The Best VPNs for Canada

Surfshark’s 170 servers in Canada performed reasonably well, and it came very close to making my rankings.

In the end, it was a touch slower than NordVPN and ExpressVPN over long distances, with a 17% drop connecting further afield.

I also noticed the mobile app takes noticeably longer to connect. It isn’t a deal-breaker, but it’s an irritation when you’re on the go and want to secure your connection quickly.

Mullvad is an extremely reputable and security-focused VPN service, but its performance connecting to Canada disappointed me.

It operates 30 servers in Canada, spread across Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. That’s one more city than any of my picks, but the big problem is that it rarely side-stepped Canadian geo-blocks.

It was the same story around the world, with Mullvad rarely working with a streaming service. The lack of a Fire TV app or Smart DNS proxy makes watching on your TV harder, too.

IPVanish is a fast and trustworthy VPN that delivered excellent results in my privacy and security tests.

Compared to its US and UK networks, though, it hasn’t invested nearly as much in Canada, and the smaller network is noticeably less reliable.

The consequence is sub-par access to some of Canada’s popular sports platforms, including DAZN and Fubo.

It also lacks the device compatibility that ExpressVPN and NordVPN offer: there’s no Smart DNS proxy for changing regions on game consoles, and no Chrome extension either.

PIA runs a very large VPN network in Canada, and at $2.03/mo over 28 months it’s far cheaper than NordVPN and ExpressVPN.

What cost it a place on my list is streaming. In my recent tests, it failed to unblock US and UK Netflix, Crave, and Canadian content on DAZN and Fubo.

If you’re outside Canada, a top-tier VPN will get you into the country’s geo-blocked streaming services and websites.

CBC Gem, for example, offers excellent TV shows and movies for free, but only to Canadian IP addresses.

The same goes for subscription services like Crave, DAZN, and Netflix, which all host content unique to Canada.

The benefit runs in the other direction, too. If you’re in Canada, a VPN helps you get around local restrictions: foreign gambling websites, for instance, are often blocked in certain provinces.

In Quebec, Bill 74 allows the state-sanctioned gambling monopoly to ask ISPs to block foreign gambling domains.

Gambling sites like Bet365 can be blocked in Canada.

And if you want international content that isn’t available in Canada at all, a VPN is the easiest way to unblock titles on platforms like Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix, and Prime Video.

Canada isn’t a surveillance state, and I won’t pretend otherwise just to sell you a VPN. But its privacy protections are thinner than most Canadians realize, and they could soon get a lot thinner.

For instance, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s signals intelligence agency, isn’t allowed to target Canadians, but it still collects their data incidentally while spying abroad.

The CSE’s own watchdog even found it may have broken privacy laws when sharing that information, and it works hand in glove with its Five Eyes partners, the US included.

Canadian ISPs have obligations, too. If a rights holder flags your IP address in a copyright complaint, your provider must keep records that identify you for six months, or a year if the case goes to court.

Neither is a reason to panic. Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, might be. It has already cleared the House of Commons, and the Senate is studying it now.

If it passes, major telecoms could be forced to keep metadata on all their customers, including location data, for months at a time. Service providers could also be ordered to build in access for police.

Ottawa says it needs these powers to keep up with digital crime, but blanket retention of everyone’s metadata worries me.

This is exactly where a VPN earns its keep. It won’t put you above the law, but it limits what there is to collect: Bell, Rogers, and TELUS only see that you’ve connected to a VPN server, not the sites and apps you use.

Products and services often cost more depending on where you are, and regional pricing (or price discrimination) can hit Canadians hard.

By changing your VPN location to another country, you can sometimes pay meaningfully less than you would at home.

I’ve done it myself: using a VPN I subscribed to a much cheaper Netflix plan by getting a Ukrainian IP address.

It doesn’t work every time, and results vary from service to service, but it costs nothing to try. The saving I made on Netflix was well worth the five minutes it took.

We examined the total number of servers each VPN operates, and how widely they’re spread across the globe.

A large, well-distributed network means you’re more likely to find a fast and reliable server near you.

It also improves your chances of unblocking your favorite geo-restricted content around the world.

The very best VPNs provide servers in over 100 countries, with wide coverage across all major regions (not just in North America and Western Europe).

To access geo-blocked Canadian content from abroad, you need a Canadian IP address, and the more servers a VPN offers, the better its performance is likely to be.

More Canadian servers usually equals faster speeds within Canada, too. The shorter the distance your data travels, the quicker the connection.

I evaluated the number and quality of Canadian servers in each network, including how many city locations and provinces are covered. I then used an IP address finder tool to check IP location accuracy.

From the best VPNs, I always expect to see hundreds of fast servers spread across multiple Canadian cities.

Fast speeds keep pages loading smoothly and streams buffer-free, wherever you are.

As a team, we regularly run in-house speed tests to measure each VPN’s download speed connecting both to and from Canada.

I always expect no more than a 10% speed loss on nearby server locations, and no more than 20% connecting to distant countries.

VPNs open up Canadian and international content platforms from anywhere, though plenty of them get detected and blocked.

I hand-tested each VPN against a selection of popular Canadian and international streaming services, including CBC Gem, Crave, CTV, DAZN, Disney+, HBO Max, Netflix, Prime Video, Sportsnet+, and TSN.

The more services a VPN unblocks around the world, the higher its rating.

Many Canadians use a VPN to protect themselves from intrusive government surveillance and corporate data collection. To reflect that, I reviewed each VPN’s logging policy against my in-house standards, separating the services that offer solid privacy protection from those that don’t.

I analyzed the type of data each VPN logs, assessed each company’s track record and ownership to gauge its trustworthiness, and examined any independent audits, court cases, and responses to data requests that put its privacy claims to the test.

On the technical side, I ran regular IP leak tests to confirm a VPN won’t expose your real IP address, and checked that a kill switch is present and working as intended.

A secure VPN adds a layer of encryption to your internet traffic, making it much harder for bad actors to intercept and manipulate the data you send over insecure WiFi networks.

I carried out network traffic analysis, with tools like Wireshark, to confirm that data traveling through a VPN is properly encrypted, and I checked for industry-approved protocols such as WireGuard.