The Best VPNs for Germany

NordVPN’s 232 German servers are spread across 3 cities: Berlin, Frankfurt, or Hamburg. This conveniently covers the North, West, and East of the country.

NordVPN’s apps are well-designed and effective at bypassing German geo-restrictions.

This isn’t the largest German server network on the market, and we’ve also noticed that the number of German servers it runs changes frequently.

That said, it’s still extensive enough to provide fast and stable connections into Germany. In fact, we’ve never experienced any server overloads or inconsistent connections during our tests.

Moreover, you can use NordVPN’s web browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox to get a German IP address within your browser window. This is faster than opening the app.

As part of our tests, we had to verify how many popular German content platforms it could unblock from abroad. Here are the results:

We were delighted to see NordVPN’s servers successfully unblock every German streaming service, except for DAZN.

Impressively, every German server worked smoothly, making it extremely easy to stream Germany-only content from abroad.

We were able to stream in ultra-high definition without any noticeable loss in frame rate or quality.

That’s mostly due to NordVPN’s formidable speeds connecting into Germany. During our speed tests connecting into Germany, we averaged an impressive 92Mbps – a mere 8% speed reduction from our standard internet speed.

Keep in mind that NordVPN’s Smart DNS is incompatible with German streaming services, and its browser extensions don’t offer the same unblocking capabilities as the full VPN.

NordVPN is available on all popular devices and platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, as well as Fire TV Stick and Apple TV.

All the apps are easy to install, visually pleasing, and easy to navigate. You can also have the VPN running on up to 10 devices at once.

But there are some minor issues, like not being able to manually resize the desktop apps. There are also many advanced settings that beginners may never use because they’re not labeled or explained properly.

In our opinion NordVPN represents excellent value at $2.99/mo over 27 months.

Watch out, though, since the subscription cost increases after the initial subscription period. From very affordable, NordVPN then becomes one of the more expensive VPNs on the market.

You also have the option to sign up for a seven-day free trial via an Android device, and which you can then use on other devices.

Better yet, you can take advantage of NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee to essentially use the VPN risk-free. Your payment method will be initially charged, though.

CyberGhost has more servers in Germany than any other VPN: 1,300 servers across 3 cities, including Berlin, Frankfurt, and Düsseldorf.

With so many servers in Germany, it’s rare to see CyberGhost’s server load go over 70%. Keeping the congestion low means there is less chance of running into CAPTCHAs, or your VPN being detected by German content platforms.

Just like we did with NordVPN, we tested CyberGhost with popular Germany streaming services and we found that it could unblock 5 out of the 8 German streaming services we tested it with. Here are the full results:

Unfortunately, CyberGhost was detected by DAZN, RTL+ and Sky Deutschland, which broadcast most of the sporting events in Germany.

At least it worked well with services like Joyn, Netflix, and DMAX.

It’s also the only VPN with a Smart DNS feature that can access German websites and apps. You can configure it to a German geolocation and maintain access to a German IP address without ever having to use the VPN software.

Connecting to Germany from outside the country, we recorded an average internet speed of (85Mbps, equal to a speed loss of 15%. This is a substantially inferior performance than NordVPN, although we were still able to stream at very high resolutions.

CyberGhost is compatible with most popular platforms, including Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and streaming devices like Fire TV Stick. However, there is still no Apple TV app.

While the apps are user-friendly, we’ve encountered connection bugs and responsiveness issues, forcing us to restart the app a few times. The Mac app is particularly temperamental.

The browser extensions are outdated in design and offer access to only 4 server locations. They are free to use, though, and Germany is included so you can effectively get a free German IP address through them.

As one of the most budget-friendly VPNs there is, CyberGhost provides excellent value at just $2.03/mo over 28 months.

There are also several VPN free trials for you to enjoy, including a completely free 24-hour option available on PC and Mac.

For extended use, CyberGhost features a 45-day money-back guarantee, one of the longest refund periods offered by any VPN company.

You can get a German IP address by connecting to either of Windscribe’s 2 free German servers. Both are based in Frankfurt, but The ‘Frankfurt – Wurstchen’ server is a 10Gbps server, with greater bandwidth and faster speeds.

No other free VPN offers this many servers in Germany. But we’d still like to see more city options made available, so that servers are spread more evenly across the country.

Here are the results of our unblocking tests using the free version of Windscribe:

Windscribe successfully unblocked all geo-restricted German streaming sites we tested, including Netflix Germany, Joyn, RTL+, and DAZN Germany.

It is the only VPN to achieve a 100% success rate at bypassing German geo-blocks, even beating NordVPN.

However, Windscribe’s 10GB data cap limits your streaming experience to approximately 4 hours of Full HD content, which severely handicaps its effectiveness.

Speed wise, our tests measured an average loss of 20% connecting to Germany from the USthe fastest speeds of any free VPN connecting into Germany.

However, this speed performance is still inferior to many VPNs, including the premium version of Windscribe. As a result, we did occasionally experience poor picture quality and low FPS when streaming from German sites.

Windscribe’s free apps are easy to use thanks to an intuitive interface, despite being packed with additional settings.

The range of extra settings is extraordinary for a free product: multi-hop servers, split-tunneling, ad blocker, and even a GPS spoofer. Every setting is clearly labeled so that you know what it does.

Windscribe has developed native apps for macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Fire TV, and Apple TV, as well as its completely free Chrome and Firefox extensions.

And due to its unlimited device policy, you can have the VPN running on as many devices as you want at the same time.

PrivadoVPN operates a small server network in Germany, with only one free server location available: Frankfurt. It’s clearly a very limited offering, but then again this is expected from a free service.

What’s less expected, however, is PrivadoVPN’s requirement to manually renew your free data each month through your online account.

No other free VPN requires this manual reset, which we find tedious and quite frankly unnecessary.

Below are the latest results of our streaming tests using PrivadoVPN:

Our results prove that PrivadoVPN is good at accessing free-to-air German TV services like ARD, RTL+, Joyn, and ZDF. However, subscription services like DAZN and Netflix continue to block PrivadoVPN’s connections.

PrivadoVPN does excel when it comes to speed, with a 93Mbps speed into Germany and a marginal loss of 7%.

These speeds are better than Windscribe’s and resulted in high definition streams on those content platforms we were able to unblock.

PrivadoVPN’s free app offering is very similar to Windcribe’s. The only differences are that the apps have much fewer advanced features, and there are no browser extensions available as of yet.

There are no multi-hop, split-tunneling or ad blocker features available with PrivadoVPN. It’s a rather bare-boned VPN that focuses on the essentials, which it does well.