IVPN Review

After analyzing its privacy policy, we’re confident that IVPN qualifies as ‘no-logs’ on paper. This means the VPN doesn’t collect any data that could link your online activities back to you.

In practice, we’re yet to see the real-world proof required to verify its no-logs status, such as a court case or server seizure.

While this isn’t in IVPN’s control, our testing criteria limits us from awarding a privacy rating above 9.0, until the VPN passes this ultimate test.

That aside, IVPN has done everything else we can ask for. It has had its privacy policy audited and publishes regular transparency reports to show how often it receives requests for its users’ personal data from law enforcement.

At the time of writing, IVPN has never complied with a request for user data, since it claims to have nothing to share.

We also love that IVPN goes the extra mile by accepting cash payments and even letting you sign up for an account without an email address. That way, not only can your online activity not be traced back to you, but there’s no way of knowing you’re even an IVPN user.

When signing up using this method, we were given an anonymous account ID rather than the usual email address and password.

Surprisingly given its privacy-focus, IVPN doesn’t use diskless VPN servers. These servers, used by PIA, Windscribe, and most of the top VPN services, don’t contain storage drives, which means their data gets wiped every time they’re powered down.

IVPN declined to answer when we asked if it plans to roll out these servers in the future.

IVPN has stated its service isn’t focused on streaming, so we weren’t surprised to find we couldn’t access geo-blocked content while connected to the VPN.

The VPN has failed to access major streaming services, including BBC iPlayer and Disney+, over years of testing, despite us trying multiple servers. Even some free VPNs, like Windscribe, manage to access these platforms regularly.

In a recent test, IVPN did unblock US Netflix, but only after several attempts and connections to specific servers (Ashburn and Chicago). This inconsistency shows that IVPN is unreliable for regular streaming needs.

Now and again, we’re able to stream US Netflix with IVPN.

To access local streaming sites while keeping all of our other traffic encrypted, we set up split tunneling to exclude the streaming website or app from the VPN tunnel. However, this feature wasn’t available on Mac or iOS, meaning we had to disconnect from the VPN entirely.

To add further frustration, IVPN doesn’t have apps for streaming devices, like Fire TV, Android TV, or Apple TV.

As our data shows, IVPN is consistently fast across every location without any significant outliers. The slowest server was Australia, with a 22% reduction in speed, but this is to be expected due to the distance between the server and our location in the US.

Though it was faster than PIA, CyberGhost, and many other popular VPNs, it fell short of the very fastest, such as Hotspot Shield. This VPN posted a maximum download speed loss of just 0% in every server location.

While fast download speeds are ideal for streaming geo-blocked HD or 4K video, IVPN is blocked from most of these services. As a result, its impressive speed felt underutilized when only used for everyday web activities.

With a ping of 5ms on nearby servers, IVPN has lower latency than other high-quality VPNs like NordVPN and PIA.

This ensured we experienced no FPS drops or lag while playing fast-paced online games, such as Fortnite and Valorant.

The added latency was only an issue when we connected to countries like Brazil for easier gaming lobbies. However, IVPN’s ping time of 114ms in Brazil was comparable to other VPNs when connected to servers in that region.

IVPN has servers in countries with easier gaming lobbies, like Brazil.

Using Wireshark while connected to IVPN, we analyzed our network traffic to assess the strength of its encryption. We were impressed with what we saw.

By default, the VPN uses WireGuard with ChaCha20. You can switch to OpenVPN with AES-256 in the app’s settings, but we recommend sticking with the defaults as they’re more modern and just as secure.

IVPN successfully encrypted our internet connection.

Regardless of which option you choose, no one will be able to intercept what you’re doing online.

In our data leak tests, IVPN didn’t leak our IP or DNS address both when our connection dropped and during standard browsing. This is due to all of IVPN’s apps including built-in leak protection for IPv4/6 and DNS.

As a result, our true IP address was never exposed to the websites we were visiting and our browsing activity was not visible to our ISP.

IVPN’s leak protection worked perfectly in our tests.

We were also able to inspect and scrutinize IVPN’s codebase as it has made all of its apps open-source. You can go to GitHub and read all of the documentation yourself.

By giving access to the code base, IVPN is being very transparent to how its VPN clients work, and how they safeguard privacy and security. This is a great move from IVPN, and we wish more VPN services would follow its lead.

During our initial review of IVPN in 2019, we complained about the VPN’s limited server network. Disappointingly, the VPN has made minimal progress in this area, providing access to just 1 additional country.

In the same time period, Proton VPN has expanded to now cover 148 countries, and Surfshark’s total reaches 100 countries.

We’re pleasantly surprised to see 12 server locations spread across the US.

On the flip side, there’s only one server location in Australia. We expect to see servers on both coasts, so we hope to see servers in Perth added soon. For this reason, Australian readers should consider using NordVPN, instead.

Also, IVPN provides just one server in South America (Brazil), and three servers in East Asia (Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong).

You can connect to a country either by searching for it directly or finding it in the alphabetical list.

The VPN service offers three to five IP addresses per server. This equals a range of IP addresses between 228 and 380.

When installing IVPN on macOS, we had to make sure to select the correct app version: Intel or Apple Silicon. Unlike most VPNs that offer a ‘Universal App’ that works for both, IVPN keeps these versions separate, which is slightly more inconvenient.

The download and installation process was longer than expected, as the IVPN app is twice the size of many other VPNs we’ve installed, such as ExpressVPN and PIA.

Frustratingly, logging in required entering our random 12-digit account ID instead of an email address or password. While this is manageable initially, it became cumbersome by the time we installed it on multiple devices.

Despite its strong reputation in the cybersecurity community, we think IVPN is particularly well-suited for beginners.

Its apps are easy to use and visually appealing. To connect to a server, you just have to toggle the ‘On’ button, which always connected us to a nearby server in less than a second.

The app appears designed to run in the background rather than being frequently interacted with. It emphasizes the Network Protection feature, which automatically connects to a VPN server when joining an untrusted WiFi network.

While using the app directly, we immediately noticed how limited the home screen was. It only shows the connect button and the Multi-hop feature. We’d prefer it if this space offered more practical options, such as accessing a favorite server.

The apps have a consistent design across desktop and mobile, making it easy to remember how to perform specific tasks. Even with its similar design, we found it to be well-designed and easy-to-use from a small phone screen all the way to a large PC monitor.

For the most part, IVPN provided a seamless experience, operating quietly in the background with minimal impact on our browsing activity.

However, for times that required interaction with the app, we were often left frustrated. One recurring issue was the need to manually toggle the VPN connection on, even after selecting the server location. This extra step felt redundant and inconvenient, especially when we were in a hurry.

IVPN was a pleasure to use all day, every day.

Another issue was the app’s tendency to log us out regularly. This is particularly frustrating since the app requires an account ID rather than an email address for login.

In our P2P tests, we saw minimal drops in speed when torrenting while connected to a VPN server. Without the VPN connected, we could download a 20GB movie in 32 minutes. While connected to a IVPN server, it took us 35 minutes to download the same file.

We were able to download a torrent file very quickly using IVPN on a UK server.

Strangely, the VPN requests that users don’t connect to its US servers while torrenting as it says its server providers threatened to disconnect its servers if it continued to receive DMCA notices. However, we were still able to download as usual while connected to all of its US server locations.

Rather than telling users to avoid certain servers, we wish IVPN would get around this limitation by owning its entire server network in the US, like IPVanish.

Similarly to Mullvad, IVPN has recently removed its port forwarding feature, citing “large scale abuse” after an influx of new customers began using the service.

Since the removal, we’ve noticed a slight decrease in the number of peers we can connect to, leading to somewhat slower and less reliable torrent download speeds.

If you’re looking for a VPN that offers port forwarding, Proton VPN, PIA, and AirVPN are good options.

IVPN is one of only four VPNs in our top 25 that doesn’t offer a dedicated app for streaming devices like Fire TV, Apple TV, and Android TV. Instead, IVPN provides instructions for setting it up indirectly on Fire TV using the OpenVPN app and configuration files.

After following this method, we thought it was far too complex for most users, especially compared to using a VPN with a dedicated app.

To use the VPN on devices that don’t support VPN apps, you can set it up on a number of compatible routers, including DD-WRT, pfSense, and Tomato. However, this process is also complicated and we don’t recommend it for beginners.

IVPN’s Windows, Linux, and Android app allow split tunneling, which is a handy feature if you only want to route some of your traffic through a VPN server. We used this on our Android device to encrypt traffic from all of our apps but maintain access to our local Netflix library.

You can choose to either include or exclude all apps in the VPN by default. We strongly recommend the former to reduce the risk of leaks due to misconfiguration.

IVPN’s split tunneling can be easily configured to either exclude or include apps from the tunnel.

Of all the VPNs that provide an ad blocker, IVPN AntiTracker blocked the most ads, preventing 100% of intrusive ads when used in ‘Hardcore Mode’. It also scored higher than PIA Mace for social trackers, but less when it came to analytic trackers.

Importantly, though, IVPN’s Hardcore Mode blocks some legitimate sites entirely, including Google and YouTube. In everyday use, we tended to prefer an ad blocker that blocked slightly fewer ads but still allowed us to use the web as we normally would.

IVPN’s desktop apps include Obfsproxy, which is a form of obfuscated server that’s designed to allow users in restrictive regions to access the internet.

Though this is likely to be sufficient to bypass censorship in countries like Russia and Turkey, our testing found IVPN doesn’t bypass the Great Firewall of China. It failed to even connect to any servers.

Here’s a video of us trying and failing to connect to a VPN server in China:

Additionally, Obfsproxy drastically slows down internet speeds, dropping ours by 45%. It’s best suited for accessing blocked text-based apps, like X and WhatsApp, rather than heavy media apps like YouTube or Instagram.

We’re pleased to see multi-hop added to the standard IVPN plan, when before it was limited to the Pro suite.

Multi-hop (or Double VPN) is an advanced feature that routes your internet traffic through two VPN servers instead of one. This makes it much harder to monitor and intercept your traffic, but often results in slower download speeds.

We used our IP lookup tool to test our multi-hop connection.

We really like that IVPN lets you choose your own entry and exit servers for multi-hop, unlike NordVPN which limits you to pre-determined locations. This allowed us to tailor the connection to our specific needs.