The best VPN services (and why more people should be using them)

The best VPN is ExpressVPN in my opinion. It offers a wide range of platforms, great performance, reliability, and server locations in 94 countries. 

However, there are many VPN options on the market that are worth your time -- and, potentially, your dollar should you choose to subscribe to them. When you consider which VPN to choose, keep in mind that the longer subscription you choose, the cheaper the VPN will be.

I ran a series of tests on each VPN's paid service to see how they compared. 

The tests were performed with a broadband connection in the UK with a starting speed, without a VPN, of 52.5Mbps download and 12.8Mbps upload. (Yes, they are terrible but the best UK currently has to offer where I live).

The following speeds are in Mbps. I also tested for the presence of DNS leaks.

Please keep in mind that results may be different for you and vary from country to country, so the below should be considered a snapshot. They may also be impacted by your ISP provider and broadband subscription. For example, my starting speed is a snail's pace when compared to some U.S. offerings. 

The below results are not the exact speeds you should expect. You can instead these results for a general idea of how your speeds could change with a VPN enabled. You should also remember that the further away the VPN server, the more your speed may be impacted. Speeds will typically be quicker when you connect to a local server, in comparison to selecting Australia, for example.

I have written about how VPNs work and how to find the best VPN service for you. Here are four tips to help you evaluate a VPN service for yourself.

1. Pay attention to trial period times and use them: Every VPN performs differently, and every user experience is going to be different. Your ISP will offer different speeds than mine. Your favorite coffee shop has a different network connection than mine. You're even likely to be connecting to different countries and definitely different sites. Before committing to a VPN provider, test candidates thoroughly in your real-world environment. That's what money-back guarantees are for.

2. Avoid free VPN providers: Running a VPN is expensive, and if the VPN provider doesn't make money from your service fees, they're going to make money from your data -- sometimes even by selling your personal information. Stick with the trusted commercial vendors we've tested. There are also cases where 'free' VPNs undermine what the software is meant to stand for -- data protection and security. You may instead be downloading a product that will compromise your privacy. 

3. Don't worry about the country of jurisdiction unless: There are generally two classes of VPN users: Those who need to protect their coffee shop surfing and those counting on a VPN to protect their lives. As shown by ZDNET Contributor David Gewirtz in his article, many countries outside of the Quadripartite Pact (also know as the Five Eyes alliance) are Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties signatories. This means many countries will share data with the U.S. and other countries anyway. If you're using a VPN to provide true protection, I recommend researching this more.

4. Finally, don't sweat warrant canaries and no log policies: Most of you are going to use a VPN to protect your data stream from being hijacked by someone sharing your network. All of these big legal and jurisdictional issues get in the way of the simple fact that you want fast transfers and an encrypted tunnel from your spot in the airport to the website you're trying to access.

The VPNs I recommend in this list have been subject to in-depth testing by ZDNET authors. We've been talking about most of these VPNs for years, spoken with company management and their users, and developed a generally favorable impression.

These VPNs also have solid money-back guarantees, and I would not have recommended them otherwise. I test VPN services from multiple locations, but I can't test from all locations. Every home, every community, every local ISP, and every nation has a different infrastructure. It's essential that once you choose, you test for all your likely usage profiles and only then make the decision to keep the service or request a refund.

Another factor to consider is whether you're working at home or while traveling. For example, if you travel rarely, have strong bandwidth at home, and have a NAS or a server box, you might want to VPN to your home server from your machine's native client and then out to the world. If you're new to working from home and your company has a dedicated VPN, you'll want to use whatever process they've set up for you.

Also: How to set up a VPN on your router

Generally speaking, it doesn't hurt to have a VPN provider already set up. Most home-based traffic won't require VPN usage, but having a VPN provider is a good idea if you're on any sort of shared connection. Also, having a VPN provider can be a win if you ever think you'll need to access the Internet while out and about -- like at a hospital or doctor's office. Likewise, if you want to obscure your location a VPN provider might help.

If you experience traffic slowdowns, be sure to check not only your VPN but also your Wi-Fi connection between your device and router, your connection to your broadband provider, and even their connection to upstream providers.

VPN is an acronym for virtual private network. These services allow users to browse the internet privately and securely connect to open or public Wi-Fi networks. VPNs give users the ability to change their virtual location by redirecting the connection through one of its servers located around the world. A VPN will also encrypt all of your traffic, so you're hidden from hackers, your internet service provider, and governments.

However, if your online activities are being monitored at the ISP level -- say, by a government -- they may recognize the signature of a VPN in play, even if exactly what you are doing is hidden.

VPNs are useful in unblocking geo-restricted content and can be a vital tool for accessing information in countries with repressive governments. They are important services for anyone that wants to maintain a high level of safety and privacy online. However, because they are anonymous (or at least should be) they can also be used to hide illegal online activities such as pirating content.

A fully functional VPN should protect your privacy and mask your location and IP address. If you're not sure if your VPN is working properly, there are a handful of tools that make checking your VPN's performance easy.

You can find out your IP address and location using whatismyipaddress.com. Just compare the IP address and location when you're connected with a VPN vs. without a VPN. If they are different, then your VPN is doing its job.

It's also possible that your VPN is leaking your data and potentially exposing your online activity. To ensure your VPN doesn't have any issues with DNS leaks or IP leaks, you can run tests on a site like DNS Leak Test. There are plenty of tools that allow you to test for leaks, but many are owned by VPN providers and it may not always be clear who developed the tool, which could be a conflict of interest. You may want to run tests with several different sites and compare the results.

If you're connecting to an existing corporate virtual private network, you may not need an additional service. MacOS comes with native VPN support built right in.

Apple provides VPN support on recent OS versions. Head over to System Settings, the Network tab, and either import the configuration file you were provided or hit the plus button and add a VPN interface. Here's a handy tip sheet from Apple that will walk you through the process.

If you're connecting to an established corporate VPN, all you need to do is add a new Windows VPN connection. Point your mouse at the Start menu, type settings, then select Settings, Network & Internet, VPN, then Add VPN. Make sure you have the connection details provided by work and then click on Add a New VPN Connection. Fill in the form and you're good to go. Here's a handy tip sheet from Microsoft.

Windows also allows you to host a VPN server by creating a new incoming network connection, choosing the users who can connect, and telling Windows that the incoming connection is across the internet. You'll also have to configure your router to allow traffic to your computer. 

Sadly, this simple solution isn't built into the standard Chrome browser. If you're just using the browser on a Mac or Windows machine, you'll need a different solution. 

That said, if you're rocking a Chromebook, all you need to do is open Settings and then Network. Click Add Connection. Then all you need to do is choose between OpenVPN and L2TP over IPSec. Google has a handy cheat sheet to guide you through the process. 

WireGuard is Linux's baked-in VPN capability. Its code is relatively simple and small, making it far easier to maintain, test, and debug. 

So what do you need to set up WireGuard? Most VPNs we spotlighted support WireGuard right out of the box. You can download it for Linux. But you can also download a package for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and FreeBSD. It's like most open-source products, in that you'll need to do some reading and thinking to make it work. 

I've highlighted paid services in this article, although some offer a free tier or a money-back guarantee during a trial period. In general, fully free VPN services aren't recommended because they may not be secure. 

Operating a good VPN service requires hundreds of servers worldwide and a ton of networking resources.  If you're not paying to support that infrastructure, who is? Probably advertisers or data miners. If you use a free service, your data or your eyeballs will probably be sold, and that's never a good thing. After all, you're using a VPN to ensure your data is kept secure. You wouldn't want your data to go to some company to sift through -- it completely defeats the purpose of a VPN.

Before you choose a VPN service, free or paid, it's important to know that no one tool can guarantee your privacy. First, anything can be compromised. But more to the point, a VPN protects your data from your computer to the VPN service. It doesn't protect what you put on servers. It doesn't protect your data from the VPN provider's VPN servers to whatever site or cloud-based application you use. It doesn't offer good passwords or multi-factor authentication. Privacy and security require you to be diligent throughout your digital journey, and VPNs, while quite helpful, are not a miracle cure.

IPVanish is the best VPN for Chrome. We did an in-depth analysis of servers, performance, Chromebook compatibility, and locations -- IPVanish topped ExpressVPN and NordVPN.

NordVPN is the best VPN for the iPhone. We analyzed the number of simultaneous connections, servers, and countries, as well as kill switch ability, logging, speed, ability to unlock streaming services, and price -- and NordVPN came out on top. It's also an easy VPN to set up and use on your iPhone, so you don't need to be a tech wiz to get it up and running.

There are also plenty of free VPNs for iPhones, but as much as you may want to save money, these typically aren't a great option. Free VPNs come with an increased risk of security flaws. Not only that, but free VPNs underperform compared to premium services and are often riddled with ads or have severe data or bandwidth limitations. In the worst cases, free VPN providers may make money selling your data.

If it's your data and you want it to be secure, yes. The same choices are valid regardless of what kind of device you use to transmit and receive data over the Internet.

Yes, in most countries, including the U.S., the U.K., and the majority of Europe. Some countries, however, have made VPN use illegal or they are severely discouraged and limited to state-approved software. 

At present, countries including North Korea, Iraq, and Belarus ban the use of VPNs entirely. As noted in NordVPN's country guide, others -- like China, Russia, and Egypt -- discourage VPN use and try to stop new adoption by demonizing VPNs as software widely used for criminal activity. 

Workarounds do exist, but they may come with risks.

Some do. Check when you sign up. For non-free plans, none of the providers we recommended limit the amount of data you can use. But almost all limit how many devices you can use at once. 

As a general rule of thumb, free or trial offerings tend to restrict usage, speed, or the number of devices you can connect to the VPN, with access and speed increased for paying customers.

Logging is the recording of data about your usage, and it occurs everywhere. Every website, at minimum, records an IP address, time, and data accessed so they can track traffic. All VPN providers have to check credentials against recorded personal data to make sure you paid, but a few let you sign up with Bitcoin, allowing you to completely hide your identity. 

When we say a VPN doesn't log data, we mean they don't track what sites you visit and for how long, but they may track how much of their infrastructure you use.

A VPN for your office only securely links to your office. If you want to securely link to anywhere else, you'll need another VPN service.

So let's say you're surfing along and all of a sudden your VPN connection fails. Your phone or computer is likely to immediately try to reconnect and do so directly without going through a VPN. All of a sudden, your data is unprotected. 

A kill switch is a feature in your device's VPN app that detects when a connection fails and immediately shuts down network access. Like with everything, it's not a 100% perfect solution, but these days, I wouldn't recommend using a VPN that doesn't offer a kill switch.

When you have multiple devices -- such as a tablet, laptop, and smartphone -- and you are using these devices for different tasks, you still want to keep your data and connections secure on each machine.

When you have enabled the VPN on more than one device at the same time, this means you are using simultaneous connections. It's always best to have this feature in a VPN to ensure your privacy isn't accidentally compromised through one device or another.  

Using a VPN does add load and can often slow down your connection. That's because your data is encrypted, decrypted, and sent through intermediate servers. Game responsiveness might suffer, for example, or you may notice your streaming service doesn't load as fast as usual. 

However, with many high-quality VPNs now available, the negative impact is often unnoticeable, unless there is a problem with the VPN server you connect to. To fix this, try out a server in a different location and see if that improves your connection.

If you've been shopping for a VPN service, you've undoubtedly come across a bunch of names like SSL, OpenVPN, SSTP, L2TP/IPSec, PPP, PPTP, IKEv2/IPSec, SOCKS5, and more. These are all communication protocols. They are, essentially, the name of the method by which your communication is encrypted and packaged for tunneling to the VPN provider. 

To be honest, while VPN geeks can argue over protocols for hours, it's probably good enough to use the default setup from your provider.

There are a number of alternative VPN providers you may want to consider: