Best VPN service in 2021: Safe and fast don’t come free

If finding the best VPN for your needs was a simple matter of comparing prices and features, this guide would not be essential reading. The fact is you won’t find the right VPN without first understanding how a VPN service accomplishes its primary mission: keeping you safe online.

Fundamentally, most VPNs (virtual private network) provide two services: Encrypting your data between two points and hiding the IP address (from which a general location can be derived) where you’re located. For those traveling or out and about, the first function was critical because most Wi-Fi available publicly is unencrypted — so anyone on the network could see what you were sending. 

But VPNs also serve to hide your IP address, replacing the address logged on servers with one in a completely different location — even a different country. For those worrying about stalking or other threats, this feature could save lives. Most consumers, though, find streaming VPN features compelling because — in some cases, and with dubious legality — it allows them to spoof their region of origin to get access to streaming media and sports blacked out from their home locale.

There is no doubt that you should use a VPN service provider when you’re using public Wi-Fi when away from home. But what about when you’re at home? Should you use a VPN then?

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My general advice is that it’s not critical for most people at home, since your ISP rarely wants to look at your traffic. But if you live in an apartment with a bunch of curious roommates all sharing one router, a VPN might prove valuable. If you’re connecting to work and want to make sure you’re taking all the precautions you can (and if your employer hasn’t given you a corporate VPN to use) a VPN service would be useful. If you’re connecting to websites that log connection information and you don’t want to leave tracks where you are (especially where your home is), you might want to use a VPN. You get the idea: If you want extra protection at home, then a VPN isn’t a bad idea.

Now, let’s be clear. Using a VPN does add a bit of a load on your computer and can often slow down your connection. That’s because your data is encrypted, decrypted, and sent through intermediate servers. Game responsiveness might suffer. If you’re a first-person shooter player, you might have enough lag to lose the shot. That said, both computers and VPNs have gotten a lot faster. When I first used a VPN, every… thing…slowed… down… to… an… unbearable… c-r-a-w-l. But now, the negative impact is almost unnoticeable, and at least one service we spotlight below (Hotspot Shield) actually increased performance, making it one of the fastest VPNs we’ve seen.

Also, most (but not all!) of the providers we spotlight limit the number of devices you can connect simultaneously, so you may have to pick and choose which home devices connect through a VPN.

We’re also spotlighting paid services in this article, although some of them offer a free tier. I generally don’t recommend free VPN services because I don’t consider them secure. Think about this: Running a VPN service requires hundreds of servers across the world and a ton of networking resources. It’s boo-coo expensive. 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 so your data remains secure. You wouldn’t want to then have all that data go to some company to sift through — it completely defeats the purpose.

Before we jump into our cornucopia of VPN services, I want to make it clear that no one tool can guarantee your privacy. First, anything can be hacked. 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’re using. It doesn’t give you good passwords or multifactor authentication. Privacy and security require you to be diligent throughout your digital journey, and VPNs, while quite helpful, are not a miracle cure.

In this article, we look at a bunch of our favorite VPN solutions. We’ll cover many of the best VPN service providers, how to access the native VPNs built into your desktop machine, and even how to use your NAS as a VPN client and host. If you’re curious about VPNs, you can learn a lot more in our massive VPN FAQ.

We’ll also dig back into what makes the best VPNs tick and answer some more of your questions at the end of this article, so read on. But first, our picks for the best VPNs of 2021.

Best VPN providers

If you’re curious about how VPNs work or what a VPN provider can do for you, here’s a great VPN overview article. Now that you understand how a VPN service can help keep you safe, let’s kick it off with our list of recommended service providers.

Native VPN support on your desktop

If you’re connecting to a corporate VPN, you may not need to purchase a VPN service. All the major desktop operating systems include VPN capabilities. Here’s how to get started using those.

VPN for your whole home network

Many of the commercial VPN services discussed above offer router-based VPN solutions. Even though I have a pretty powerful router, I prefer to run my VPN on my NAS. Here are two NAS-based VPN solutions that will get you connected securely.

A mini-FAQ about VPNs

I answered a bunch of common questions above our big list of the best VPNs for 2021. But here’s a quick lightning round of questions and answers about VPNs, just to round out your knowledge.

Do VPN providers limit usage? 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.

What does logging really mean? 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 own infrastructure you use.

Is it legal to use a VPN? Yes, in most countries. Some countries (and you should read my guide for more in-depth info) have made VPN use illegal. And even in countries where it’s legal, it’s likely to be illegal to use a VPN to spoof a streaming service into giving you content that otherwise wouldn’t be accessible. Plus…

Can I use a VPN to get free Netflix or watch a blacked-out sports event? Sometimes, but it’s likely illegal and probably fattening. There’s an ongoing arms race where the media vendors are getting better at identifying and blocking VPN connections, so each case is different. And that’s all we can say about it, because… illegal.

If I have a VPN to my office, do I need a VPN service? The VPN to your office will secure your link to your office. If you want to secure your link to anywhere else, you’ll need a VPN service.

Should I use a VPN on my phone or tablet? 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.

What’s this kill switch thing? 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 that connection fail 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.

What do simultaneous connections mean and why should I care? I’ll give you a personal example. When I travel, I often take my laptop and my tablet. I use the laptop to write and I use the tablet as a second screen to look stuff up. I have two connections I’m using at once and I want my VPN to protect both. If my wife is also doing the same thing, that’s four connections. Add our phones and you have six connections. If we’re using all those devices at once that’s simultaneous connections. The more the better.

What about all those weird protocol words? 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, you’re probably good enough if you just use the default set up by your provider.

How to choose

I could write an entire article about how VPNs work and how to choose, and, in fact, I did. Rather than repeating it all here, I’m just going to point you to How to find the best VPN service: Your guide to staying safe on the internet.

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Our process

This list did not involve as much original research and testing as some of my other recommendation lists. That’s because I’ve been writing VPN articles every month or so since early 2017. I have looked at a lot of VPN providers.

Many of the providers recommended in this list have been subject to in-depth testing and reviews, written either by me or by CNET’s product evaluation team. (See: The best VPN services for 2021.) For those, we have tangible testing numbers. Other VPNs have been ones we’ve been talking about for years, spoken with their management and their users, and have developed a generally positive impression.

A few of the VPNs (Hotspot Shield, in particular) had a more rocky road. They had some tough PR at the beginning and made some seemingly ludicrous claims about speed. It wasn’t until I brought them in house and pounded on them for a few weeks that I realized that their claims were justified. Sometimes, products just surprise you.

But here’s the thing: All these vendors have solid money-back guarantees and we would not have recommended them otherwise. We do test VPN services from multiple locations, but we 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.

One thing to consider is whether you’re looking for a solution for working at home vs. traveling. For example, if you travel rarely (even before COVID-19), 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 newly home for the duration and your company has a dedicated VPN, you’ll want to use whatever process they’ve set out for you.

But, generally speaking, it doesn’t hurt to have a VPN provider already set up and in your kit bag. Most home-based traffic won’t require VPN usage, but if you’re on any sort of shared connection, having a VPN provider is a good idea. Also, if you ever think you’ll need to access the Internet from out and about — like a hospital or doctor’s office, then having a VPN provider can be a win. Likewise, if you want to obscure where you’re connecting from (this might be more important now that we’re always in the same place all day), a VPN provider might help.

Finally, don’t expect miracles. Your home-based pandemic broadband pipes are likely to be more clogged than ever before. Everyone is at home, many people are streaming movies to stay sane, and there are only so many bits that can fit at any given time. If you experience traffic slowdowns, be sure to check not only your VPN, but your Wi-Fi connection between your device and your router, your connection to your broadband provider, and even their connection to upstream providers.

That said, we’re all in this together. Hang in there and stay safe. How are you managing your home-based networking? Let us know in the comments below.

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