The Best VPNs for Germany

NordVPN maintains 232 servers in 3 German cities. You can quickly get an IP address from Berlin, Frankfurt, or Hamburg – generously covering the North, West, and East of the country.

NordVPN’s apps are well-designed and effective at accessing German websites.

This isn’t the biggest German server network on the market, and we’ve noticed that the amount of German servers it operates changes frequently. But it’s still extensive and more than enough for stable connections into Germany. In fact, we’ve never experienced any server overloads or inconsistent connections during testing.

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

After connecting to NordVPN’s Germany servers, we tested to see how many popular German streaming sites it accesses. Here are our results:

We were delighted that NordVPN successfully unblocked every German streaming service we tested, except for DAZN. Impressively, all the German servers we used worked, making it extremely easy to stream German content from abroad.

However, 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 also the fastest VPN for connecting into Germany. During our speed tests from New York to Germany, we averaged an impressive 92Mbps – a mere 8% speed loss from our normal speed.

This minimal reduction allows you to stream in ultra-high definition without any noticeable loss in frame rate or quality, making it perfect for German streaming.

NordVPN is an excellent choice for protecting your online privacy against the mass surveillance undertaken by the BND. It adheres to an unintrusive logging policy, ensuring that no sensitive information is recorded.

Additionally, NordVPN incorporates several advanced privacy features, such as Multi-hop, which enhances your online anonymity by routing your traffic through multiple servers. This provides an extra layer of security, making it difficult for anyone to track your online activities.

This has the added benefit of protecting your online life, whether you’re using public Wi-Fi in Germany or trying to avoid marketing and trackers. NordVPN offers the CyberSec ad blocker to enhance your defense against ads and tracking attempts.

NordVPN is available on all popular devices, so you can install it as an app on Windows, macOS, iPhone, and Android, as well as streaming platforms like Fire TV Stick and Apple TV.

All of these apps are simple to install, visually pleasing, and easy to navigate. But there are some issues, like not being able to manually resize desktop apps. There are also a lot of technical features that newcomers might not ever use because they are not labeled or explained.

NordVPN offers excellent value for money at $2.99 per month. This includes the ability to connect to NordVPN on 10 devices at once.

However, the cost of NordVPN’s subscription increases after your first two-year subscription period. Therefore, after your initial subscription, NordVPN becomes one of the most expensive VPNs around.

You can download NordVPN on mobile and sign up for a one-week free trial. Better yet, you can use it for free for a month by signing up and asking for your money-back within 30-days. This is a guaranteed, no-questions-asked refund and essentially functions as a one-month free trial.

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

CyberGhost has the most German servers of any VPN.

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 getting detected by German sites.

We tested CyberGhost’s servers and found that it could unblock 5 out of the 7 German streaming sites we tested it with. Here are the full results:

It’s unfortunate that CyberGhost was detected by DAZN and RTL+, making it a bad choice if you want to stream sports on a German IP address. It’s much more reliable with services like Joyn, Netflix, and DMAX.

CyberGhost is also the only VPN with a Smart DNS feature that works to access German websites. You can configure it to a German geolocation and maintain access to a German IP address without ever having to use the VPN.

Connecting to Germany from the US, we experienced a speed loss of 15%. This is substantial, enough to be noticeable, and is an inferior performance compared to NordVPN.

However, CyberGhost’s average connection speeds into Germany (85Mbps) are still fast enough for Full HD streaming.

While Germany enforces data protection laws under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), CyberGhost provides an additional layer of privacy for your personal information, safeguarding it from data collection by telecom companies and intrusive state surveillance practices.

It uses AES-256 to encrypt your data and offers a range of additional features to keep you safe online, including an ad blocker and Tor Over VPN. One near feature forces unsecure websites to be routed through HTTPS encryption, which is also useful.

CyberGhost is compatible with most popular platforms, including Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and streaming devices like Fire TV Stick. However, it currently lacks an app for Apple TV.

While the apps are user-friendly, we’ve encountered connection bugs and responsiveness issues, forcing us to restart the app a few times. In addition, the browser extensions are outdated in design and offer only 4 server locations. Thankfully, Germany is included for easy access to a German IP address on Chrome or Firefox.

As one of the best budget VPNs, CyberGhost provides excellent value at just $2.03 per month on long-term plans. It also offers a 7-day free trial on both desktop and mobile devices, allowing users to access a German IP address at no cost.

For extended use, CyberGhost features a 45-day money-back guarantee, the longest refund period of any VPN.

You can get a German IP address by connecting to either of Windscribe Free’s 2 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.

Windscribe Free is safe, easy to use, and gives you a free Frankfurt server.

Here are the results of Windscribe Free’s German streaming tests:

Windscribe Free successfully unblocked all geo-restricted German streaming sites we tested, including Netflix Germany, Joyn, RTL+, and DAZN Germany. It is only VPN to achieve a 100% unblock rate for German streaming services.

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

Like NordVPN and CyberGhost, Windscribe isn’t strictly a no-logs VPN, but it maintains a minimal logging policy, prioritizing user privacy. As a free VPN, it is safe to install and useful for stopping data retention from telecom companies and the BND.

However, Windscribe was involved in a controversy regarding its servers in Ukraine, which were not encrypted and were subsequently seized. While there is no evidence to suggest similar vulnerabilities exist in Germany, this incident raises concerns about its security practices.

Windscribe Free is easy to use despite being full of additional features. Every feature is labeled, and the interface is intuitive. You can also install it on as many devices as you want, enabling you to connect to a German IP address on every device you own.

We used the VPN’s native apps for macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and Fire TV to do so, as well as its completely free Chrome and Firefox extensions. These extensions are useful if you want to quickly connect to the German web within your browser.

PrivadoVPN provides a simple way to obtain a Frankfurt IP address from anywhere, completely free. All you need to do is create an account to gain access.

While the server network in Germany is quite limited, this is expected from a free service.

PrivadoVPN is decent free service for temporary privacy and streaming German sites.

What’s less expected, however, is PrivadoVPN’s requirement to manually renew your data each month through your account page. No other free VPN imposes this, and we find it tiresome and unnecessary.

Here are the results of PrivadoVPN’s German streaming tests:

The results show that PrivadoVPN is good at accessing free-to-air German sites like ARD, RTL+, Joyn, and ZDF. However, subscription services like DAZN and Netflix continue to block PrivadoVPN.

This is a performance on par with paid VPNs like CyberGhost, but it’s falling behind NordVPN and Windscribe Free.

PrivadoVPN does excel when it comes to speed. We measured an average US to Germany speed as 93Mbps: a marginal loss of 7%. This results in high definition streams, even though you are restricted to 10GB of data per month.

If your aim is to protect your privacy against mass data retention from government or big tech in Germany, then PrivadoVPN is a useful temporary solution. It’s equipped with the best encryption a VPN can have – AES-256 – and it only logs a small amount of data about its users.

But it’s not completely no-logs; we still believe PrivadoVPN stores more data than is necessary for a VPN to retain, including individual bandwidth usage.

It’s also lacking the same level of advanced features on offer from other top-tier providers. There is no multi-hop, for example, and we are concerned about the absence of a kill switch on iOS.