There’s nothing as annoying as having a slow Internet connection, and if your Wi-Fi works at a snail’s pace, it’s almost impossible to work, watch videos, or even message your friends and family.
It should come as no surprise, then, that one of the main concerns for many when choosing the best VPN service is that it could slow down your internet connection. But is that true? And if so, how long can we expect it to be delayed?
I’ll explain how VPNs have the potential to slow down your connection and leverage first-hand test data to see if any of today’s top providers actually have a significant impact on your internet speed.
Can VPNs slow down your Internet connection?
In short, yes, they can, but it’s rare nowadays.
Let’s start with the basics. A VPN routes your traffic through its own servers, essentially becoming an intermediary between you and the website you want to visit. It adds an extra physical distance for your internet traffic to travel, which is what can cause a higher ping.
Ping is the delay between you performing an action and that action happening, and while a very high ping can be annoying in any situation, a very low ping is only essential if you’re doing something like gaming, which requires your reactions to be as quickly as possible. 100 milliseconds is perfectly acceptable on a day-to-day basis, and by selecting a server geographically close to your current location, you can avoid any substantial ping increases.
A VPN also encrypts your data, making it unreadable to anyone who could intercept it, whether it’s a hacker or simply your ISP. This is the step that can help reduce upload and download speeds as it takes time to encrypt and decrypt data. Low download speeds contribute to a “slow connection”: pages will load slowly, videos will buffer endlessly, and you’ll basically have a bad time.
Lastly, VPN servers have finite performance. That means that if a lot of people use a single server, speeds may be slower if the server is not up to par. Many providers are now upgrading to 10Gbps or even 20Gbps servers, meaning that overcrowded servers are largely a thing of the past when it comes to the biggest and best providers.
Therefore, a poorly optimized VPN can definitely have an effect on internet speed, but in recent years advances in encryption technology have meant that the impact has become negligible; We will address the numbers to support this very soon.
How have VPNs become faster?
Nowadays, it’s rare for a quality VPN to affect your internet connection, and there are a few key reasons for this. For starters, VPN apps tend to be small, efficient packages that place minimal burden on your device.
Most importantly, however, VPN protocols have advanced. VPN protocols are how a VPN encrypts your data and sends it to its destination; There’s more to it than that, so check out our What is a VPN? guide to learn more.
Until a few years ago, the dominant VPN protocol was OpenVPN. OpenVPN replaced a number of older, less secure protocols, and is still considered secure and reliable. However, as a piece of code it is quite large and involves many updates and modifications, and connection speed was never a priority in its original design. Different VPNs often offered wildly different speeds when using the same protocol, and years ago it was definitely true that a VPN slowed down your connection.
However, new protocols like WireGuard and proprietary technology like ExpressVPN’s Lightway are becoming the gold standard and have been designed from the ground up to offer great speeds and excellent privacy. These handy tools give smaller VPNs (not known for their speed) a chance to go toe-to-toe with the big dogs if they’ve implemented WireGuard efficiently.
Which VPNs are the fastest?
There are plenty of blazingly fast VPNs available, but you don’t have to take our rankings at face value. Part of our review process includes recording the connection speeds of each service, using an ultra-fast 1 Gbps connection. So, if the speeds we recorded are faster than your home connection, you can rest assured that the VPN you’ve chosen won’t stop your browsing.
The renowned NordVPN uses a modified version of WireGuard that it calls NordLynx and always gets a top spot in our speed rankings. It reliably delivered speeds of up to 880 Mbps when using NordLynx, compared to around 190 Mbps when using OpenVPN.
When testing ExpressVPN’s Lightway protocol, we also saw excellent results, with speeds of up to 580Mbps. However, OpenVPN’s speeds were much better than Nord’s, reliably hitting over 300 Mbps.
ProtonVPN didn’t used to be a big speedster, but when using WireGuard it regularly maxed out at around 740 Mbps. OpenVPN’s speeds were also impressive, with highs of over 500 Mbps. If you’d still prefer to use OpenVPN, ProtonVPN would be our pick to get. the maximum speed.
However, even the smallest VPNs can offer excellent speeds when using WireGuard. Atlas VPN, best known for its free VPN, ranked near the top of our list with speeds up to 800 Mbps, and ZenMate topped out at a respectable 500 Mbps.
Will a free VPN slow down your connection?
Unlike paid VPNs with no limits, free services impose limitations on users, mainly in the hope that they will upgrade to a paid plan to avoid them.
In addition to data limits, one of the most common restrictions is the speed limit. For example, the free version of Hotspot Shield limits users to a very slow 2 Mbps, which doesn’t allow for much more than simple text-based website browsing. You won’t watch many 4K YouTube videos with that.
While it’s probably the best free option out there, ProtonVPN’s free plan also limits speeds, and while it’s not as brutal as Hotspot Shield, you certainly won’t see speeds hit triple figures.
So yes, free services are very likely to slow down your connection, but that’s because the provider chose to limit speeds, rather than limit technology. If you really want to maximize your performance and want a service that can keep up, I suggest trying a cheap VPN.
Does a VPN slow down your Internet connection?
In the past, the answer would have been yes, but in today’s market, VPNs simply can’t afford to slow down connections. WireGuard has been instrumental in this, and even if you use an ultra-fast connection of 1Gbps or more, if you choose the right provider you won’t have any problems.
Which VPN do we recommend?
- Explore our guides on the best VPNs for Android and iPhone
- If you’re a Windows user, check out the best VPN for Windows 10…
- …or if you’re an Apple fan, read about the best VPN for Mac
