We spend over 3,000 hours undertaking 2,800 streaming tests and 28,000 speed tests on over a hundred VPNs every year – all in the name of delivering the most accurate and impartial results to our readers so they can make the most informed decision possible when picking the best VPN.
In this round of testing, we've made quite possibly the biggest change to our rankings since we started reviewing VPNs. After six years, NordVPN has finally dethroned ExpressVPN as our #1 provider. While both services are at the bleeding edge of VPN tech, NordVPN quite simply offers more features for a better price. It's also one of the fastest VPNs we've ever tested, and is a great VPN for streaming.
Elsewhere, Private Internet Access has shown continued improvement, moving up to fourth, followed by the ever-impressive Proton VPN in fifth. Some of the results in this round of testing were very surprising, so here I'll be running down all the juicy bits. First, though, I'll give you a quick breakdown of the very best providers right now.
The 5 best VPNs in 2024
My latest test results
The constituents of my top five haven't changed, but their order certainly has – most notably with ExpressVPN dropping off the #1 spot in favor of NordVPN. Private Internet access has shown real improvement, and thanks to that it has just edged out Proton VPN for the #4 position.
Elsewhere, we've seen some changes. Windscribe continues to improve despite a few setbacks – namely its cramped apps, lack of audits, and controversial April fools joke – while privacy-focused Mullvad and uber-configurable Hide.me round off my top 10.
PrivadoVPN Free took its place as my top free provider a few months ago, toppling Proton VPN Free, but both are excellent and will suit different users.
The most feature-packed VPN doesn't take #1 by default. Maintaining a quality privacy product year after year is the most important thing.
In my opinion, having great swathes of features and additional products doesn't necessarily make a product better than one that is only a VPN.
For example, ExpressVPN offers very little other than its VPN, but the VPN itself is class-leading, and overall ExpressVPN outdoes Proton VPN, which has a whole ecosystem of apps.
Consistency is also essential. My choices and rankings are drawn not only from individual rounds of testing, but my years of experience using, reviewing, and writing about VPNs.
The ones you'll see me recommending the most are those that I trust, and have seen deliver great results review after review, year after year.
Streaming site unblocking results
Most VPNs claim they're able to unblock just about every streaming site around the world – but this simply isn't true. The Tom's Guide VPN team and I test every VPN we review with a ton of different streaming sites to make sure the claims they make are true.
Malware, tracker, and ad-blocking results
Lots of VPNs include extra malware- or ad-blocking tools to bolster their offering, but do these actually work, and can they outdo a dedicated service? We always test these, and we check them using:
- A tool we've built that tries to access over 150 common trackers (Facebook, Twitter, etc), and notes down whether or not they're blocked by the VPN.
- A tool we've built that attempts to visit a list of around 500 URLs (updated daily from sources like GitHub) that have been flagged as malicious to see what happens.
- Running a few ad-blocking testers (including AdBlock Tester) and seeing how the VPN's ad blocker stacks up.
Here are our results:
What is the fastest VPN?
Almost every VPN on the market will claim to be the fastest provider around. Some have even based their whole branding around it (ahem, FastestVPN, ahem), but in reality, there's a huge difference between the truly speedy and desperately sluggish.
Bear in mind, too, that speed isn't everything – if you've only got a connection that can deliver, say, 100 Mbps, having a VPN that tops out at 1 Gbps won't make your connection any faster, and often it's worth making your decision elsewhere.
Tom's Guide's VPN rankings
The VPN market is huge with a new name apparently cropping up every week. Below are my top 20 services that I've reviewed – some aren't worth your time, while others may offer you a certain feature that you can't get elsewhere.
How we test VPNs
When it comes to recommending a product that users will entrust with quite possibly every byte of their online life, I have to be absolutely sure that my choices are correct, and thoroughly tested.
For a comprehensive rundown, check out our full methodology of how we test VPNs. For the time-poor, though, here are the crib notes.
Unlike some sites, we don't simply reel off a spec sheet and declare the provider with the most impressive claims the winner. Instead, we have a dedicated team in-house that gets hands-on with all the providers listed (and more).
Every 6 months, after scouring the website for new claimed features or changes in policy, we sign up to a plan and install it on a range of devices. The Windows app sees the most rigorous testing, and it's here that we'll try to break the kill switch, ensure any leak protection is working correctly, and measure connection speeds.
The other apps, including the Mac VPN, iPhone VPN, and Android VPN also see comprehensive testing, and we'll check every available setting in every app to make sure it's functioning as promised by the provider.
As we use the apps, if anything appears to be behaving strangely we'll investigate that. We might dig into the source code, or view the contents of its RAM. This general usage stage is also how we make decisions on aesthetics and ease of use – although these are admittedly more subjective.
Then comes the streaming testing. We'll test each VPN with all the big streaming sites from a number of locations to ensure it's working as claimed. As Netflix is still hugely popular and somewhat troublesome when it comes to VPNs, we test the biggest providers every month to make sure my recommendations are still relevant.
Meet the experts
Meet the people behind our VPN reviews and rankings:
