We spend over 3,000 hours running 2,800 streaming tests and 28,000 speed tests on over a hundred VPNs each year, all with the goal of providing the most accurate and unbiased results to our readers so they can make the most informed decision possible when choose the best VPN. .
In this round of testing, we’ve made possibly the biggest change to our rankings since we started reviewing VPNs. After six years, NordVPN finally dethroned ExpressVPN as our number one provider. While both services are at the forefront of VPN technology, NordVPN simply offers more features at a better price. It’s also one of the fastest VPNs we’ve tested and is a great VPN for streaming.
Elsewhere, Private Internet Access has shown continued improvement, moving up to fourth place, followed by the always impressive Proton VPN in fifth place. Some of the results in this round of testing were very surprising, so I’ll go over all the interesting aspects here. First, though, I’ll give you a quick breakdown of the best providers right now.
Top 5 VPNs in 2024
My latest test results
The components of my top five haven’t changed, but their order certainly has, especially since ExpressVPN lost the number one spot to NordVPN. Private Internet access has shown real improvement and thanks to this it has fair It surpassed Proton VPN in the number 4 position.
Elsewhere, we have seen some changes. Windscribe continues to improve despite some setbacks, namely its cluttered apps, lack of audits, and controversial April Fool’s joke, while privacy-focused Mullvad and super-configurable Hide.me round out my top 10.
PrivadoVPN Free took its place as my top free provider a few months ago, unseating Proton VPN Free, but both are excellent and will suit different users.
In my opinion, having a wide variety of additional features and products does not necessarily make a product better than one that already is. only a VPN.
For example, ExpressVPN offers very little more than its VPN, but the VPN itself is class-leading, and overall ExpressVPN beats Proton VPN, which has an entire ecosystem of apps.
Consistency is also essential. My picks and rankings come not only from inpidual rounds of testing, but also from my years of experience using, reviewing, and writing about VPNs.
The ones I will recommend the most are the ones I trust and who have delivered excellent results, review after review, year after year.
Streaming site unblock results
Most VPNs claim that they can unblock almost every streaming site in the world, but this is simply not true. The Jugo Mobile VPN team and I test every VPN we review with a bunch of different streaming sites to make sure the claims they make are true.
Malware, trackers and ad blocking results
Many VPNs include additional ad- or malware-blocking tools to beef up their offering, but do this in fact They work, and can they outperform a dedicated service? We always test and verify them using:
- A tool we created that attempts to access more 150 common trackers (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and note whether or not they are blocked by the VPN.
- A tool we created that tries to visit a list of around 500 URLs (updated daily from sources like GitHub) that has been marked as malicious to see what happens.
- running a few ad blocking testers (including Ad Unit Tester) and see how the VPN’s ad blocker stacks up.
Here are our results:
What is the fastest VPN?
Almost every VPN on the market will claim to be the fastest provider out there. Some have even based their entire brand around it (ahem, FastestVPN, ahem), but in reality, there’s a big difference between the truly fast and the desperately slow.
Also note that speed isn’t everything: if you only have a connection that can offer, say, 100 Mbps, having a VPN with a maximum of 1 Gbps won’t make your connection faster and is often worth the worth making your decision elsewhere.
Jugo Mobile VPN Ratings
The VPN market is huge and a new name appears seemingly every week. Below are my top 20 services that I have reviewed; some are not worth your time, while others may offer you a certain feature that you can’t get anywhere else.
How we test VPNs
When it comes to recommending a product that users will trust with possibly every byte of their online life, I have to be absolutely sure that my choices are correct and fully tested.
For a complete summary, see our complete methodology of how we test VPNs. However, for those short on time, here are the crib notes.
Unlike some sites, we don’t just present a spec sheet and declare the vendor with the most impressive claims the winner. Instead, we have a dedicated in-house team that gets hands-on with all of the vendors listed (and more).
Every 6 months, after searching the website for new claimed features or policy changes, we sign up for a plan and install it on a variety of devices. The Windows app goes through the most rigorous testing and this is where we’ll try to disable the kill switch, make sure any leak protection is working properly, and measure connection speeds.
The other apps, including Mac VPN, iPhone VPN, and Android VPN, also undergo extensive testing, and we’ll check all the settings available in each app to make sure they work as promised by the provider.
As we use the apps, if something seems to behave strangely, we’ll investigate it. We could delve into the source code or see the contents of your RAM. At this general use stage we also make decisions about aesthetics and ease of use, although admittedly these are more subjective.
Next comes the transmission tests. We’ll test each VPN with all the big streaming sites from multiple locations to make sure it works as claimed. Since Netflix is still very popular and somewhat problematic when it comes to VPNs, we test the biggest providers every month to make sure my recommendations remain relevant.
Meet the experts
Meet the people behind our VPN reviews and ratings:
