN Comparison

After making a post about comparing VPN providers, I received a lot of requested feedback. I've implemented most of the ideas I received.

Providers

Notes

  • I'm human. I make mistakes. I made multiple mistakes in my last post, and there may be some here. I've tried my best.
  • Pricing is sometimes weird. For example, a 1 year plan for Private Internet Access is 37.19€ first year and then auto-renews annually at 46.73€. By the way, they misspelled "annually". AirVPN has a 3 day pricing plan. For the instances when pricing is weird, I did what I felt was best on a case-by-case basis.
  • Tor is not a VPN, but there are multiple apps that allow you to use it like a VPN. They've released an official Tor VPN app for Android, and there is a verified Flatpak called Carburetor which you can use to use Tor like a VPN on secureblue (Linux). It's not unreasonable to add this to the list.
  • Some projects use different licenses for different platforms. For example, NordVPN has an open source Linux client. However, to call NordVPN open source would be like calling a meat sandwich vegan because the bread is vegan.
  • The age of a VPN isn't a good indicator of how secure it is. There could be a trustworthy VPN that's been around for 10 years but uses insecure, outdated code, and a new VPN that's been around for 10 days but uses up-to-date, modern code.
  • Some VPNs, like Surfshark VPN, operate in multiple countries. Legality may vary.
  • All of the VPNs claim a "no log" policy, but there's some I trust more than others to actually uphold that.
  • Tor is special in the port forwarding category, because it depends on what you're using port forwarding for. In some cases, Tor doesn't need port forwarding.
  • Tor technically doesn't have a WireGuard profile, but you could (probably?) create one.

Takeaways

  • If you don't mind the speed cost, Tor is a really good option to protect your IP address.
  • If you're on a budget, NymVPN, Private Internet Access, and Surfshark VPN are generally the cheapest. If you're paying month-by-month, Mullvad VPN still can't be beat.
  • If you want VPNs that go out of their way to collect as little information as possible, IVPN, Mullvad VPN, and NymVPN don't require any personal information to use. And Tor, of course.

ODS file: https://files.catbox.moe/cly0o6.ods

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[–] rirus@feddit.org 16 points 10 months ago (3 children)

PIA isnt independent, its by a Israeli spyware company, that owns multiple VPN Review sites and VPN services . Remove it from the list.

[–] mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 9 points 10 months ago

No, don't rrmove it from the list. Make a note acknowledging the issue so others see it

[–] BlueRhinos@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Whoa for real??

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yes. The owner/developer is Kape technologies, an Israeli spyware/adware company.

To quote from cnet

For maximum privacy, I recommend VPN providers with a jurisdiction outside of Five Eyes and other international intelligence-sharing agreements -- that is, one headquartered outside of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. So it initially seems like a positive sign that, while CyberGhost has offices in Germany, it's headquartered in Romania. German entrepreneur Robert Knapp says he founded the $114,000 startup on the back of low-wage Bucharest labor before flipping it for $10.5 million in 2017.

The issue is who he sold it to -- the notorious creator of some pernicious data-huffing ad-ware, Crossrider. The UK-based company was cofounded by an ex-Israeli surveillance agent and a billionaire previously convicted of insider trading who was later named in the Panama Papers. It produced software which previously allowed third-party developers to hijack users' browsers via malware injection, redirect traffic to advertisers and slurp up private data.

Crossrider was so successful it ultimately drew the gaze of Google and UC Berkeley, which identified the company in a damning 2015 study. (You can read the Web Archive version of that document.)

This practice, commonly called traffic manipulation, is condemned web-wide. And the only difference between it and one of the oldest forms of cyberattack, called man-in-the-middle (MitM), is that you clicked "agree" on the terms and conditions.

Whether or not PIA or ExpressVPN or the other providers owned by Kape fulfill this data scraping and ad-serving pipeline in my mind is irrelevant. Choosing to do business with them rewards bad actors when there are other VPN sellers who don't have such a tainted lineage.

[–] loxdogs@lemmy.wtf 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I read from somewhere that mullvad is owned by two israeli guys. Dont remember the names, but I was told, that it's written on a frontpage or smth.

[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That's disappointing if true, though not as bad as being owned by Kape Technologies. It's entirely possible there are two Israeli guys that care about privacy, and on the other hand it's possible that Mullvad was created specifically for intelligence purposes.

[–] kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why isn't F-Droid included in the Availability section?

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[–] dirtySourdough@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

OP this is a big improvement from your previous post. It's an excellent starting point for folks who are looking to start using a VPN. There's a lot of constructive criticism in here, which is good, but might be discouraging. Just know that this is already very useful for many people.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

PIA does not have WireGuard configs available. To get those, you have to use third-party tools to capture and generate the necessary info. Otherwise, you have to use their client, or else no WireGuard.

Users have been asking for years (since 2018, I think), and they've never provided them.

[–] Chulk@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

PIA was also purchased by the Israeli company, Kape Technologies, which is tied to Unit 8200. If your concern is privacy, I would recommend do against it.

The very first CEO of Crossrider, Koby Menachemi, happened to be once a part of Unit 8200 which is an Israeli Intelligence Unit in their military and has also been dubbed as “Israel’s NSA “.

[–] Lemmchen@feddit.org 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Upload to https://catbox.moe/

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

Thanks! I've uploaded it!

[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

I've been using one of these since forever and it just works. Should I look at the others?

I don't want this to be a "I use x and its the best" type comment so I won't say which one.

I only use wireguard and wouldn't touch openvpn just because it seems so complex in comparisson.

The price is fine, the speed is fine, wireguard makes it ubiquitous, never had a problem with reliability.

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

This is a really great resource thank you!

[–] wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I appreciate the attempt to quantify availability, but don't most of these providers allow you to generate OpenVPN and Wireguard configs, which can be used practically anywhere?

Nevertheless, your work is appreciated.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

ProtonVPN: only 8 years old: RED FLAG!

Well reddish flag at least, is there a rationale behind this? I mean 8 years is quite a long time.

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I think it's just a relative color scale from a spreadsheet.. with the older being the greenest, the youngest the reddest, and the rest just fall in between. ProtonVPN just happens to be in between, it's not as red as the others but also not as green as the ones that have been around for much longer.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So you also think the choices were not that good?

I mean what you are saying is that if there had been a 50 year old one, all the others should be red?

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I'm just explaining the reason why it's more reddish (but not as red as others). It's something most spreadsheet software (this was clearly MS Excel) can do automatically with numbers for visual indication so we can more easily see the distribution, it does not mean 8 years old is bad.

If there's a big unbalance in color it would just make it more visible that there's a big unbalance in ages. Probably if that had happened more colors could have been added to the gradient, maybe maroon->red->yellow->green->blue->white. But I think it was not seen as necessary in this case (or the author was lazy, since these are one of the defaults I believe).

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

(this was clearly MS Excel)

LibreOffice Calc, actually. You are correct about the color grading.

(or the author was lazy, since these are one of the defaults I believe)

I changed the conditional colors from the default to match the colors that LibreOffice uses for "Good", "Neutral", and "Bad".

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[–] online@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

Also of note, some providers have data caps. I haven't looked at all providers, merely Nymvpn as I was interested. Turns out they have a 2TB/month cap. Might not be an issue for some, but might be for others.

[–] TunaSlap@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Mullvad has port forwarding Edit: I so I thought. I had set it up and apparently not kept up with the times

[–] Bruhh@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They removed port forwarding. Only reason I don't use them as my main vpn.

[–] TunaSlap@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Ah I wasn't aware. Thanks for the update

[–] unexpected@forum.guncadindex.com 1 points 10 months ago

Airvpn doesn't require any personal information. I mean... I guess it asked for a name or whatever, but it doesn't verify any of it. I certainly didn't give it anything legitimate, and I paid with mixed crypto so it certainly has as little personal information on me as would be possible with a vpn.

What gives ivpn, mullvad and nym the advantage for the personal info section?

[–] bowreality@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago

Thanks so much! I am looking for a new one because my current one is expensive and of questionable ownership haha.

[–] Undertaker@feddit.org 1 points 10 months ago

Availability: Direct download via Repo or developer web page is missing. Google shouldn't be a plus. The provided explanation in the last thread was invalid

[–] pglpm@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 months ago

Next time you update this very useful guide, it may be interesting to include official and non-official info about data limits. For instance, according to this post, Windscribe (Pro!) has a data limit. This seems to be confirmed by their review on TorrentsFreak.

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

C tor/little-t-tor/etc. is licensed under the "3-clause BSD" license

Tor technically doesn’t have a WireGuard profile, but you could (probably?) create one

I dont know a lot about wireguard, but of the cuff answer would be no.

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It's odd that it says it's licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International but the actual license file is a different license.

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Tor is distributed under the "3-clause BSD" license

The reason gitlab says it is, is because the LICENSE file contains all licenses for the codebase, including stuff like geoip which is destributed under CC BY-SA 4.0

This file contains the license for Tor,

It also lists the licenses for other components used by Tor.

[–] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

Ah, that explains it. Thank you! I apologize for the mistake.

[–] MrSulu@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Proton and Mullvad VPN appear to win the battle of the charts for privacy & security.

[–] kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Except Mullvad has been proven a trustworthy service, while Proton has already a couple alarming things in their record.

[–] redhilsha@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Proton is essentially the best free VPN huh.

[–] kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you care about privacy no.

If you just need to unlock regional content then it should be good.

[–] redhilsha@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Keyword being "free".

Could you suggest a better VPN that's free?

[–] kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago

This is the Privacy community though and the keyword should be "privacy"

[–] abominable_panda@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is it worth stating which companies own which vpns? I saw a TIL that mentions a select few companies own most VPNs

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (10 children)

I'm on ProtonVPN because it's ran by CERN people, so definitely an important information IMO.

[–] ehyuman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 10 months ago

In steins;gate, cern is evil...

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