The Best VPNs for Canada

NordVPN runs 350 servers in Canada, one of the largest Canadian networks on the market. Only Private Internet Access has more.

The exact count varies from month to month, but it hasn’t dropped below the 300 mark in any of my recent checks.

That gets you anonymous IP addresses from Montreal (Quebec), Toronto (Ontario), and Vancouver (British Columbia).

All of those servers are RAM-based (diskless), so with no hard drives in use, none of your data is written to disk. Any usage data sits in temporary memory instead and is wiped 15 minutes after each session.

Combine that with NordVPN’s logging policy, independently verified by Deloitte, and there’s no meaningful record of your browsing for anyone to hand over.

NordVPN does collect a small amount of non-identifying account data, which is why PIA still edges it on my privacy score, but nothing it keeps ties your activity back to you.

Outside Canada, NordVPN’s network spreads across a further 136 countries, with excellent speeds and reliability throughout.

So if you want to get a British, Australian, or US VPN IP address, NordVPN is one of the best in the business.

Thanks to its phenomenal speeds, I find streaming with NordVPN far more enjoyable than with most other VPNs.

Videos, both live and on demand, played quickly and without buffering in every session I ran.

Connecting from New York to Vancouver, internet speeds dipped by only 3%: the best long-haul result into Canada I recorded from any VPN.

Once I factored in far-flung locations like Australia and South Africa, the average speed slowdown settled at roughly 14%. Very few VPNs can match, let alone beat, this performance.

I tested NordVPN with the most popular Canadian streaming services, and these are the results:

Table showing popular Canadian streaming services NordVPN unblocks.

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
CBC Gem	Yes
Crave	Yes
CTV	Yes
DAZN Canada	Yes
Fubo Canada	Yes
Netflix Canada	Yes
Sportsnet+	Yes
TSN	Yes
TVA+	Yes

As you can see, NordVPN delivered flawless results, unblocking every geo-restricted Canadian platform on my list.

The same held true elsewhere in the world: it also worked with a further 16 Netflix regions, Disney+, HBO Max, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer, and many more popular services.

Speed and unblocking are only half the story, and NordVPN is just as convincing on the security side.

If you’re in Canada and concerned about your online privacy, NordVPN is a great option for greater protection.

Between its non-intrusive logging policy and its excellent record of keeping your real IP address concealed, the VPN substantially limits what ISPs and government agencies can collect about you.

NordVPN also meets my strict security expectations. Via its NordLynx protocol, it secures connections using ChaCha20 encryption, and it regularly passes third-party security audits.

When I inspected my own traffic in Wireshark, everything leaving my machine was properly encrypted: no readable packets, no leaks.

NordLynx also protects your connections from “Store Now, Decrypt Later” (SNDL) attacks through post-quantum cryptography (PQC).

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned user, I find NordVPN’s apps enjoyable to use, especially on smartphones and tablets.

If you want to stream geo-blocked content on large-screen devices, there are VPN apps for Apple TV, Android TV, and Fire TV Stick. I’ve had no trouble with any of them.

Truth be told, I don’t love the design of NordVPN’s desktop apps, although they have improved a lot with recent updates.

The server map, for example, takes up less screen space than before, while Threat Protection (the ad and malware blocker) and Dark Web monitor now appear below core VPN functions.

These are all good improvements, although the home screen remains pretty large and, unlike ExpressVPN’s UI, it can’t be reduced.

One small gap I need to mention: unlike ExpressVPN, NordVPN doesn’t sell a dedicated router with its own app, which is a genuine convenience for game consoles and Roku sticks.

While you can still cover those devices by manually configuring NordVPN on your home router, this takes more effort than ExpressVPN’s plug-in-and-go alternative.

ExpressVPN is the only VPN I’d describe as almost plug-and-play.

The apps are so well designed and intuitive that changing your IP address is child’s play.

The UI is pretty much identical across every platform, with the home screen built around a large connect button, flanked by shortcuts to the full server list, your last location, and the nearest (fastest) server.

Unlike NordVPN’s apps, ExpressVPN doesn’t push its extra features and add-ons in front of your face. Everything secondary stays a tap away.

Its device compatibility is unrivaled, too, with apps for all popular devices and its own VPN router, which comes with a dedicated app that lets you assign different IPs to different devices on your home network.

The router is called Aircove, and it costs extra, but I’ve found it makes life far easier with devices that don’t support VPN apps natively, like game consoles and Roku sticks.

Just like NordVPN, ExpressVPN gives you access to anonymous IP addresses from Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

The key difference is that its servers connect faster than any other VPN I’ve tested, NordVPN included.

In my tests, my IP address had switched to a Canadian one in just under three seconds, while NordVPN’s apps consistently took over five.

Security-wise, ExpressVPN’s servers match NordVPN’s, using RAM to instantly destroy any VPN session data.

They also run ShuffleIP in the background, a technology that changes your IP address (but not your location) every time you use a website or app.

You’ll find all these protections in use throughout ExpressVPN’s network of 13,360 servers spread across 113 countries.

Globally, no VPN can match ExpressVPN’s ability to bypass streaming geo-restrictions.

It remains one of my go-to VPN picks for India, Australia, the UK, and the US.

If you want to use a VPN to unblock Netflix, HBO Max, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer, Kayo Sports, and the like, you can’t go wrong here.

On Netflix in particular, I was able to access geo-locked content in 18 different regions, including the US, the UK, India, and Korea.

Canada is the one place where that dominance slips. ExpressVPN worked smoothly with most platforms, but not all. NordVPN beat it here, which doesn’t happen often.

Here are the results of my streaming tests:

Table showing how ExpressVPN performed with popular Canadian content platforms.

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
CBC Gem	Yes
Crave	Yes
CTV	Yes
DAZN Canada	Yes
Fubo Canada	Sometimes
Netflix Canada	Yes
Sportsnet+	Sometimes
TSN	Yes
TVA+	Yes

As the table shows, ExpressVPN bypassed most Canadian content geo-blocks, with videos loading instantly and streaming at the highest possible resolution.

The only blemish to an otherwise excellent performance was the occasional VPN block from Fubo and Sportsnet+, which meant reconnecting to a different Canadian server before I could watch.

ExpressVPN and NordVPN were neck-and-neck on speed, too. Neither will meaningfully dent your connection, and there were moments when I had to check the app to confirm the VPN was actually on.

Connecting to nearby servers, ExpressVPN is even slightly faster than NordVPN, with a fantastic 2% slowdown compared to its rival’s 4%.

The order flips over long distances: connecting into Canada from outside the country, ExpressVPN’s speed loss was 5%, a little behind NordVPN’s 3%, but an outstanding result nonetheless.

Windscribe runs the largest free VPN server network in Canada, with endpoints located in Montreal (Quebec), Toronto (Ontario), and Vancouver (British Columbia).

It covers just as many cities as NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and PIA, but with a fraction of the servers behind each one, so the odds of hitting an overloaded server are much higher.

That’s exactly what I experienced. Windscribe was very fast at times, but the connection was unstable, fluctuating from one session to the next.

At its best, my speed into Canada dipped by only 6%. At its worst, it dropped enough to knock the sharpness out of my stream, which is why I rate PrivadoVPN as the more consistent free VPN.

The wobbles were most acute during high-traffic sporting events, most noticeably when I was watching blackout NFL games on DAZN Canada.

I tested Windscribe’s free VPN with the popular Canadian streaming services, and here are the results:

Table showing popular Canadian streaming services Windscribe unblocks.

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
CBC Gem	Yes
Crave	No
CTV	Yes
DAZN Canada	Yes
Fubo Canada	Yes
Netflix Canada	No
Sportsnet+	No
TSN	No
TVA+	Yes

Windscribe unblocked five of the nine platforms I tested. That’s a better hit rate than any other free VPN, and I can safely say it’s by far the best free VPN for watching DAZN Canada and Fubo.

As those results show, though, it wasn’t smooth sailing across the board, with Crave, TSN, Sportsnet+, and Netflix Canada all blocking me.

Given how well Windscribe handles American streaming services, I’d hoped for a repeat performance in Canada, but it’s hard to be too critical of a service that costs nothing.

Where Windscribe is beyond reproach is privacy, and that’s the main reason it tops my free rankings for Canada.

Let me be clear: Windscribe does log more data than my absolute best picks, including bandwidth usage, but I’m still comfortable recommending it because none of the data collected can be linked back to you.

From a security standpoint, Windscribe uses best-in-class ChaCha20 encryption and the industry’s VPN protocol of choice, WireGuard.

I’ve repeatedly inspected Windscribe’s traffic in Wireshark, and my data transfers have always come back properly encrypted.

You’ll find the same security and privacy standards across all of the VPN’s free apps for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, and Linux.

The free Chrome and Firefox extensions are worth shouting about, too. They bundle in useful extras like an ad and tracker blocker, plus user agent and time zone spoofing.

PrivadoVPN’s free servers in Montreal delivered the most dependable speeds I’ve seen from a free VPN for Canada.

Whether I connected to a nearby location or one on the other side of the world, performance held up.

Speed fell by just 8% connecting into Canada from abroad, and 3% within Canada. These numbers barely moved across repeat tests.

Those figures speak for themselves, with PrivadoVPN’s free service giving top-tier VPNs like NordVPN and ExpressVPN a run for their money speed-wise.

Offering just one location in Canada is very limiting, though, and it does make you wonder how long a single Montreal cluster can keep performing at this level as the company’s user base grows.

Alongside those speeds, PrivadoVPN properly secures your web traffic: AES-256 encryption on OpenVPN and IKEv2, and ChaCha20 when you use WireGuard, which is the protocol I’d recommend sticking with.

Combine that with a kill switch that held firm in my leak tests, and it’s a genuine option for torrenting with a free VPN.

Privacy is where it trails Windscribe, though. PrivadoVPN logs some connection data that doesn’t identify you personally, but is more than I’d like to see and enough for its privacy rating to sit below Windscribe’s.

PrivadoVPN also needs to expand a fairly scarce range of privacy and security settings, and to open up its browser extensions, which are currently reserved for paying customers.

Unblocking Canadian geo-restricted content with PrivadoVPN is a mixed bag.

It performed well with free-to-air services, like CBC Gem and TVA+, but struggled against Canadian content on Crave, DAZN, and Netflix.

The root cause is that PrivadoVPN doesn’t refresh its free Canadian IPs often enough, so the more sophisticated VPN detection systems have already flagged them.

Having a single Canadian server location, in Montreal, doesn’t help either.

At least everything I could access streamed in full high definition, thanks to those outstanding speeds.

Internationally, PrivadoVPN’s free tier works with US Netflix as well as several other US platforms, including Peacock, HBO Max, and Hulu.