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 my research, I 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

Every service on the list opened first time, videos started quickly, and each one settled at the highest resolution available. A clean sweep is rare enough that I re-ran it to be sure.

ExpressVPN’s German network used to be nothing special. After an overhaul, it’s now among the best in the business.

Adding Berlin alongside the existing Frankfurt and Nuremberg locations finally brings it level with NordVPN and CyberGhost on city coverage, and Nuremberg is the differentiator: it’s the only southern German location any of my top picks offers.

I’m also pleased to see its number of German endpoints increase to more than 400, which matters for two reasons.

It improves your internet speed by reducing server congestion, and provides more options to cycle through should a streaming service detect your VPN IP.

Connecting took under three seconds every time I tried it, which is faster than any other VPN I’ve tested, NordVPN included.

Whether you’re traveling 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 137 countries, including servers in all 50 US states.

If you need a German IP address, NordVPN’s 425 German servers are spread across Berlin, Frankfurt, and Hamburg, covering the north, west, and east. There’s nothing in the south, which is where ExpressVPN’s Nuremberg location stands out.

While it isn’t the biggest German server network on my shortlist, it’s comfortably the fastest. Across thousands of tests connecting into Germany, my team and I recorded an average speed loss of 8%, against 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 I noticed across months of day-to-day use is NordVPN’s high success rate with UK platforms. If you want to stream BBC iPlayer, Channel 4, ITVX, NordVPN works every single time.

For German content specifically, I tested NordVPN with the most popular streaming services and recorded my 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

Unblocking that many German services is a strong result, and the only miss is DAZN’s German catalog.

Every German server I tried streamed smoothly, with videos loading quickly in high definition.

Two NordVPN features are essential when you’re moving around Germany: 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.

In Germany, where hotspots are everywhere, I’d call it the single setting most worth turning on.

Meshnet lets you remotely connect a device running NordVPN to another device, as though they were on the same local network. This is a secure way to continue accessing your home IP address.

It’s bundled with the base subscription, and NordVPN also offers it as a standalone free download, so you can install it on the device left at home without paying for a second account.

While in Germany, I used Meshnet myself to bypass Netflix’s password sharing ban and continue accessing my account.

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

That’s a great total for a free VPN, and it 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 are nothing to scoff at, but I 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.

Speed depends heavily on which direction you’re going. Connecting to the Frankfurt server from within Germany is quick enough that I stopped noticing it.

Connecting into Germany from overseas, I averaged a 20% loss, which is a real slowdown and well behind PrivadoVPN on the same route.

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

In my testing, I’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.

I 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

Windscribe unblocked every geo-restricted German streaming service I tested it with. 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.

Wherever I connected, PrivadoVPN added very little overhead. Across every location I tested, average speed loss stayed under 11%.

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

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

In spite of this, PrivadoVPN returned a 7% slowdown, a very strong result that even edges past NordVPN’s 8% over the same distance.

PrivadoVPN can’t unblock as many streaming services as Windscribe’s free tier or my 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.

I 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

My 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 my benchmark for privacy and safety: no identifiable data, a privacy-friendly jurisdiction (Iceland), and secure ChaCha20 encryption.

Despite this, PrivadoVPN’s privacy score is the weakest of my picks for a simple reason: none of it has been independently verified. Windscribe’s no-logs claim was tested when Dutch police found nothing during a server seizure, whereas PrivadoVPN has never faced this level of scrutiny.

Given it’s scandal-free history, I’d still use PrivadoVPN in Germany, but I wouldn’t stake anything on it.

There’s also a genuinely odd limitation: you have to manually renew your 10GB of data every month through your online account. It doesn’t roll over automatically, like with most other free VPNs.

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.