The Best VPNs for the UK

One of NordVPN’s strongest attributes is its connection speeds, particularly over long distances.

Connecting to any of NordVPN’s 440 secure servers you should expect a marginal impact of 10% on your internet speed.

This is slightly inferior to ExpressVPN’s measurements, but let’s not take anything away from NordVPN. The VPN remains one of the fastest for the UK, and you won’t experience any buffering or long loading times while using it.

Carrying on its tradition, NordVPN continues to evade most geo-restrictions from British streaming services. The VPN consistently unblocks BBC iPlayer, UK Netflix, Channel 4, ITVX, and Disney+ UK.

NordVPN worked flawlessly with BBC iPlayer.

Not only did we have great success with the provider’s computer and mobile apps, but also its Fire TV and Apple TV VPN apps worked extremely well to stream UK content directly from our TV.

On a less positive note, NordVPN’s Smart DNS proxy is only intended for unblocking American streaming apps, and is therefore useless for streaming UK content.

Surprisingly, we also ran into occasional hiccups trying to access Sky Go and NOW, with several IP addresses blocked by both streaming services.

The big difference between NordVPN and ExpressVPN is how their apps look and work, especially on PC and Mac.

While ExpressVPN’s computer software is slick and compact, NordVPN’s is rather bloated with extra tools that take up too much real estate in our view.

NordVPN’s Mac app feels cluttered.

Both its macOS and Windows apps cannot be resized, and feature the Threat Protection Pro and Dark Web Monitor tools on the home screen. While these are useful extras, they’re not core VPN features.

Also, NordVPN lacks a dedicated app for routers, which makes the VPN more challenging to use on devices such as game consoles and Roku.

That being said, these are minor drawbacks in the big scheme of things. You can judge this for yourself by trying NordVPN risk-free through its 3-day free trial (via the Google Play Store) or its 30-day refund guarantee.

ExpressVPN has a huge network of 1,750 servers in the UK. These are mostly in London (listed as ‘UK – London’, ‘UK – Docklands’, and ‘UK – East London’) with additional servers in Coventry, listed as ‘UK – Midlands’.

Thanks in part to this impressive tally of UK servers, we’ve rarely encountered signs of server overloads, such as annoying CAPTCHAs, slow page/video loading times, or connection failures.

The company’s investment in its UK server infrastructure has translated into phenomenal speeds. The VPN is currently the fastest for connecting into the UK from abroad, with an average internet speed loss of only 7%.

We tested the VPN’s speeds from various continents and it’s almost hard to believe how well it maintains high speeds, whether its on mobile, desktop or on a streaming device.

ExpressVPN hasn’t always unblocked BBC iPlayer in the past, but it has been working very well for the last few years.

You can also use ExpressVPN to unblock other British content available on Sky Go, ITVX, Channel 4, and the UK’s Netflix library.

Watching Sky Sports F1 with ExpressVPN.

ExpressVPN’s Smart DNS proxy, MediaStreamer, enables you to trick BBC iPlayer and Channel 4 into thinking that you’re in the UK without a VPN connection. It’s a great way to watch BBC content on your Smart TV or games console.

But what really separates ExpressVPN is its router support. While all other VPNs only allow manual setup, ExpressVPN has developed its own dedicated router application.

It’s a fantastic piece of software that allows you to connect all your devices in your home, and to assign a different IP location to each. We used it to watch the Six Nations for free on our Smart TV, with minimal setup or fuss.

Just like NordVPN, all of ExpressVPN’s its UK servers are physically located in England.

They’re also zero-knowledge DNS servers, meaning when you connect to a UK website ExpressVPN will handle and encrypt your DNS request itself and stop a third-party doing it.

And its TrustedServer technology stops your data ever being written onto hard drives, along with regular wipes of information stored on its RAM only servers.

We’ve never experienced unexpected DNS or IP leaks using ExpressVPN, and its kill switch (called Network Lock) will prevent your real IP address from displaying in the event of a connection failure.

You can test drive all the benefits above through ExpressVPN’s 7-day free trial (via iOS or Android) and its 30-day money-back guarantee.

If ExpressVPN and NordVPN are too expensive for you, Surfshark is one of the cheapest VPNs you can get. It costs only $1.99/mo over 27 months.

Moreover, Surfshark offers a free trial that allows you to test the VPN for seven days, through its website and mobile app without upfront payment.

If you then subscribe to a paid plan, you’ll get another 30 days to test the VPN service thanks to its 30-day money back guarantee.

Despite its low-cost pricing model, Surfshark pretty much matches its rivals when it comes to circumventing British geo-restrictions.

In fact, the VPN unblocked BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, Disney+ UK and Sky Go without hitches.

We streamed BBC iPlayer from overseas using Surfshark.

The VPN’s Android app also comes with a built-in GPS spoofer, which is rare among VPN providers.

Called ‘Override GPS location,’ the tool is extremely useful to bypass GPS-based blocks enforced by certain UK mobile apps. If you’re an Android user, this may shift the balance in Surfshark’s favor.

There are two key downsides to using Surfshark: slower long-distance download speeds and occasional delays in connecting to some servers.

On average, Surfshark will slow down your internet speed by 12% when connecting into the UK. While this isn’t as good as NordVPN or ExpressVPN, it’s more than good enough for streaming at the maximum resolution.

It may lead to occasional picture degradation or slightly slower page loading times, but this will also depend on your internet line speed.

And if we’re going to nitpick, we noticed that sometimes Surfshark can take a few more seconds than ExpressVPN to connect to a VPN server.

It’s by no means a major issue, but in the event you need to change IP address more or less instantly, then this unpredictable delay could be a problem.

Windscribe is currently the only free VPN that can access the British Netflix catalog from outside the UK.

The VPN provider also unblocks other major British content platforms, including BBC iPlayer, Channel 4, ITVX, and Sky Go from outside the UK.

It’s astonishing how Windscribe’s free UK servers can still do this, despite regular VPN crackdowns from these broadcasters.

We streamed UK Netflix while connected to one of Windscribe’s free UK servers.

This allows UK expats and fans abroad to stream geo-restricted movies for free and watch shows like The Great British Bake-Off and Strictly Come Dancing without hassle, security risks, or intrusive pop-up ads.

What’s more, Windscribe’s free VPN unblocks 4 more Netflix regions.

And if you’re in the United States, you can use Windscribe’s free VPN to access Star content on Disney+’s UK library.

Windscribe has two free UK servers, both in London and labeled ‘Crumpets’ and ‘Custard’. Both servers slowed our internet speed down by a very respectable 13%, although we found the connections less stable than with our premium recommendations.

This impact on stability is most likely due to the amount of people connected at the same time, and therefore overloading the servers.

As such, don’t be surprised if you have to go through CAPTCHAs while connected, or experience periodic blurriness during popular live streams.

The main downside of Windscribe’s free plan is that it limits your data usage to 2GB of data a month when you create an account, and 10GB per month if you register your email address.

We worked out that 10GB of data equals roughly four hours of HD streaming time, which isn’t a lot.

That said, it’s actually one of the more generous data allowances we’ve seen from a secure free VPN. For instance, rival free apps like TunnelBear and Avira Phantom only offer 2GB and 500MB respectively.

Windscribe also has free browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge. There’s no registration necessary, it has one free UK server, but it’s limited to 2GB of data per month.