Mozilla VPN Review

Due to its shared server network and partnership with Mullvad, Mozilla’s privacy policy is more confusing than most.

Here’s the crux of it: Mullvad deals with your encrypted web traffic (activity data), Mozilla handles everything else.

Given Mullvad’s no-logs policy and trustworthy reputation, you can rest assured that all of your activity logs are safe. This also means Mozilla uses Mullvad’s diskless server network, which are built on volatile memory to periodically wipe your browsing activity.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Mozilla and its handling of your user logs.

According to its privacy policy, the VPN service logs your real IP address for 90 days. This undermines the entire point of using a VPN, since it directly links your real identity and location with your VPN account.

Moreover, Mozilla collects information about your device and your payment records, which makes it even easier to identify you once paired with an IP.

While this isn’t actually the worst privacy policy we’ve reviewed, its US jurisdiction means Mozilla is subject to some of the most intrusive data-sharing laws in the world.

If US law enforcement or a bad actor were to target Mozilla, your real IP, device information, and payment records would all be at risk of exposure.

Mozilla VPN’s ability to unblock streaming libraries is unfortunately tied to Mullvad’s ability to do so, as it operates using Mullvad’s infrastructure. Despite being a great VPN, Mullvad is terrible for streaming – and therefore Mozilla VPN is too.

The good news is that we were able to unblock HBO Max, an excellent US streaming service with lots of unique content – we just connected to Mozilla VPN’s US – Raleigh server and it let us stream straight away.

HBO Max is one of the few services Mozilla VPN works to unblock.

We were also able to watch UK-based streaming service Channel 4 by using the United Kingdom – Manchester server.

Those two services are the limit of Mozilla VPN’s streaming abilities. Every other popular service we attempted to access blocked us immediately or, in some cases, wouldn’t even let us log in.

A good streaming VPN should be able to unlock plenty of services, as well as multiple Netflix libraries from around the world to give you access to as much content as possible. ExpressVPN is the best VPN for streaming – it unblocks 10 Netflix libraries, BBC iPlayer, and more.

When connected to a nearby server in New York, US, Mozilla VPN suffers just a 3% download speed loss. You’ll barely notice any difference to your internet speeds when connected to a nearby Mozilla server.

It also performed very well in a selection of distant locations like the US West Coast and Germany, and when connected to a server in neighboring Canada downloads slowed by an indistinguishable 1%.

We didn’t notice a difference in our download speed when connecting to Canada.

When Mozilla VPN is running at its absolute maximum it comes close to the fastest VPNs on the market. While conducting multiple tests over a longer period of time we did notice some fluctuations, but not enough to seriously concern us.

Mozilla VPN records very impressive numbers for both upload and download speeds, wherever you are in the world. This is partly down to its total commitment to WireGuard, one of the fastest VPN protocols available.

Unsurprisingly, Mozilla follows Mullvad’s lead of implementing a WireGuard-only VPN. This is the most up-to-date and best-performing VPN protocol, so we have no complaints here.

WireGuard works alongside the ChaCha20-Poly1305 cipher to encrypt your web traffic, which we confirmed ourselves using Wireshark:

As expected, our internet traffic was left indecipherable.

We also stress-tested the VPN’s kill switch by simulating an unexpected connection drop. In every instance, the kill switch fired successfully and blocked our real IP address from leaking.

Putting encryption and leak protection to the side, Mozilla VPN’s biggest security asset are the apps themselves. Its desktop, mobile, and Linux apps are all open-source, allowing anyone to inspect their source code for vulnerabilities.

This is a great layer of transparency, which is only offered by top VPNs like Proton VPN and IVPN.

Sharing Mullvad’s server network means that Mozilla VPN enjoys all the same strengths and suffers the exact same weakness as Mullvad.

The main drawback is that Mozilla VPN’s server network completely ignores Central America, the Middle East, and large parts of South Asia and Africa. Leaving billions of potential users with no option but to use servers thousands of miles away is extremely disappointing.

The rest of the world sees good coverage, though. Mozilla VPN has city-level server coverage in seven countries:

There’s also servers in 13 different US cities from coast-to-coast, so if that’s where you’re based you should get optimal speeds no matter what.

One Fifth of Mozilla VPN’s Servers Are Owned by Mullvad

Most VPNs rent their server network from third party providers. Mullvad is a little different in that it owns almost 20% of its server network itself. All of those privately owned servers are in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

While there’s nothing wrong with renting servers, knowing that your VPN provider owns its own provides that little extra bit of security. While these servers are owned by Mullvad and not Mozilla itself, the principle still stands – Mullvad is an extremely secure and trustworthy VPN.

When it comes to VPN apps, simpler is better — even if you’re an experienced user. Mozilla VPN is as simple as can be, and that makes using it a pleasure.

Mozilla VPN looks exactly the same on almost every platform, with only a feature changing here or there between them.

You can see what Mozilla VPN looks like on every platform below, as well as what’s different about each one.

Mozilla’s US jurisdiction and excessive data collection puts you at risk should you accidentally torrent copyrighted material.

It’s also not the most straightforward to torrent with since its download bitrate often fluctuates and drops out. This is reflected in an average speed loss of 54%, which can make even simple downloads take a long time.

Another disadvantage for torrenting is Mozilla VPN’s lack of port forwarding, which limits your upload speeds. If you want a technical VPN with plenty of pro-torrenting features, then AirVPN is a suitable alternative.

Without dedicated apps, router support, or Smart DNS, there isn’t a way to use Mozilla VPN on streaming devices or platforms that don’t support VPN software (like game consoles).

As expected, you can install a VPN extension on Firefox, Mozilla’s very own web browser. However, there aren’t any extensions available for Chrome or Microsoft Edge.

While it’s true that Mozilla VPN is still a relatively new product, this limited device compatibility is inexcusable.

Mozilla VPN Can Only Be Installed on Five Devices at Once

Perhaps the most annoying drawback, though, is Mozilla VPN’s five-device limit. Ordinarily a VPN will limit your number of simultaneous connections, but will let you install it on as many devices as you like. With Mozilla VPN, you can only be signed in on five devices at once, regardless of how many are actually being used at the same time.

Mozilla VPN at least shows you the devices currently linked to your account within the app, so you can quickly remove the ones you don’t need.

Multi-hop (Double VPN) is a technology which routes your device’s web traffic through two servers instead of one.

The exit location you choose determines the IP address you’re assigned.

While this makes you harder to track, it comes at the cost of speed since your data has to move through an additional location.

Mozilla VPN’s multi-hop is especially impressive because it doesn’t limit you to a handful of entry or exit nodes (like with NordVPN). Instead, the entire server network is available for you to select at both stages.

One of Mozilla’s few extra features is custom DNS, which allows you to pick from ad blocking servers, tracker blocking servers, both at once, or a custom DNS of your own choosing (such as Google or Cloudflare’s).

The ad and tracker blockers work well, but they don’t catch everything they should. However, almost every VPN in-built ad blocker struggles, as we discovered in our in-depth testing on whether or not VPNs actually block ads.

Mozilla includes a split tunneling feature, labelled “Excluded apps”, in its Windows and Android apps.

As the name suggests, this feature lets you choose which apps won’t be routed through the VPN tunnel. While a useful tool, many VPNs let you go further and switch between including or excluding apps from the VPN encryption.

It took us seconds to set up split tunneling on Mozilla VPN.

That said, Mozilla VPN uniquely allows its ad and malware blockers to continue working on excluded apps. We applaud this functionality.