The Best VPNs for Australia

ExpressVPN gives you access to IP addresses from Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.

These are the same exact cities available with NordVPN, although ExpressVPN gives you the ability to manually select different Sydney locations, including one in the Wooloomooloo district.

What really caught our eye, though, was how quickly the apps connected to a server compared to other VPN services. This was really noticeable on smartphones and tablets.

In just under three seconds, the VPN changed our IP address to an Australian one (or an international one) no matter our distance from that server.

From a security standpoint, ExpressVPN’s entire network runs purely on RAM, meaning no data is ever written permanently to disk.

And thanks to its ShuffleIP technology, your IP address will regularly rotate in the background without modifying your online location.

We tested ExpressVPN with every major Australian streaming platform and the results were fantastic, as the table below shows:

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
7plus	Yes
9Now	Yes
ABC iView	Yes
Kayo Sports	Yes
Netflix Australia	Yes
SBS On Demand	Yes

ExpressVPN successfully bypassed all Australian streaming geo-blocks, streaming quickly at maximum picture quality and no buffering.

The big news is that the VPN has consistently unblocked Kayo Sports for many months, putting its past struggles with the platform in the rear view mirror.

It was child’s play getting an Australian IP address and watching the NRL, the Australian Open, international cricket, and many other sports.

And on the topic of cricket, keep in mind that ExpressVPN is also an excellent VPN for India, especially for watching the IPL for free on JioHotstar.

Zooming out, ExpressVPN is also our preferred choice for international streaming. It’s our go-to VPN for Netflix, and an equally great option for streaming region-locked titles on BBC iPlayer, Disney+ and Prime Video.

Long-distance speeds to and from Australia have always been a tough cookie to crack for many VPN services, but not for ExpressVPN.

We connected to all of the service’s Australian locations from overseas and recorded just 17% loss in our download speed.

And connecting abroad from Australia, we averaged a very low 15% slowdown on servers all over the world, including Canada, South Africa, the UK, and the US.

These speed results are truly impressive considering some of the distances were over 10,000 miles!

Yes, NordVPN is still marginally faster, but honestly you won’t notice any difference.

ExpressVPN makes getting an Australian IP address a piece of cake, thanks to its intuitive and well-designed apps.

It’s the most widely compatible VPN on the market, with apps for every major platform, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

There are also dedicated apps for Apple TV, Fire TV Stick, and Android TV, so you can stream Australian shows and sports on your smart TV.

Plus, ExpressVPN is the only VPN with a dedicated router app across the entire VPN industry.

Since its Smart DNS proxy isn’t designed to unblock Australian streaming services, setting up the VPN on your home router is a great way to use ExpressVPN on your game console.

ExpressVPN’s cheapest plan costs $2.44/mo over 28 months, which isn’t as cheap as Surfshark but it’s certainly more affordable than NordVPN.

We feel the price is completely justified in light of the exceptional performance.

You can also try ExpressVPN for free by signing up to its 7-day free trial (via iOS or Android). You can then use your free account details on all the other apps.

Surfshark’s free trial is arguably better, since you avoid the app store workaround, but the fact there’s a 7-day free trial in the first place is a definite plus.

The 30-day money-back guarantee on all pricing plans is also useful to extend free use to a maximum of 37 days.

NordVPN has one of the largest Australian server networks, with 190 servers spread across 5 Australian cities: Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.

While the server park isn’t as large as ExpressVPN’s, its performance was practically on par in our tests.

Connecting to each server location took a handful of seconds at every attempt, with no sudden slowdowns, connection issues, or extremely annoying CAPTCHAs.

And if you want your own Australian IP, NordVPN offers dedicated VPN IP addresses in Sydney and Melbourne for an extra cost. ExpressVPN’s token-based IPs are considerably more private, but they only cover Sydney.

All of NordVPN’s servers are also diskless, but NordVPN offers something that its main rival doesn’t: Double VPN (or multi-hop).

This special feature tunnels your internet traffic through two different countries for added security. Unfortunately, Australia isn’t currently available as either an entry or exit node.

NordVPN’s unblocking performance in Australia (and generally worldwide) is almost as good as ExpressVPN’s. Here are the full results of our Australian streaming tests:

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
7plus	Yes
9Now	Yes
ABC iView	Yes
Kayo Sports	Yes
Netflix Australia	Yes
SBS On Demand	Yes

After years of testing, NordVPN continues to easily access every single Australian streaming platform on every Australian server.

If you’re connecting out of Australia, NordVPN doesn’t work with quite as many international platforms as ExpressVPN. To be fair, we’re nitpicking since the VPN is still a fantastic choice, especially for watching British TV.

Once thing is for sure: when it comes to watching BBC iPlayer from any country, no VPN does it better.

As with most of NordVPN’s connections around the world, we equally experienced excellent speeds on its Australian servers.

After connecting to Australia from cities like New York, Los Angeles, and London our average speed loss was only 16%, a fraction faster than ExpressVPN.

Connecting to servers around the world told a similar story, with international speeds dipping by just 14% and narrowly outperforming ExpressVPN’s global averages yet again.

NordVPN has developed user-friendly apps for macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, and Android TV.

You can also use the service on up to 10 devices simultaneously, which should be perfectly fine for most people.

Although NordVPN is by no means hard to use, we enjoyed using ExpressVPN more.

NordVPN’s apps, especially on PC and Mac, have features like ‘Threat Protection Pro’ and ‘Dark Web Monitor’ prominently displayed on the home screen, which distract from the main use of the software.

Also, the ‘Pause’ function is pretty frustrating. It adds an unnecessary step when you go to disconnect, forcing you to scroll through multiple timing options just to find the off button.

Considering its impressive Australian performance, NordVPN is good value for money at $3.39/mo over 24 months.

However, it’s more expensive than both ExpressVPN and Surfshark, and its subscription price increases enormously on renewal.

NordVPN’s free trial is also underwhelming, with only three days of free use via the Google Play Store.

In all honesty, we expected a more compelling offering from arguably the most popular VPN on the market.

Just like its higher-ranked competitors, Surfshark also offers IP addresses in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.

Strangely, there are only 40 Surfshark servers in Australia. This is really surprising considering all the network investments the company has made in recent years.

Moreover, connecting to these servers took longer than we expected, especially on mobile. While ExpressVPN changed our IP address almost instantly, Surfshark took over five seconds at times.

On a more positive note, Surfshark’s dynamic multi-hop tool is far more flexible than NordVPN’s. You can pick any country from the server list as your entry or exit node, including Australia.

Surfshark performed almost identically to NordVPN with Australian streaming services, unblocking every single one:

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
7plus	Yes
9Now	Yes
ABC iView	Yes
Kayo Sports	Yes
Netflix Australia	Yes
SBS On Demand	Yes

The only slight nuisance was the very occasional picture degradation during peak traffic.

This is largely due to Surfshark’s slower connection speeds but, in all fairness, it only happened a handful of times across hundreds of streaming tests.

We did get very excited about one specific and very rare feature, though: Surfshark’s ‘Override GPS location’ setting in its Android app.

It allowed us to spoof our GPS location (verified using Google Maps) and bypass location-based app restrictions on Android.

Setup wasn’t that complicated, either, but we still recommend you watch Surfshark’s helpful explainer video.

Thanks to the built-in GPS spoofing setting, we managed to get round Kayo’s GPS restrictions on our Android smartphone without having to download a separate ‘fake GPS’ app.

Surfshark’s long-distance internet speeds really need to improve if it wants to give ExpressVPN and NordVPN a run for their money.

Its average speed drop-off of 21% connecting into Australia isn’t bad, but it’s noticeably worse than its higher-ranked rivals.

The same thing happened connecting to internationally, with internet speeds slowing down by 17% on average.

At least connections remained mostly stable, although during peak hours we did notice a wobble here and there (which explains the slight blurriness we mentioned above).

All of Surfshark’s apps are user-friendly and relatively straightforward to navigate, particularly the mobile ones.

The desktop apps do take a little too much screen space, and you can’t resize them either, which is annoying. They also feel slightly cluttered, with all those extra settings crammed into the home screen.

Just like our VPN picks above, you’ll find apps for Fire Stick and Apple TV, as well as web browser extensions for quick IP changes straight from the browser.

All the apps work almost identically to each other, so you can easily switch from one device to another.

There is no dedicated router app, though, so streaming with Surfshark on your PS5, Xbox or Roku Stick is going to be more challenging and time-consuming than using ExpressVPN.

Surfshark provides excellent value at only $1.99/mo over 27 months. This is even cheaper than ExpressVPN.

If you don’t want to commit to a paid subscription just yet, you can also get a 7-day Surfshark free trial via desktop or mobile.

It’s one of our favorite VPN free trials because, unlike ExpressVPN and NordVPN, you don’t have to use the mobile app store workaround in order to test drive the VPN on your PC or Mac.

The VPN service will also honor its 30-day money-back guarantee on all pricing plans, with a full refund deposited in your account within a few days.

TunnelBear is the only trustworthy free VPN service with an Australia server, allowing you to get a Sydney IP address completely cost-free.

This is very useful to use Australian websites from overseas although, given the size of Australia, a server on the west coast in Perth is very much needed.

This would be undoubtedly better to achieve faster connection speeds if you’re connecting from regions like Europe or Asia.

Here are the results of TunnelBear’s Australian streaming tests:

Australian Streaming Service	TunnelBear Free Unblocks
7plus	Yes
9Now	No
ABC iView	No
Kayo Sports	No
Netflix Australia	No
SBS On Demand	No

Using free VPNs to unblock geo-restricted Australian content platforms is notoriously hard to do, and TunnelBear only confirmed this fact.

Sadly, it was detected and blocked by most Australian streaming services. The only exception was 7plus.

A better solution is to sign up to an ExpressVPN or Surfshark free trial. It isn’t a “free forever” solution, but at least you’ll have seven days of completely free use.

Considering its popularity as a free service, and therefore its large user base, TunnelBear’s speeds on its free Sydney server performed much better than expected!

We were anticipating drastic slowdowns, but instead our speed dropped by only 26% and gave us a normal web experience, with pages and videos loading quickly enough.

Global speeds saw a dip of 15%, which is quite impressive considering the service is completely free.

TunnelBear has some of the most user-friendly VPN apps around, available on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

You can also install it as a browser extension on Chrome and Firefox for even quicker access to a free Australian IP address.

However, TunnelBear’s apps are nowhere near as advanced as ExpressVPN’s or NordVPN’s.

Moreover, there are no bespoke clients for streaming devices like Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, or Android TV. It’s not compatible with routers, either.

In other words, there’s no way easy way to use TunnelBear on anything other than your computer or smartphone.

TunnelBear’s free VPN requires no account or credit card details for you to use it. It makes getting a free Australian IP address easy and privacy-friendly at the same time.

The downsides are substantial, though, especially the free monthly data restriction of 2GB. This is one of the most restrictive data allowances of any (safe) free VPN.

For context, Windscribe and PrivadoVPN both offer 10GB of free bandwidth each month. The problem is they don’t offer free Australian IP addresses.