The Best VPNs for YouTube TV

ExpressVPN is incredibly effective at bypassing YouTube TV’s geo-restrictions, especially on PC and Mac.

Using ExpressVPN’s browser extension, change our IP address to one of its 57 US cities, and spoofing our geolocation, was a piece of cake.

ExpressVPN’s browser extension conceals your HTML5 location.

YouTube TV uses HTML5 geolocation tracking to determine your physical location. When enabled, the ExpressVPN’s ‘Spoof your location’ function provides a false location that matches the VPN server location you’re connected to.

We tested this across a dozen US VPN locations and it worked every single time. We streamed region-restricted content without any issue, including NBA, NHL, and MLB blackout games.

At every attempt, over hundreds of tests, YouTube TV never blocked our ExpressVPN connection.

You can see how easy it was to use ExpressVPN to change our YouTube TV location in our dedicated section further below.

It’s amazing how fast and consistent ExpressVPN’s speeds have been since we started testing the VPN many years ago.

Not only do its servers connect always instantly, but the impact on our internet speed continues to be among the lowest we’ve seen.

For instance, connecting to Los Angeles from New York, our internet speed slowed down by only 10%, while connecting to even closer locations, like Washington DC, the impact was a mere 2%.

Even during hours of peak traffic, our VPN speeds remained very stable with our video stream sharpness unaffected. This is partly due to the thousands of servers ExpressVPN has rolled out across the United States.

ExpressVPN is our favorite VPN for streaming for many reasons, and streaming speed is definitely one of the key ones.

ExpressVPN’s arsenal of user-friendly apps for every conceivable device is simply unmatched.

You’ll find a consistent design across its dedicated apps for computers, smartphones, streaming devices, and even routers.

The VPN router app is unique in the industry, and it conveniently allows you to connect all of your home devices to ExpressVPN, including Roku Sticks and games consoles that don’t support VPN applications.

Connecting to a server location takes only a few seconds on any of these apps: launch the software, go to the server list, find your desired location, and select it. That’s really it!

ExpressVPN’s server list on Android.

The only downside to ExpressVPN is that it’s one of the most expensive VPNs on the market, costing $4.99/mo over 28 months.

While we think the VPN’s exceptional streaming performance warrants this higher price, Private Internet Access may be a more sensible option if you want save on additional costs.

The fact that PIA has servers in all 50 US states is extremely useful to bypass the Home Area and Playback Area restrictions.

PIA VPN’s US servers in the Android app.

PIA currently offers access to 50 different city locations, although not every server location worked with YouTube TV.

This is the key difference between PIA and ExpressVPN, and the main reason why PIA ranks in second place in our standings.

PIA’s internet speeds, especially within in the US, are comparable to ExpressVPN’s and won’t notice much difference in terms of video quality.

When we connected to different locations across the US, both near and far away, the VPN delivered excellent results on a variety of devices.

Connecting to nearby states our internet speed slowed down by only 4%, and only 10% connecting from one coast to another.

PIA has developed eye-pleasing and intuitive applications for all mainstream devices such as computers, smartphones and even streaming devices like Fire Stick and Apple TV.

There are also no device limits so you can run the VPN on as many devices as you want at the same time.

That being said, PIA can’t match ExpressVPN’s device compatibility: its Smart DNS proxy is faulty and there is no dedicated router app. These shortcomings make it harder to use the VPN on gaming systems and Roku devices.

PIA’s main draw is really its much lower subscription price: at just $2.03/mo over 28 months, it’s definitely more suitable to frugal people who are willing to put up with some of the service’s limitations.

Windscribe offers more free US servers than any other free VPN. This allowed us to easily change our playback area to access local channels in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and Seattle.

All free US servers quickly bypassed YouTube TV geo-blocks, which is extremely rare among secure free VPNs. Not even close competitors like PrivadoVPN could achieve this.

It has to be said that speeds on these servers did fluctuate every so often, which affected the sharpness of the video stream at times.

Windscribe offers free apps for all mainstream devices, including streaming devices like Fire TV Stick, Android TV, and Apple TV.

Uniquely, the VPN’s free Android app and browser extensions come with location-spoofing settings that worked extremely well with YouTube TV.

Once activated, the ‘GPS Spoofing’ (in the Android app) and ‘Location Warp’ (in the browser extension) settings matched our GPS data to the VPN server location we were connected to, allowing us to update our YouTube TV location.

No other free VPN offers this level of location spoofing, which is why Windscribe is head and shoulders above them for unblocking YouTube TV.

And thanks to the service’s unlimited device policy, you can stream YouTube TV on as many devices as you want, although YouTube TV restricts viewing to only three devices at once.