Mullvad VPN Review

Mullvad’s privacy policy is clear: it does not log any traffic, user bandwidth, or your originating IP address. It used to log metadata relating to server usage, but it has since abandoned that.

Mullvad VPN does not ask for an email address or any other information in order to create an account. Instead, it gives you a random account number that you use to activate your VPN.

Mullvad doesn’t even run subscriptions anymore. Instead, it runs a one-time payment model so that it need never store any data regarding its users.

This is unique to Mullvad and shows how much it values customer privacy. Just don’t lose the account number.

Sweden/EU Jurisdiction Is Not Ideal

Mullvad is based in Sweden, which means it has to follow the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law. There are serious privacy implications to an EU jurisdiction: Mullvad is obliged to collect your payment information should you pay via bank wire, PayPal, Swish, or Stripe.

As you can see, if you pay via bank wire your Mullvad account number is associated with personally-identifiable information. For this reason, Mullvad warns against paying for its service through bank wire. It states:

“Please avoid making payments through bank wire if you do not want your Mullvad account to be traceable to you.”

For maximum privacy, Mullvad allows subscribers to pay via Bitcoin and even cash. We like that Mullvad is transparent about this and warns potential subscribers, and suggests a way around it.

The only other data Mullvad collects is the content of emails and problem reports that you send, as well as the email address you use. Mullvad advises you to refrain from entering personal data when contacting support.

While Mullvad does receive information requests about its users, it has no information to provide. Mullvad told us:

“We frequently get requests regarding IP-addresses and if we know which user was using it at a certain time. Since we do not have any VPN activity logs, they get very similar responses […] that we have no information that could help their investigation, and that all our IP-addresses are shared by our users.”

Who Is Behind Mullvad VPN?

Mullvad VPN is owned by Swedish company Amagicom AB and run by its CEO, Jan Axel Jonsson. The owners and sole shareholders of Amagicom AB are Fredrik Strömberg and Daniel Berntsson, who describe themselves as “idealists.” The company is based at Engelbrektsgatan 28, 411 37 Göteborg, Sweden.

As more VPNs get acquired and consolidated under larger companies like Kape Technologies (owner of ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, ZenMate), Ziff Davis (IPVanish, StrongVPN, SaferVPN), and Cyberspace (NordVPN, Surfshark, AtlasVPN) Mullvad remains an independent VPN service provider and the owners “are not interested in ever selling it.”

Mullvad’s VPN apps have lots of extra features and have been audited for safety, ideal for high levels of internet security.

Two Safe Protocol Options

Mullvad has OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols available on almost every platform (Android only offers WireGuard). We like that it’s left out protocols like PPTP and IKEv2, using only the two best security protocols in town, because we don’t recommend using any other.

Mullvad actually donated money towards the development of the WireGuard protocol and was one of the very first VPNs to implement it, which has since become industry practice. Even Mozilla VPN and Malwarebytes Privacy use Mullvad’s trailblazing WireGuard servers.

Under Advanced in the settings menu, there are additional settings for each protocol. For WireGuard you can enable multi-hop VPN servers for double protection, or change your port. You can also choose between IPv4 and IPv6 connections, or stay with automatic.

For OpenVPN, you can choose between UDP and TCP connections and enable Bridge Mode, which is Mullvad’s anti-censorship obfuscation technology.

It’s a shame that Bridge Mode isn’t available on WireGuard and multi-hop isn’t available on OpenVPN.

Split tunneling, which lets you decide which programs should use the VPN connection and which ones shouldn’t, is also only available on Windows, Android, and Linux.

Automatic Kill Switch & VPN-Only Option

Mullvad has an in-built kill switch, so it’s always running, ready to stop your entire internet connection should the VPN connection drop, and you cannot turn it off.

Many VPNs make the kill switch optional, or have it off by default (like Surfshark). We like Mullvad’s approach because it prioritizes security and guarantees no accidental exposure of your real IP address.

Mullvad also has something called Always Require VPN, which is an optional feature that also works like a kill switch. Unlike the normal kill switch which only works once your VPN tunnel is activated, Always Require VPN blocks your internet connection until you connect to Mullvad.

This is useful if you’re someone who forgets to turn your VPN on. It also means Mullvad has double kill switch protection: an automatic one to protect you from accidental VPN connection drops, and an optional one to kill your internet until you are connected to the secure VPN tunnel.

Mullvad’s iOS kill switch is always running in the background, but to use the kill switch on Android you have to adjust your Android device network settings and activate Always-on VPN or Block connections without VPN. This is an inconvenience and should be integrated within the app as a matter of importance.

Working Ad, Tracker & Malware blocker

Under Preferences, you can find toggle options to launch the app on start up and auto-connect, as well as activate ad, tracker, and malware blockers.

Mullvad doesn’t have the best VPN ad blocker we’ve tested, but it does block the majority of social and analytic trackers, and some pop-up ads. It’s worth toggling on, but it’s not as effective as a proper ad blocker like uBlock Origin.

Full IPv6 Support

Mullvad supports IPv6 connections on its VPN servers even if your ISP doesn’t yet support it.

Many VPNs deal with IPv6 incompatibility (and subsequent leaks) by simply blocking IPv6 connections and redirecting you to IPv4. Mullvad is one of only a few VPNs that has found an alternate solution.

Mullvad’s Security Features Compared Across Devices

As there are considerable differences between the Mullvad apps, it might be helpful to compare what’s available on each platform with the table below:

We tested Mullvad’s speeds on multiple servers, both local and international. It’s not the fastest VPN we’ve tested, but it still delivers impressive connections.

We tested Mullvad’s short-distance speeds by connecting to a server near to our physical location. Here are the results:

A 5% difference between your normal internet connection and a VPN-connected internet is impressive. Most VPNs fail to meet this standard.

Mullvad’s International Speed Test Results

All VPNs reduce internet speed. More so when you’re connecting to a server that is located far away. But Mullvad’s long-distance speed loss is minimal.

Connecting to the US we recorded speeds over 51Mbps, which is very good for such a distance. Likewise, we picked up best speeds of 65Mbps connecting to Canada.

Even further away from our UK base, we still managed best speeds of 82Mbps connecting to Australia when using OpenVPN.

There are better VPNs for long-distance connections, like Hotspot Shield, but we think you’ll be satisfied with Mullvad’s performance.

OpenVPN vs WireGuard: Which Mullvad Protocol Is Faster?

We compared OpenVPN versus WireGuard to see which Mullvad protocol delivers the best speeds. This way, you can select for optimal connections. Here are the results:

We found that both are very fast and perform equally on most connections. The notable difference was Germany and Australia, which were much faster on OpenVPN.

In contrast, WireGuard performed much better when connecting to Canada.

The good news is that Mullvad VPN has fast speeds no matter which protocol you choose. Ping times (latency) were also unaffected by the choice of protocol.

Mullvad’s Speeds Compared to Other VPNs

The graph below illustrate Mullvad’s speeds compared against three top VPNs: ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and Private Internet Access.

We use our internal automated speed test tool to calculate the average download speed loss on a capped 100Mbps connection.

The tool runs VPN speed tests automatically four times a day, seven days a week on our New York server.

The chart above shows how Mullvad’s average download speed loss isn’t much worse than ExpressVPN. The VPN is also beating Private Internet Access, and matching NordVPN’s speeds.

Mullvad doesn’t unblock streaming sites and doesn’t pretend to. It no longer works with Netflix and it hasn’t bothered to develop any streaming-optimized servers or an app for Amazon Fire TV Stick.

We tested it on all the major streaming sites and recorded very little success. Only Amazon Prime Video (US), HBO Max, and Australia’s version of Netflix became available to us outside those regions. It won’t bypass Hulu blocks.

Like with Astrill VPN, it’s fair enough that Mullvad is focused on privacy. But a VPN can do both. We’d love to see Mullvad expand into unblocking streaming sites, especially unblocking Netflix. Then we can recommend it wholeheartedly.

Mullvad is a top torrenting VPN. All of its servers are optimized for P2P activity. Some VPNs, like TorGuard, now ban popular torrenting websites, but Mullvad still has no restrictions in place.

We tested Mullvad VPN on safe torrent clients like qBitorrent to see how it performed as a torrenting VPN. We found that the download speeds were quick and stable; we recorded an excellent average torrenting bitrate of 9.8MiB/s.

While Mullvad wasn’t as fast as the best VPNs for torrenting, it is still a fast and private choice – kill switch protection and a safe logging policy make sure of that.

SOCKS5 Proxy & Port Forwarding Is Available

Mullvad allows you to use port forwarding for faster P2P connections. Port forwarding is also a useful manual tool for gamers who use VPNs, as it allows you to optimize speeds, change your NAT type, and reduce lag.

SOCKS5 is available on all of Mullvad’s servers once you activate it for the application you wish to use it on. This is great for torrenters and even reduces the chance of seeing CAPTCHAs.

Mullvad’s Bridge Mode works by first connecting you to one of Mullvad’s ‘Bridge servers’, which use the Shadowsocks proxy to avoid fingerprinting, and then connect you into the country you wish to bypass web blocks in.

This technique for bypassing censorship doesn’t always work: we tested Bridge Mode on our server in Shanghai and it wouldn’t get around the Great Firewall of China, which has the strictest web censorship in the world.

Bridge Mode is more likely to work in countries with less sophisticated censorship technology, such as the UAE, Turkey, and Russia.

Mullvad has servers close to Russia, including Estonia and Latvia, should you need to get around Russian web blocks and access banned websites like Twitter and BBC News.

Mullvad’s help center is genuinely useful, with straight-to-the-point, clearly-written troubleshooting fixes, user guides, and suggestions, as well as explainers of Mullvad’s features.

You can access the help center via the FAQ & Guides link in the app. You can also report a problem within the app itself.

If you want to contact Mullvad directly, you can send an email. We sent an email at 2:37pm and got a response at 2:50pm. 13 minutes isn’t a long wait for an email response, so we were impressed.

We’d like to see Mullvad invest in 24/7 live chat support for instant assistance. Most top VPNs have this level of support on hand.