The Best VPNs for Germany

You can use ExpressVPN to change your online location and access streaming services like HBO Max, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+.

It also provides consistent access to 18 libraries including the US, UK, and Canada, which are huge content catalogs.

As part of our research, we tested ExpressVPN with all of Germany’s most popular streaming services. Here are the results:

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
3sat-Mediathek	Yes
ARD Mediathek	Yes
DAZN Germany	Yes
DMAX	Yes
Joyn	Yes
Netflix Germany	Yes
RTL+	Yes
Sky Deutschland	Yes
ZDF	Yes

The VPN accessed every single German streaming service with a 100% success rate. Every attempt resulted in immediate access, with videos loading quickly and consistently at the highest possible resolution.

ExpressVPN’s server network in Germany was once nothing to write home about but, following an overhaul, it’s one of the best in the business.

The recent addition of a Berlin server location, alongside existing options in Frankfurt and Nuremberg, means it finally matches the coverage of NordVPN and CyberGhost.

We’re also pleased to see ExpressVPN expand its number of German endpoints to 400+. This improves your internet speed by reducing server congestion, and provides more options to cycle through should a streaming service detect your VPN IP.

Connecting to one of ExpressVPN’s German servers took less than 3 seconds, which is faster than all other VPNs we’ve reviewed, including NordVPN.

Whether you’re travelling to or from Germany, ExpressVPN’s ‘set and forget’ approach makes it an ideal choice.

The home screen is clutter-free and simple to use. For the smoothest experience, just click ‘Smart Location’ to be automatically connected to your fastest server and ExpressVPN will handle the rest.

The exceptional usability of ExpressVPN’s apps is its secret weapon, providing a uniform and intuitive experience across every device, including computers, smartphones, Fire TV Stick and Apple TV.

While there are no German TV dedicated streaming servers, every German server we tested connected instantly and worked perfectly, eliminating any need for dedicated options.

You can use NordVPN to connect to IP addresses from 127 countries, including servers in all 50 US states.

We connected to a New York server while staying in Berlin, to make sure our banking app wouldn’t detect we were overseas.

If you need a German IP address, NordVPN’s 425 German servers are spread across 3 cities: Berlin, Frankfurt, or Hamburg. This conveniently covers the North, West, and East of the country.

While it isn’t the largest German server network available, it’s still extensive enough to provide extremely fast and stable connections into Germany.

In fact, over thousands of tests connecting into Germany, our internet speed slowed down by only 8% compared to ExpressVPN’s 13%.

Second only to ExpressVPN, NordVPN outperforms every other VPN for streaming.

Using it, you can unblock 17 Netflix libraries from anywhere in the world.

The best part is that the VPN automatically assigns you a server that works first time with US Netflix, a feat no other VPN can match.

Another pattern we noticed across months of day-to-day use is NordVPN’s high success rate with UK platforms. If you want to stream BBC iPlayer, Sky Go, or ITVX, NordVPN works every single time.

For German content specifically, we tested NordVPN with the most popular streaming services and recorded our results:

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
3sat-Mediathek	Yes
ARD Mediathek	Yes
DAZN Germany	No
DMAX	Yes
Joyn	Yes
Netflix Germany	Yes
RTL+	Yes
Sky Deutschland	Yes
ZDF	Yes

We were delighted to see NordVPN successfully unblock so many German streaming services. It’s a shame it couldn’t work with DAZN’s German content, though.

Every German server worked smoothly, with videos loading quickly and streaming in high definition, without any noticeable loss in frame rate or quality.

NordVPN includes two advanced features in its base subscription for staying secure while travelling: auto-connect and Meshnet.

Once enabled, auto-connect activates your VPN connection as soon as you launch the app. To conserve battery, you can customize this feature so that it only connects on public WiFi.

We found this essential in Germany, given the high density of public WiFi hotspots in every city.

Another useful feature while abroad is Meshnet. This is completely free to use (you don’t need a NordVPN subscription) and lets you remotely connect to a device as if you were in the same household.

This is a secure and cost-free way to continue accessing your home IP address, as long as the device you connect to also has Meshnet installed. While in Germany, we used Meshnet to bypass Netflix’s password sharing ban and continue accessing our account.

Surfshark includes several features, at no extra cost, for keeping you safe on public WiFi networks in Germany.

By activating ‘Auto-connect’ in the VPN settings, Surfshark will connect to your nearest VPN server until you’re within range of a trusted WiFi network (i.e. your home broadband).

This feature is a real lifesaver in Germany as it means you don’t have to constantly worry about whether or not you’re connected to the VPN, especially when in an airport or a U-Bahn station.

In Surfshark’s mobile apps, there’s also an option to add cellular data networks to avoid draining your phone battery from a 24/7 VPN connection.

The VPN also includes a rotating IP feature which changes your IP address every five minutes, making it harder to profile you. We really appreciated this extra layer of privacy when using open WiFi networks like Freifunk.

With servers in 100 countries, Surfshark is an obvious contender for accessing geo-blocked content: whether that’s streaming or otherwise.

We used it to unblock 10 Netflix libraries, including the German and American catalogs.

In all honesty, there are very few streaming services it doesn’t work with. It even works with harder-to-unblock platforms like Peacock, Paramount+, and BBC iPlayer.

Despite only providing two server locations in Germany (Frankfurt and Berlin), Surfshark works to unblock Joyn, RTL+, ZDF, Sat 1, WOW, and DAZN Germany.

Unlike ExpressVPN or NordVPN, you can use Surfshark on as many devices as you want.

We found this really useful in our Frankfurt hotel as it meant we could connect our iPhone, iPad, and laptop without having to worry about hitting a limit.

We also felt better about plugging our Firestick into the hotel room TV, knowing that Surfshark was encrypting our connection.

It won’t threaten to terminate your account if you share your credentials with a travel partner either.

While we installed the app seamlessly on our mobile, it often took ages to connect to a server. It’s not a big deal, but it’s frustrating when you’re in a rush or switching between WiFi and cellular networks.

CyberGhost has more servers in Germany than any other VPN: 1,300 servers across 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.

Despite such a large amount of German servers, we were slightly disappointed with the speeds they produced.

A speed reduction of 15% is not the end of the world, but it certainly pales in comparison to the performance of NordVPN.

Beyond Germany, CyberGhost provides servers in 100 countries. This is excellent coverage and keeps the pace with the very best VPNs.

CyberGhost unblocks many popular streaming services from across the globe, including US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and HBO Max.

Despite this, it can’t match the performance of the ‘big 3’ streaming VPNs: ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and Surfshark.

It struggled with many European distributors, such as Canale 5 (Italy) and RTVE Play (Spain).

Crucially, this inconsistency extends to Germany’s main streaming services. Here are the results:

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
3sat-Mediathek	Yes
ARD Mediathek	Yes
DAZN Germany	No
DMAX	Yes
Joyn	Yes
Netflix Germany	Yes
RTL+	No
Sky Deutschland	Yes
ZDF	Yes

As shown above, CyberGhost didn’t perform badly, but its German IP addresses were detected and blocked by DAZN and RTL+.

It accessed all other platforms without issue, although JOYN required us to switch to the ‘DE Android TV‘ server.

Also, due to the VPN’s slower download speeds, our stream did go blurry on rare occasions, but certainly not as much as using a free VPN like Windscribe.

CyberGhost apps are very easy to start using. Combined with its generous free trials, this makes it a natural choice if you want to try out a VPN for the first time.

While user-friendly, we’ve encountered connection bugs and responsiveness issues, forcing us to restart the app a few times.

Its Android app, in particular, takes a long time to connect to a server, which only increased in busy areas like airports and hotels.

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

Moreover, CyberGhost is also the only VPN with a Smart DNS proxy that unblocks German streaming services.

You can use the proxy to update your device’s DNS settings and change your geolocation to Germany without having to use the VPN software. This is especially useful on PlayStation and Xbox.

Windscribe’s free plan provides IP address from the US, Germany, and 8 other countries.

This is a great total for a free VPN and means you’ll have plenty of options should you need to change your online location while in Germany.

If you have the opposite problem, you can also get a free German IP address by connecting to either of Windscribe’s two free German servers.

Both are based in Frankfurt, but the ‘Frankfurt – Wurstchen’ server is a 10Gbps server, with greater bandwidth and faster speeds.

These servers aren’t to be sniffed at, but we had some issues while using them: they triggered a lot of CAPTCHAs on search engines, and they provided no coverage for the north and east of the country.

We also recorded an average speed loss of 20% when connecting to the 10Gbps Frankfurt server from overseas.

This is a considerable slowdown, especially compared to PrivadoVPN’s faster speeds on its free German server.

Windscribe’s free VPN grants access to content catalogs from across the world.

In our testing, we’ve used it to watch titles from Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, UK Netflix, CBC Gem, and more, at no extra cost.

It fails to unblock US Netflix, but it’s still the best-performing free VPN for streaming that isn’t dangerous to use.

We also tested its Frankfurt server with the most popular German streaming services:

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
3sat-Mediathek	Yes
ARD Mediathek	Yes
DAZN Germany	Yes
DMAX	Yes
Joyn	Yes
Netflix Germany	Yes
RTL+	Yes
Sky Deutschland	Yes
ZDF	Yes

Unbelievably, Windscribe unblocked every geo-restricted German streaming service. No other free VPN matches this.

However, there are two major drawbacks: a 10GB data cap that limits you to four hours of HD streaming, and occasional buffering due to Windscribe’s slow speeds on connections into Germany.

Unlike many other free VPNs, Windscribe is completely safe to use and can be trusted to keep your personal data secure.

It collects minimal data from you, which was proven when the Dutch police seized a Windscribe server and found nothing.

All of its apps use WireGuard and ChaCha20 to encrypt your internet connection, which are industry-backed and secure methods.

As such, you can use Windscribe in Germany to securely browse the internet and access open WiFi networks.

Regardless of where you connect to, PrivadoVPN adds very little overhead to your download speeds. On average, our speed never dropped by more than 11% in every location.

This allowed us to make the most of its modest server network of 11 countries.

We experienced this most clearly in Germany, where PrivadoVPN only operates one free server location: Frankfurt.

In spite of this, PrivadoVPN’s speeds were shockingly good (a 7% slowdown) and even better than NordVPN!

PrivadoVPN can’t unblock as many streaming services as Windscribe’s free tier or our paid recommendations.

For a free VPN it’s still decent, with access to Disney+ (UK), Hulu, HBO Max, Prime Video, and most surprisingly, US Netflix.

We also tested PrivadoVPN’s free tier with the most popular German platforms:

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
3sat-Mediathek	Yes
ARD Mediathek	Yes
DAZN Germany	No
DMAX	Yes
Joyn	Yes
Netflix Germany	No
RTL+	Yes
Sky Deutschland	No
ZDF	Yes

Our results reveal a clear trend: PrivadoVPN accesses free-to-air German broadcasters without issue, but its IP addresses are blocked by subscription services like DAZN, WOW, and Netflix.

PrivadoVPN meets our benchmark for privacy and safety: it doesn’t log identifiable data and it uses secure ChaCha20 encryption.

While we’d like to see real-world proof of its privacy policy, PrivadoVPN has a scandal-free history and operates out of a private jurisdiction (Switzerland).

We feel assured that you can use PrivadoVPN in Germany to safely encrypt your internet connection and data transfers.

That said, there is a very odd requirement to manually renew your 10GB of data every month through your online account.

Not only is this tedious, but it runs the risk of leaving you without data in Germany with no way to renew it securely. You either need to use a different VPN to connect to your online account or leave your connection temporarily unprotected.