How to Watch Hulu with the Best VPNs

ExpressVPN has servers spread across 57 US cities covering every single state.

This was particularly useful for changing our location on Hulu + Live TV to access local channels and bypass sports blackouts.

Some VPNs, like CyberGhost, offer dedicated servers for unblocking Hulu. ExpressVPN doesn’t need them, though, since all its US servers consistently unblocked Hulu in our tests.

This phenomenal success at beating Hulu’s blocks is because the VPN provider regularly updates its American IP addresses to avoid detection. This takes time and investment, which most other VPNs aren’t prepared to do.

Moreover, ExpressVPN has also expanded its range of dedicated VPN IP addresses in the US, providing you with unique IPs from cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and New York.

And thanks to this huge server park of 6,250 US servers, we averaged an internet speed slowdown of only 15% connecting from abroad and just 2% within the US.

These fantastic download speeds is why we were able to stream at maximum resolution every time we used ExpressVPN.

You can use ExpressVPN to watch Hulu from anywhere and on any device. That’s because it offers the widest device compatibility in the industry, with the best-designed apps for every popular device, including Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, and Android TV.

Testing the ExpressVPN Fire TV Stick app.

We genuinely enjoyed using all of these apps because they’re so easy to install and to navigate. Most importantly, they all unblocked Hulu.

ExpressVPN is also the only VPN that offers an app for routers, which you can use to give each of your home devices a different US IP location. Or, to use the VPN with Roku a lot more easily.

MediaStreamer, the VPN’s Smart DNS proxy, is also useful to use the ExpressVPN on devices that don’t support VPN software, like your PlayStation or Xbox.

Not to mention that all these apps come with built-in DNS and IPv6 leak protection that prevents accidental exposures of your real IP address. This helps make it much harder for Hulu to figure out you’re using a VPN.

ExpressVPN’s main drawback is its price, which is considerably higher than CyberGhost’s, although we think it still represents great value for the superior performance you get.

That said, if you want to try the VPN before committing to a subscription, you can sign up for ExpressVPN’s 7-day free trial via the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, or take advantage of its 30-day money-back guarantee.

Just remember to cancel your trial or subscription before the end of the test period.

NordVPN offers access to 3,125 secure servers located in 30 US cities.

Most of its US server locations worked to unblock the service, although not every single one. Very occasionally we were hit with the P-EDU101 error notification.

Similarly to ExpressVPN, the advantage of running a large US server network is that these servers are almost never overloaded, making connections faster and less likely to be detected by Hulu.

As a result, our international download speed fell by only 14%, which is marginally better than ExpressVPN’s 15% reduction.

Stream quality was excellent, even during live streams, with videos loading quickly and without buffering or abrupt interruptions.

NordVPN has developed user-friendly applications for desktop (Windows and macOS), mobile (iOS and Android), Fire TV, Android TV, and Apple TV.

You can use NordVPN on a Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, and more.

The apps are relatively simple to use, but we have small gripes, like having to type in “United States” to find US servers, rather than simply “US” or “America”.

Or, the fact that the desktop applications are rather cluttered and unnecessarily big, with no option to resize them.

We were also unimpressed by NordVPN’s Smart DNS service, which surprisingly failed to unblock Hulu, and the absence of an app for routers.

These shortcomings can make NordVPN more challenging to use depending on the device you want to stream Hulu on.

Generally speaking, though, you shouldn’t have any issues using the VPN on mainstream devices like laptops and smartphones.

CyberGhost has specific servers designed to unblock Hulu, which are available on desktop, Android TV, and Fire TV. Sadly, they aren’t available on mobile.

CyberGhost’s Fire TV Stick app.

These Hulu-optimized servers frequently worked well, but not 100% of the time. On the other hand, most of CyberGhost’s regular US servers were almost always detected by Hulu.

This doesn’t compare very favorably ExpressVPN’s and NordVPN’s much more consistent access.

CyberGhost’s device compatibility is also subpar. Since there’s no Apple TV app, you’ll have to use its Smart DNS proxy instead, and its (free) browser extensions are extremely basic and slow to connect. Sometimes they won’t connect at all!

CyberGhost’s dedicated Hulu servers were good enough for us to stream content with reasonable sharpness.

We also lost roughly 19% of speed connecting from abroad and 5% from within the US.

These speeds are more than fast enough for Full HD streaming without lag, but if you’re connecting from a far away location, then you may want a faster VPN.

What’s more, CyberGhost’s speeds did fluctuate at times, generating some occasional blurriness.

Windscribe is completely free to use, with no hidden catches and no requirement to submit credit card or payment details.

It’s one of our favorite free VPNs because it’s secure, reasonably quick, and very good at beating streaming geo-blocks. Not only does Windscribe work really with Hulu, but it’s also a great VPN for Peacock and HBO Max.

With Hulu specifically, we’ve been testing it for years and have never encountered issues, which is incredible.

That being said, you’ll only have access to 8 US cities compared to ExpressVPN’s 57.

Windscribe offers access to several free US locations.

On top of user-friendly apps for computers and smartphones, Windscribe also offers some of the best free apps for Fire TV, Apple TV and Android TV.

Windscribe’s Firestick app is easy to use.

And since Windscribe doesn’t impose a device limit, so you can install the VPN on as many devices you wish.

However, Windscribe’s 10GB monthly bandwidth restriction can be a problem if you plan to stream a lot of content each month.

On the free plan, we could only watch about four hours of HD content per month, which isn’t much. If you think you’ll stream more, you’re better off going with our premium choices.

It has to be said that Windscribe is also slower than ExpressVPN and NordVPN, with a long-distance speed slowdown of 13% on average.

On fast internet lines this shouldn’t cause any issues, but on slower connections it could well impact streaming quality.