Best VPN for Android

Most popular VPN providers offer dedicated Android apps, ensuring a user-friendly experience on mobile as well as desktop. Some of these are better than others however, so in our top picks we’ve tried to only include providers with simple, one-click apps that still pack in a good amount of advanced privacy features.

Make sure your chosen protocol (OpenVPN in most cases) is available on the Android app too, as it isn’t with every provider.

Speeds vary a great deal from provider to provider, so you want to make sure you choose one that isn’t going to massively affect your Android’s day-to-day performance.

If you’re going to be doing lots of streaming on your phone, choose a provider with super-fast download speeds, and low latency is an advantage if you’re a gamer. A general rule when it comes to VPNs is the faster, the better.

Every VPN will tell you it is a “zero logs” VPN and does not store any of your personal information. In reality, delivering consistently good performance across a vast global server network isn’t possible unless you’re monitoring at least some connection details of your users.

Ideally you want a VPN that does not log your IP address and limits timestamp logging to just the date of your connection, or better still one that doesn’t collect any logs at all.

You could read a ton of privacy policies and terms of service to find out exactly what’s collected and for how long it’s stored or let us do that for you and just check the logging policy section of our review that explains this in plain English.

For the best possible performance you’ll need to connect to a VPN server close to your physical location.

The more servers a provider has, the lower the likelihood of server congestion, however this unfortunately isn’t always the case.

Look at the speed test results for individual locations in our reviews to get the best idea, especially if you’re looking to connect to a specific country.

The sheer amount of VPN jargon can be overwhelming, even if you are pretty tech-savvy.

Do look out for OpenVPN though, as this connection protocol offers the best overall blend of speed and security. Ignore talk of military or bank-grade encryption and just look for AES-256, as that’s the gold standard.

Unless you know your DNS from your IPv6, a VPN killswitch is the main thing to look out for among security features as it will protect you from exposing your real IP address should your connection drop unexpectedly.

There’s no point in finding the ‘perfect’ provider and then discovering that their apps are clunky and confusing. Look for a VPN with software that’s well-designed, user-friendly and powerful and you will be much more likely to use it all the time.

We share the results of our hands-on testing of each VPN app in the the Ease of Use part of its review.

Even the most expensive VPN plans can be made affordable by taking out a longer subscription.

Don’t bother with a one-month plan – 12-month plans typically offer the best value and you can reduce the risk of buyer’s remorse by choosing one with a long refund period.

We’d advise a 30-day no-questions-asked guarantee – they essentially act as a free trial period.

Make the right choice, though, and you hopefully won’t be thinking about a refund at all.