VyprVPN Review

VyprVPN is a completely no-logs VPN. It doesn’t collect your public IP address, VPN IP address, timestamps, or DNS queries.

All of VyprVPN’s VPN servers are also self-hosted and operated internally, meaning they aren’t rented by a third-party, and VyprVPN is less vulnerable to third-parties interfering with the company’s logging practices.

Here’s a table listing exactly what VyprVPN logs and does not log:

VyprVPN does keep your email address, username, password, and any payment information if you don’t use anonymous payment methods. However, almost all VPNs have to collect this information to provide their service.

VyprVPN clarifying itself as “network neutral” is a key detail: it means VyprVPN won’t run real-time analyses of your traffic or block certain kinds of activity. Importantly, it also means you can torrent on any server you want.

Similarly, by agreeing not to log your IP address or connection times, VyprVPN makes it impossible for a third-party to trace an IP back to you, even with a warrant. Again, this is good news for file-sharing users, but we’ll go over this in more detail later in the review.

Past logging practices

A few years ago VyprVPN’s logging policy far exceeded what we consider reasonable. As of 2019 it has fixed this, and we now feel comfortable recommending VyprVPN as a private service.

It used to collect your real IP address, newly assigned IP address, timestamps, and bandwidth usage for 30 days.

Logging policy audit

Golden Frog, VyprVPN’s parent company, has since updated its approach to user data. It was even one of the first VPNs to commission an independent logging policy audit in 2018.

The audit initially found some issues with how the service was handling personally identifiable information, but this was quickly rectified.

Ideally, we want to see VyprVPN undergo another external audit in 2023.

VyprVPN Is Owned by Powerhouse Management

VyprVPN belongs to Golden Frog GmbH, which is itself owned by Powerhouse Management.

While it’s operated from Texas, US, Golden Frog is incorporated in Switzerland. This is a plus for user privacy, although it’s not as impactful as some believe.

Switzerland is often called a ‘privacy haven’ because it isn’t in the EU, or in a major data sharing alliance like the Five Eyes or SIGINT. This means it doesn’t have formal agreements for sharing surveillance data. However, Switzerland does sometimes share information with other countries.

It also has data retention laws like the BÜPF, but they are comparatively lax compared to those of other countries.

In Switzerland, there is no law compelling VPN services to keep traffic logs, and the sharing of user data can’t be done casually. Crucially, Golden Frog doesn’t log any user web data in the first place.

Below is a table showing all the VPN protocols, encryption ciphers, and other technical features that VyprVPN offers:

VyprVPN automatically uses the WireGuard protocol on every platform, which is fast, secure, and open-source. Previously, the VPN used to automatically enable IKEv2 on mobile and OpenVPN on desktop.

VyprVPN also offers a NAT firewall to block any unrequested traffic coming into your device when connected to VyprVPN.

Not all of VyprVPN’s apps have the same advanced security features, though. For instance, VyprVPN’s iOS app doesn’t feature a kill switch and its PC client has a Public WiFi Protection option that’s not available on Mac.

The macOS app also has split tunneling and a malware blocker, which isn’t available on the Windows app.

VyprVPN Owns its Entire VPN Server Network

VyprVPN owns and operates all its VPN servers. Having almost no third-parties involved is one of VyprVPN’s biggest selling points as it is extremely rare for a mid-tier VPN to offer a self-hosted VPN server network.

This is better than most providers but still not as great as ExpressVPN and IPVanish, which use first-party DNS servers too.

Furthermore, VyprVPN advertises itself as completely eliminating third-parties, when actually it still uses third-party DNS servers as an endpoint, like a majority of other VPNs.

It’s nonetheless a strong step towards privacy by design, as it eliminates the security risks associated with renting VPN servers.

Trustworthy Kill Switch Stops IP Address Leaks

VyprVPN offers a kill switch Windows, macOS, Android, Android TV, and Amazon Fire TV — but not on iOS. In our kill switch tests, VyprVPN successfully prevented our real IP address from leaking.

It worked when our connection dropped altogether, and also when we switched servers from France to Greece. During these windows of time when our real IP could be leaked, VyprVPN successfully blocked our internet traffic.

VyprVPN passed our kill switch test on macOS.

Remember to manually turn off the VPN kill switch if you want to reconnect to the internet without VyprVPN connected.

VyprVPN Passed Our IP Address, DNS, & WebRTC Leak Tests

Our IP and DNS leak tests proved that VyprVPN is leak-proof. When connected to a VyprVPN server, our IP address appeared under German addresses, and our true IP location was never exposed.

On macOS, VyprVPN successfully masked our IP address.

VyprDNS uses a DNS relay system to prevent your DNS query from being associated with VyprVPN, and prevent websites from knowing you’re using a VPN.

When we tested for VyprDNS’ servers, it showed us the last DNS server in the relay was an Amazon DNS server.

A partial leak test, showing Amazon DNS servers instead of VyprVPN’s.

As you can see above, the DNS servers aren’t showing as VyprVPN, or its owners Golden Frog and Powerhouse Management.

VyprVPN clarified in an email that before your DNS traffic reaches any public DNS servers it is routed through a DNS proxy, fully anonymizing your traffic.

This isn’t quite the same as total end-to-end elimination of third parties, as VyprVPN seems to be leasing third-party DNS servers, but it’s still as close to it as possible without alerting websites that a VPN is being used.

Secure AES-256 encryption

We used Wireshark, a packet-sniffing tool, to inspect traffic being encrypted by our VyprVPN connection.

A Wireshark scan while connected to VyprVPN showed all traffic was encrypted.

Our tests showed that VyprVPN successfully encrypted web traffic. The unintelligible text in the screenshot above is exactly what anyone attempting to hack your connection would see while you use VyprVPN.

Technical Features We’d Like to See

Compared to some of its rivals, VyprVPN is lacking some key technical features. Here’s a list of some features we’d like to see introduced:

VyprVPN used to work in China, but lately it’s been very inconsistent. In our China VPN tests, we found it only had a 14% success rate in the past year.

In comparison, Private Internet Access’ has had a 97% success rate and only costs $2.19 per month on its best-value subscription.

VyprVPN’s Chameleon Protocol & Obfuscation Tools

VyprVPN can unblock websites in some high-censorship countries because of its Chameleon protocol.

You can find VyprVPN’s obfuscation protocol in Customize > Protocol.

This VPN protocol is specifically designed to bypass aggressive censorship and VPN blocks in countries like Turkey, China, and UAE. It’s currently available with every VPN server, too.

VyprVPN’s Chameleon protocol works by scrambling the metadata of each OpenVPN packet, preventing it from being identified through Deep Packet Inspection (DPI).

This should allow it to avoid detection from governments, ISPs, and other network administrators like your employer, school or university.

Underneath the obfuscation technology lies the unmodified OpenVPN protocol, with tried and tested AES-256 encryption. This means you can overcome censorship without sacrificing security.

The latest version of the protocol, Chameleon 2.0, has additional compatibility with Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS devices.

To measure the impact on our internet speed, we took note of our connection speed before and after connecting to VyprVPN’s servers.

We recorded an 16% when connected to a nearby server, which is an above average result. There have also been big speed improvements on international connections, too.

Upload speeds were really strong, reaching as high as 86Mbps. This is an improvement on past test results.

However, it’s simply not as fast as other top-rated VPNs like NordVPN and Surfshark.

Here’s a table showing VyprVPN’s international speed test results:

VyprVPN is very reliable, with little fluctuation in speed from one server location to the next. As long as you have a stable internet connection, you shouldn’t have any speed issues.

While global speeds have been a past weakness for VyprVPN, this is clearly no longer the case. On almost all connections, we saw notable speed improvements for both uploads and downloads.

Despite these improvements, VyprVPN simply isn’t able to match the speeds of other top VPN providers, such as ExpressVPN and NordVPN. If speed is a priority, there are faster VPNs available.

To put this in context, you can see how much slower VyprVPN’s international speeds are compared to other top VPNs in the table below:

On a New York-to-New York connection we suffered download speed drops of as much as 50%, compared to drops of less than 10% for VPNs like ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access.

Internationally, the results have been very similar, but VyprVPN has performed surprisingly well on very long-distance connections.

Low Ping for Gaming (But Only On Nearby Servers)

Ping times of just over 10ms between London and European servers are good, but not good enough to be a top-rated VPN for online gaming.

We were able to play Fortnite lag-free with VyprVPN, but we had to use a local server.

We especially wouldn’t recommend using VyprVPN to game on a long-distance connection. We recorded 98ms in the US and 300ms in Australia.

VyprVPN’s streaming capabilities have massively improved over the years. It can now unblock several major streaming platforms, which it could not do just two years ago.

Tested: VyprVPN Doesn’t Work with Netflix

VyprVPN unblocks zero Netflix libraries. This is extremely poor compared to some of its rivals like ExpressVPN and NordVPN, which both unblock at least 10 Netflix libraries.

Netflix detected VyprVPN and refused us access to the platform.

There are better VPNs that work with Netflix. Some can unblock 32 Netflix regions, like we assessed in our Windscribe tests.

VyprVPN Unblocks BBC iPlayer

Historically, we’ve struggled to stream BBC iPlayer using VyprVPN. However, the newest apps currently work well.

VyprVPN gets around BBC iPlayer blocks.

All UK servers worked, which is no easy feat considering lately many top-tier VPNs struggle to stream BBC’s video player.

VyprVPN Doesn’t Stream Disney+, Hulu, or HBO

VyprVPN doesn’t unblock either Hulu, HBO Max, or Disney+. We have been able to stream DAZN and Amazon Prime Video, though.

Hulu detected VyprVPN and blocked us from logging in.

Here’s a quick summary of showing how ExpressVPN performed in our torrenting tests:

VyprVPN’s kill switch and first-party VPN servers are great additions, and protect your real IP address during file-sharing on Windows and macOS.

Having said that, VyprVPN’s speeds aren’t the fastest and there is no support for port forwarding, either. If you’re a devoted torrenter then you may prefer to use a VPN that’s even more suited to P2P activity, like Private Internet Access.

We tested VyprVPN on qBittorrent.

Golden Frog has significantly improved its privacy policy. However, the copyright policy remains broadly unchanged.

At first the two policies seem to hold some conflict. The Copyright Policy states that “it is Golden Frog’s policy:

1. to remove or disable access to the content identified in the notice of claimed infringement;
2. to notify the subscriber that it has removed or disabled access to the content; and
3. to terminate in appropriate circumstances subscribers who are repeat infringers.”

However, VyprVPN would actually be “unable to identify particular users that may be infringing upon the copyright of others” because it’s a strict no-logs VPN. It doesn’t log real IP addresses, newly assigned IP addresses, DNS requests, timestamps, or bandwidth used.

But, we did find an isolated incident of someone being flagged for DMCA violations while using VyprVPN in 2022. In this case, however, it seems the user didn’t configure VyprVPN and qBittorrent properly.

In summary, it’s possible to receive a DMCA when connected to VyprVPN if you haven’t configured the app properly. If you’re a frequent torrenter, it’s worth checking out better VPNs for torrenting.

You can contact VyprVPN’s customer support team in the following ways:

VyprVPN has online support resources in multiple languages:

• Chinese
• Dutch
• English
• French
• German
• Portuguese
• Spanish
• Turkish

Compared to other top VPN services, VyprVPN’s online resources are great. It has an organized, easy-to-navigate help center, full of guides on how to set up VyprVPN on your device, FAQs, and how to manage your account details.

But, we are disappointed there aren’t any video tutorials.

VyprVPN’s live chat is sometimes helpful, other times confusing.

Getting in touch via the 24/7 live chat is by far the best way to get help from VyprVPN. You can request a human immediately, and we’ve never encountered a queue of above two people.

But the quality of responses are hit-or-miss. We’ve seen some frustratingly scripted and confusing responses to our queries.