The verdict
VPN providers often appear very similar, and it’s tempting to choose a service based on simple stats like the price and the number of locations. But that’s not a good idea. There are many more factors to take into account, and even the most obvious figures are difficult to interpret.
A high number of locations means little if you won’t use them, for instance, and a low price may not be so appealing if it gets you slow servers and no support. We’ve tried to get a more realistic view of our providers by checking them out in more depth: reading the small print, signing up, installing the services and trying them out in the real world.
Buffered VPN may be at the bottom of our list, but it’s not a bad service. You get servers in an above-average 37 locations, all with P2P support, and speeds are also better than a lot of the competition. The website support isn’t great and the privacy policy could be clearer, but if you’re experienced it might give you everything you need.
SlickVPN also does very well in some key areas, offering more locations than anyone else (140+) for the lowest price of our group. We felt it didn’t excel in any of the other test areas, but if locations and price are your priorities then it could still be a good choice.
IVPN is more than twice as expensive as SlickVPN, but we felt its real-world performance helped edge the service ahead. It was faster, more reliable and consistent, with a little more detail on the support site if something goes wrong. There’s a clear privacy policy, and we liked the ability to sign up with nothing more than an email address.
Mullvad took anonymity to the next level by allowing you to create an account and test it for three hours, without providing any personal or payment details at all. The low monthly price and strong OpenVPN features are also major pluses, but slightly disappointing performance held it back.
Perfect Privacy is the priciest service here, but excellent results in every other area meant that it won out anyway. It’s the easiest to set up, has a Linux client, delivered the best speeds in our tests, and has a good mix of novice-friendly features (tracker blocking) with expertlevel configurability.
“It’s tempting to choose a service based on simple stats like the price…”