PrivadoVPN Review

PrivadoVPN only collects a small amount of information, and none of it is identifiable. It doesn’t log any sensitive data, such as your IP address or the websites you visit.

What it does collect is more mundane: your email address, username, and total bandwidth used. App version and device type are also logged, but as anonymous aggregate statistics that can’t be tied back to your account.

However, this is not a no-logs privacy policy, and the data it collects appears to be stored indefinitely. VPNs like Private Internet Access maintain a top-tier service without retaining any information at all.

Here’s where we have to be blunt: a good privacy policy is not the same as a proven one.

The VPN has never had its claims tested by a court case or server seizure, although this is obviously out of their control. More disappointingly, they are yet to commission an independent audit of their privacy policy, implement transparency reports, or display a warrant canary.

For now, you are taking PrivadoVPN at its word.

Is PrivadoVPN Trustworthy?

The company behind PrivadoVPN is legitimate and we like that it’s based in Switzerland, which has no data retention laws and respects consumer privacy. It is not a member of the European Union, so it doesn’t abide by the Data Retention Directive, either.

Moreover, Switzerland has no role in the Five Eyes or 14 Eyes alliances, or any other anti-privacy intelligence-sharing agreements. In other words, PrivadoVPN is under no legal obligation to store or share the data of its users.

For this reason, we think PrivadoVPN is trustworthy.

Whether you’re on the paid or free plan, PrivadoVPN unblocks US Netflix from anywhere. This is a major selling point given it is one of the few free VPNs that work with US Netflix.

We’ve never had an issue accessing US Netflix with PrivadoVPN.

The paid version also unblocks Netflix in France, Israel, Turkey, and the UK. This is nowhere near as many Netflix libraries as similar VPNs can access — Windscribe unblocks 32 — and some popular regions are missing like Japan, Canada, and Germany.

Both the paid and free version of PrivadoVPN also work to unblock US streaming services like HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video.

Again, this is praiseworthy for a free VPN and marks PrivadoVPN out as the best free VPN for streaming overall.

However, the amount of time you can stream with the free tier is heavily restricted by its 10GB monthly data cap.

Outside of the US, the VPN’s streaming record is mixed. Neither version of the VPN works consistently with BBC iPlayer or ITVX, whether that’s for live or on demand content. On the flipside, we ran into no issues streaming Channel 4 or the usually hard-to-unblock Sky Go.

The London server location occasionally unblocks BBC iPlayer, but not right now.

It performed especially poorly in the Americas, where OTT streaming services like DAZN and TV Azteca regularly detected our VPN connection.

These results show that PrivadoVPN performs very well connecting to any part of the globe.

Its international speeds are naturally slower, but still more than enough for Full HD streaming, video calling, and even gaming.

For example, connecting to Australia saw our download speed drop by just 18% despite over 10,000 miles of geographical distance.

PrivadoVPN Free Is Faster than the Pro Version

Curiously, PrivadoVPN’s free tier performs just as well — and sometimes better — than the paid version in our speed tests.

We recorded an average speed loss of 3% on nearby servers, which is actually better than the pro version.

Similarly, its Germany connection speeds were faster compared to the Pro version, and its long-distance UK speed scored a similar speed decrease of 11%.

This means that PrivadoVPN does not throttle its free servers like other free VPNs do, such as Hide.me’s free plan.

While this is excellent for users of the free version, paid users might feel short-changed by this.

Upon first launch, PrivadoVPN is set to tunnel your traffic with IKEv2. We recommend changing to WireGuard or OpenVPN, since they are more secure.

Annoyingly, WireGuard isn’t immediately available on macOS as it has to be manually authorized in your system settings. While this only takes a couple of seconds to do, it’s quite frustrating considering no other VPN makes you do this.

We tested all of the VPN’s protocols by running our connection through a data packet analyzer, called WireShark. As shown in the screenshot below, PrivadoVPN encrypted our web traffic, displaying it as jumbled plaintext:

PrivadoVPN hides your internet traffic from your ISP.

Continuing our security tests, we checked all of the VPN’s apps for IP, DNS, and WebRTC leaks. We detected no leaks whatsoever and were pleased to see its kill switch activating reliably on every platform.

In our view, the VPN is perfectly safe to use but we want it to take a more proactive approach to security. While its protocols and encryption ciphers work for the time being, PrivadoVPN should follow the lead of ExpressVPN and NordVPN by implementing post-quantum cryptography.

This protects against more sophisticated cyber attacks based on quantum computing, which are predicted to become more mainstream in the future.

Similarly, taking steps to increase its transparency, like open-sourcing its codebase, would allow for potential security vulnerabilities to be spotted and fixed more quickly.

PrivadoVPN’s paid server network caters heavily to European countries, with only one server location on the African continent and two in South America. Asia is relatively well represented, but we’d like to see the VPN generally invest in more locations going forward.

PrivadoVPN’s server network is small compared to the competition.

PrivadoVPN’s server network is nowhere near the size of networks offered by top-ranking VPNs.

ExpressVPN scores 9.9 in our server evaluation because it has lots of servers spread across 100 countries, including a much greater focus on often-neglected regions like Africa and the Middle East.

Small Network of Physical Servers

One of the reasons that PrivadoVPN has a small server network is that it is exclusively devoted to building an all-physical server network. This is more expensive, and it makes it much harder for PrivadoVPN to provide IP addresses in countries with less developed infrastructure.

There are some privacy benefits to choosing physical over virtual servers, but we are worried that, as the subscriber base grows, servers will become increasingly congested.

PrivadoVPN Offers Free Servers in 11 Countries

PrivadoVPN’s free service has a substantially smaller network compared to the paid version, but servers in 11 countries is a lot compared to other free VPNs like Hotspot Shield Basic, Betternet, and ZoogVPN, which all have only 3.

PrivadoVPN’s free server network is refreshingly diverse. Alongside major European and North American countries, it has IP addresses for Argentina, Brazil, and India. It’s also the best free VPN for Mexico, and there are four city-level server choices in the United States.

PrivadoVPN has made significant strides in improving the design and usability of its apps, making it a beginner-friendly VPN. The interface is consistent across devices, featuring a simple home screen with a large connect button, a server list, and a settings menu.

You can expand the sections below for a detailed analysis of the user experience, by platform:

PrivadoVPN permits torrenting on all of its servers, including its free ones. The is great to see considering other freemium VPN services tend to ban P2P traffic on their free VPNs (like Proton VPN).

That said, PrivadoVPN’s privacy policy hasn’t been verified so the service could, in theory, monitor and log your torrenting activity. We’re yet to hear of anyone receiving a DMCA request while using PrivadoVPN, but it is worth keeping in mind should you accidentally download copyrighted material.

We downloaded a test file while connected to a nearby PrivadoVPN server and found that our bitrate decreased by 21% on average.

PrivadoVPN is fast enough for occasional torrenting.

While this is decent, other VPNs we test, like IPVanish, PIA, and Hide.me, all stay within a 5% loss margin. PrivadoVPN feels noticeably slower in comparison, especially when torrenting larger file sizes.

The free version of the VPN is much slower and comes with a 10GB data cap.This is fine for the occasional torrenting of smaller file types, but we suggest upgrading to a premium torrenting VPN for more heavy duty downloads.

Subscribing to the VPN also provides access to a SOCKS5 proxy on every server. This is a favorite of torrenters as it can allow for faster speeds, at the cost of no encryption. This feature is not available on PrivadoVPN Free, though.

Unfortunately, PrivadoVPN does not permit port forwarding on any of its plans, so you may not be able to seed files for fellow torrenters.

PrivadoVPN imposes a limit of 10 simultaneous connections, which is standard. While this should be enough to run the VPN on every device you own, there are VPNs that have abandoned device limits like IPVanish.

Alternatively, you can try and sidestep this restriction by installing the VPN on your WiFi router since this protects every device that connects.

There are manual setup guides on PrivadoVPN’s website that show you how to do this, but we only recommend it if you’re tech-savvy.

On paid accounts only, you can install PrivadoVPN’s Chrome extension. Unlike many other VPNs, PrivadoVPN’s browser extension actually encrypts your traffic.

The VPN extension works as intended, with almost zero speed loss, but its servers are limited to just 12 countries.

Using the VPN’s Scramble Mode, we were able to get around The Great Firewall of China on our Shanghai server.

To replicate this, go into protocol settings, select OpenVPN, and check the “Scramble” box.

However, as you can see in the video below, connections within China took a very long time to establish. While we unblocked YouTube when connecting to the Taiwan server, it took over four minutes to get around Chinese website blocks (we have shortened the video).

It’s unclear how long PrivadoVPN’s success in China will last, since we expect the more popular PrivadoVPN comes, the more likely China will block it.

To future-proof against this, we’d like the VPN to implement more modern obfuscation technologies like QUIC.

, but since introducing the requirement for users to manually refresh data via its website each month, users in China cannot access more data as that web page is blocked in the country.

It’s rare that a free VPN works in China, so it’s a shame that the manual refresh requirement has unintentionally stopped people from accessing the global internet.

Split tunneling is a feature that lets you customize which apps and websites run through the VPN tunnel.

You can use this feature on every PrivadoVPN app and on both its free and paid plans. But setting it up on Mac requires you to grant permissions in your system settings, which isn’t the case with most VPNs.

We excluded apps that require our real location from the VPN tunnel.

We also didn’t like PrivadoVPN’s rigid approach to split tunneling: only letting you choose apps to exclude from the tunnel. Many VPNs, like Hide.me and PIA, let you choose between including or excluding the apps, for a greater level of control.

PrivadoVPN includes a GPS spoofing tool on Android called “GeoJump” that works by syncing your device’s GPS location to your VPN’s location.

We used GeoJump to livestream NBA matches.

While the privacy benefits are obvious, an underrated use case for this feature is bypassing regional blackouts on sports broadcasts. Many streaming platforms, like NFL+ and ESPN+, implement strict geo-restrictions to enforce licensing agreements, including tracking your device’s GPS.

As a result, PrivadoVPN joins a select group of VPNs in Windscribe and Surfshark that include this niche, but useful, feature.