iPhone VPN, comparison
You might be surprised at how similar the three VPNs I chose are when you analyze their features, but that’s no accident. Considering how restrictive I was about who made the final cut, that’s a pretty high bar for inclusion. Although there are some minor differences, I’ve designed this list in such a way that you can pick one of my picks without reading a single word and still come out on the other side with an excellent VPN for iPhone.
Other iPhone VPNs we tested
Surfshark: Surfshark was a strong contender for the main list. Even its Starter plan comes with additional features like a masked email generator. Features like ad and tracker blocking as well as unlimited simultaneous connections come standard on all plans. However, it was a little slower than my top choices, losing about 20 percent speed on average, compared to about 15 percent for the top choices.
Mullvad: Mullvad is a favorite among privacy enthusiasts, and with good reason too. It doesn’t bother with multi-year rebates or referral programs, and you don’t even need to provide an email to sign up for an account. You can also pay a fixed monthly fee by mailing Mullvad Cash. This is a great service if privacy is your top priority, but it sacrifices speed and features in the process. VPN services like Nord and Proton have quickly evolved into full privacy and security suites, while Mullvad is more focused on building a robust VPN. In terms of the iPhone, the scales tilt more towards those security suites, but Mullvad is still a great privacy-focused option to keep in mind.
ExpressVPN: By the numbers, ExpressVPN has to be at the top of the list. It’s got tons of servers, a featureset that can go toe-to-toe with the Nord, and speeds just a touch slower than the Proton. However, ExpressVPN has found itself in the midst of increasing controversy over the past four years, and the brand has yet to get back on solid footing. After being purchased by Cape Technologies – the company behind the infamous adware company CrossRider – former US intelligence officer Daniel Gerik took over as CTO and remained in that role for two years, even after being fined more than $300,000 by the US Justice Department for hacking activities on behalf of a foreign government. Gerike left in 2023, but that same year, ExpressVPN experienced massive layoffs, and its parent company Cape was delisted from the London Stock Exchange. The majority of the shares went to Uniquemind Holdings Ltd., a company owned by Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi, who got his start by creating the gambling software Playtech. This is a very condensed version of what ExpressVPN has gone through over the years. The company hasn’t done anything nefarious, but the revolving door of executive control associated with controversial names doesn’t inspire confidence.
Private Internet Access: Private Internet Access, or PIA, is also owned by Cape Technologies, and it followed the same playbook as ExpressVPN and CyberGhost, also owned by Cape. Following the acquisition and community reaction, there has been little transparency about what is going on at the company. The connection to the Cape certainly raises questions, but it does not immediately disqualify a service from inclusion. Unfortunately for PIA, its speeds were much slower than any other VPN services I tested, so regardless of ownership, it’s not a top choice for an iPhone VPN.
iPhone VPNs to Avoid
X-VPN: X-VPN is one of many different VPNs that appear at the top of search results on iPhone. There is a desktop app, but X-VPN primarily targets mobile users with its free plan. It was featured in a Tech Transparency Project report about VPNs linked to the Chinese government, along with apps like TurboVPN. I haven’t tested TurboVPN, but X-VPN has had issues. Even without the shady ties, X-VPN doesn’t have the best speeds, and it lacks basic features like split tunneling, all the while charging the same price as top VPNs like NordVPN and ProtonVPN.
Hola: If you have been in the VPN space for any length of time, Hola is a notorious name. About a decade ago, Hola came under fire. It owns a data collection company known as Bright Data (formerly Luminati), and the network is made up of users using Hola. This network was used for a public distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Even a decade later, Hola still logs user data, including your IP address, and it still sells access to its peer-to-peer network, meaning you could become an exit node without knowing.
EventVPN: EventVPN comes from the same team behind ExpressVPN, but it takes a very different approach to privacy. It’s free, and it’s only available on iPhone and Mac, but most importantly, it’s supported by ads. EventVPN says it is able to leverage an ad-supported model with Apple’s ad privacy features, allowing tailored advertisements without giving out personally-identifiable information. At least that’s the story, but as you can read in our iPhone privacy guide, Apple’s privacy-focused advertising model still shares some important information, including your zip code. Additionally, the prevalence of ads in EventVPN makes it difficult to recommend. Every time you connect or disconnect from the server you have to wait for a 30-second video, and a banner ad remains on top of the app at all times. EventVPN has a paid plan to remove ads, but at that time, you can also choose ExpressVPN. And, at the free end, there are ProtonVPN and Windscribe, I would recommend both of these over EventVPN.
How we tested
To earn the Best iPhone VPN title, a service must meet three criteria. It needs to be secure, fast and easy to use. This may seem pretty straightforward, but there’s more to it. For ease of use, I only looked at VPNs that offer one-tap connections. If you need to configure anything, it’s impractical. This still only includes the most popular VPNs on iPhone, so I’ve further narrowed the field by focusing on apps that balance utility with power. You should have all the relevant features in the iOS app that are available in the desktop app, and arranged in such a way that they don’t disrupt that one-tap experience.
Speed testing is where I focused most of my testing time. Speed testing is highly variable, and trying to come up with a single number to encompass the speeds of thousands of servers is a fool’s errand. The numbers I collected for this guide are the result of 20 tests I conducted for each VPN, then averaged.
I tested five locations for each VPN, measuring their unsecured speeds just before the test and running three passes before averaging. Each location was tested at different times of the day, and I removed any outliers before averaging. For this guide, this meant if there was more than 10 percent deviation between two of the three dice. After averaging the speed drop for each location, I gathered all those numbers together and averaged them to get the final speed drop.
Finally, security. The conventional wisdom with a VPN is that you have to, at some point, have some trust in the company that its privacy policy is accurate and that it’s not lying about its logging practices. He didn’t do this for me. Again, I have set a high bar for inclusion.
Every VPN I include here has not only been independently audited, but has also been forced to maintain its no-logs policy in legal proceedings. You really need to have some trust that the VPN provider you’re using is telling the truth, but the options I’ve included have a pretty good track record when it comes to transparency.
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