Fastest VPN for 2020

In order for a VPN service to be fast, a well-maintained server network is essential.

This doesn’t just mean coverage in a range of countries around the world, but it also needs loads of individual servers to choose from. If the pool of IP addresses is too small, then more users will be using them at one time, massively eating into your bandwidth.

It’s not enough just to be fast, either – we only want to see VPNs that don’t discriminate against activities like streaming or torrenting.

There are plenty of VPN services out there guilty of ‘throttling’: it’s used to prevent one user from monopolizing the traffic of a single VPN server – as the name suggests, it chokes the life out of your download speed.

Don’t forget, though – a VPN won’t make your internet faster. If your computer or smartphone only delivers 10Mbps without a VPN, it won’t magically increase with one.

There are several different ways you can choose the fastest VPN server from your chosen VPN service.

1. Choose the closest server to you

   The best way to get the fastest VPN speeds is to choose a server as close as possible to your physical location.

   If you absolutely need to connect to another country (like if you want to watch a different Netflix library or game on a different server) make sure it’s the closest server available.

   For example, users in Europe looking to stream US content should connect to a server on the East Coast, such as New York or Boston.

2. Select a server with low latency

   Latency (or ping time) is very closely linked to how far you are from your chosen VPN server. It is a measurement of how long it takes for a server to send and receive data requests to and from your device.

   A lot of VPN apps will allow you to check which server locations offer the lowest latency (this is normally measured in milliseconds).

3. Check the server load

   There’s a handful of VPN services that also allow you to see the current load of all their VPN server locations – this is usually displayed as a percentage.

   The higher the percentage load, the busier the server is, meaning speeds will be much slower. Servers tend to be busier if you’re connecting at a peak time, such as in the evening.

4. Try different VPN protocols

   We advise users to always connect via OpenVPN if possible, as this protocol provides the best balance of speed and security.

   IKEv2, however, could be slightly quicker for you, especially if you’re connecting using a mobile data connection. PPTP is generally regarded as the fastest protocol, but this has several known security flaws so we’d recommend avoiding it in most cases.

As a rule, free VPN services generally aren’t as fast as premium VPNs, but there are a handful that still provide decent speeds.

Our current fastest free VPN is Hide.me, but the free versions of Windscribe and ProtonVPN are pretty quick too.

The problem with free VPN services, however, is that even if they are quick, they often come with severe limitations, such as bandwidth caps and smaller server networks.

If you want a truly fast VPN experience, you’re should pay for a premium service – you won’t regret it.

We’d strongly advise against choosing a VPN service just because it’s fast. Speed is an important factor, but security is always our number one priority – we would never recommend you an unsafe VPN, no matter how fast.

For the most part, though, our top-performing VPNs are secure as well as being speedy, so you don’t have much to worry about.

You should always check the privacy features before you commit to a paid VPN subscription, though. Things to look out for include:

1. Encryption and VPN protocol

   For a VPN service to be secure, it should be using AES-256 encryption. This is almost impossible to hack and will ensure your personal information is protected.

   Our preferred protocol is OpenVPN, but IKEv2 is almost as secure if that’s your only option. Avoid PPTP at all costs, as this is an outdated connection protocol with known flaws.

2. Privacy-friendly logging policy

   To ensure your confidential data remains safe, you should only sign up for a VPN that doesn’t collect any information that could be used to personally identify you, such as your IP address.

   If you can’t easily locate a VPN’s privacy policy, or don’t understand what it collects, do not risk using it. There are too many good options out there for you to be taking risks.

3. Extra security features

   Extra features such as a VPN kill switch will help to keep you safe online by protecting you should the VPN connection drop for any reason.

   Most VPN services also have built-in protection against DNS and IP leaks, which is essential to ensure your true IP address is undetectable.

All VPN services will slow down your internet speed, no matter how good they are.

The way VPNs work means that your internet traffic is routed through a server that could be hundreds of miles away from where you’re actually located, increasing the amount of time it takes for data to be transmitted.

When you see the figures we report from our speed testing, you must bear in mind that we test on a 100Mbps business broadband connection. If you have a 100Mbps connection in your home then you can expect numbers that are very similar – but if you have one that’s slower then you’ll need to adjust the figures accordingly.

Thankfully, all of the VPNs we recommend here will only reduce your speeds by a negligible amount, especially if you make sure to connect to a nearby server.

There’s not a specific country you can connect to for the fastest VPN speeds – your best bet is to connect to a server as close as possible to your true physical location.

If your chosen VPN service only has a handful of servers located close to you, though, it’s likely that speeds will suffer. This usually applies to people located in South America, Africa and some parts of Asia.

If you choose a VPN service that uses OpenVPN, chances are you’ll have the option of connecting via UDP or TCP.

Usually, USP is used for streaming and gaming, while TCP is for general browsing and downloading. While UDP has long been considered to be faster, this is more of a guideline than a hard-and-fast rule.

The only reason that TCP is slightly slower is because it uses error protection and guaranteed delivery, ensuring that each data packet is sent in the correct order. UDP doesn’t have these protections as its emphasis is on speed, rather than being perfect.

This doesn’t make UDP less secure, though, so it’s nothing to worry about.

Long story short, if you’re mainly going to be using your VPN for gaming, streaming video, or listening to music, you should use UDP. For anything else, TCP will do the job just fine.

You can read more about VPN connection protocols in our handy encryption guide.

There is not a single VPN service in the world that will make your internet speeds any faster, no matter what you’re doing online. If you find a VPN that claims to do this, avoid it at all costs.

As we explained above, even the best VPN services will reduce your speeds, even if it’s almost unnoticeable. If you stick to one of our recommendations, though, you’ll most likely barely be able to tell the difference, whether you’re streaming or torrenting.

There is one exception to this, though: throttling. Every ISP monitors the data transferred over its network (often referred to as packet inspection). Some unscrupulous ISPs are set up so that data determined to be streaming content is deliberately slowed (or ‘throttled’).

Using a VPN will mask this data, meaning that in some rare cases it will actually improve the speed of your streaming – but only if your ISP is slowing it in the first place.

Using a VPN service to keep yourself safe online is 100% legal in almost every country.

Using a VPN, however, does not mean you’re exempt from laws. This includes copyright laws, so we’d always advise against doing anything illegal while connected to one.

However, there are a handful of countries where VPNs are banned outright or restricted in some way.

You can view the ten countries with the harshest VPN restrictions, below.

Country	VPN Status	Social Media Blocks	Censorship	Surveillance
Belarus	Illegal	Moderate	Extensive	Extensive
China	Restricted	Extensive	Extensive	Extensive
Iran	Restricted	Moderate	Extensive	Extensive
Iraq	Illegal	Moderate	Moderate	Minor
North Korea	Illegal	Extensive	Extensive	Extensive
Oman	Restricted	Minor	Extensive	Moderate
Russia	Restricted	Moderate	Extensive	Moderate
Turkey	Restricted	Moderate	Extensive	Extensive
Turkmenistan	Illegal	Extensive	Extensive	Extensive
UAE	Restricted	Moderate	Extensive	Moderate

 

Take a look at our in-depth guide ‘Are VPNs Legal?’ for more information on VPN restrictions and potential repercussions if you’re caught using one.

We’ve also rounded up our Best VPN Services for China — we usually advise that if a VPN works well in China, it will also do very well in other high-censorship countries like those listed above.

In the same way that a VPN won’t make your device any faster, it also won’t reduce your ping time.

Ping (or latency) is the amount of time it takes for a packet of data to travel from one point in a network to another. This means that the closer you are to a server, the lower ping time will be.

This means that if you connect to a VPN that’s located anywhere other than the same city as you, your ping will increase, as your data is having to travel further before it reaches its destination.

Your ISP or throttling play no part here – your ping will simply always increase when using a VPN.

If you’re planning on using a VPN service for gaming or any other latency-sensitive tasks, make sure you choose one with city-level choice in your country, as this will reduce the impact on your ping time and keep it as snappy as possible.