The best VPN services (and whether it's worth trying free VPNs)

We found the best VPN is ExpressVPN. It offers a wide range of platforms, great performance, and has server locations in an exceptionally high number of countries. 

However, there are many VPN options on the market that are worth your time -- and, potentially, your dollars should you choose to subscribe to them. When you consider what VPN to go for, keep in mind that the longer you agree to a subscription, the cheaper the VPN will be.

We ran a series of tests on each of the above VPNs, on paid services, to see how they compared. 

The tests were performed with a broadband connection in the UK with a starting speed, without a VPN, of 54.5Mbps download and 15.1Mbps upload. (Yes, they are terrible, but the best where I live in the UK currently has to offer).

The following speeds are in Mbps. We also tested for the presence of DNS leaks.

Please keep in mind, though, that results may be different for you and vary from country to country. They may also be impacted by your ISP provider and broadband subscription. 

The below results are not to say exactly what speeds you may expect, but to provide a general idea of how your speeds could change with a VPN enabled. 

We have written about how VPNs work and how to find the best VPN service for you. Here are four tips to help you evaluate a VPN service for yourself.

1. Pay attention to trial period times and use them: Every VPN performs differently, and every user experience is going to be different still. Your ISP will offer different speeds than mine. Your favorite coffee shop has a different network connection than mine. You're even likely to be connecting to different countries and definitely different sites. Before committing to a VPN provider, test candidates thoroughly in your real-world environment. That's what the trial times and money-back guarantees are for.

2. Avoid free VPN providers: Running a VPN is expensive, and if the VPN provider doesn't make money from your service fees, they're going to make money from your data -- sometimes even stealing your personal information and selling it. Stick with the proven commercial vendors we've tested. There are also cases where 'free' VPNs undermine what the software is meant to stand for -- data protection and security -- and you may, instead, be downloading a product that will compromise your privacy. 

3. Don't worry about the country of jurisdiction unless: There are generally two classes of VPN users, those who need to protect their coffee shop surfing and those counting on a VPN to protect their lives. VPN often provides a level of security theatre where folks get bent out of shape if a country has any form of data jurisdiction. But as shown by ZDNET author David Gewirtz in this article, many countries outside of the so-called Five Eyes are Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties signatories and will share data with the US and other countries anyway. If you're using a VPN to provide true protection, research this a lot more than reading a review article.

4. Finally, don't sweat warrant canaries and no log policies: Most of you are going to use a VPN to protect your data stream from being hijacked by someone sharing your network. All of these big legal and jurisdictional issues get in the way of the simple fact that you want fast transfers and an encrypted tunnel from your spot in the airport to the website you're trying to access.

Many of the providers recommended in this list have been subject to in-depth testing and reviews by ZDNET authors. Other VPNs have been ones we've been talking about for years, spoken with their management and their users, and have developed a generally favorable impression.

But here's the thing: All these vendors have solid money-back guarantees, and we would not have recommended them otherwise. We do test VPN services from multiple locations, but we can't test from all locations. Every home, every community, every local ISP, and every nation has a different infrastructure. It's essential that once you choose, you test for all your likely usage profiles and only then make the decision to keep the service or request a refund.

One thing to consider is whether you're looking for a solution for working at home vs. traveling. For example, if you travel rarely, have strong bandwidth at home, and have a NAS or a server box, you might want to VPN to your home server from your machine's native client and then out to the world. If you're new to working from home and your company has a dedicated VPN, you'll want to use whatever process they've set out for you.

Also: How to install and set up a VPN on iOS, Mac, Windows, and Android 

But, generally speaking, it doesn't hurt to have a VPN provider already set up and in your kit bag. Most home-based traffic won't require VPN usage, but having a VPN provider is a good idea if you're on any sort of shared connection. Also, having a VPN provider can be a win if you ever think you'll need to access the Internet from out and about -- like a hospital or doctor's office. Likewise, if you want to obscure where you're connecting from, a VPN provider might help.

If you experience traffic slowdowns, be sure to check not only your VPN but your Wi-Fi connection between your device and your router, your connection to your broadband provider, and even their connection to upstream providers.

VPN is an acronym for Virtual Private Network. These services allow users to browse the internet privately and securely connect to open or public Wi-Fi networks. VPNs give users the ability to change their virtual location by redirecting the connection through one of its servers located around the world. A VPN will also encrypt all of your traffic, so you're hidden from hackers, your internet service provider, and governments.

However, if your online activities are being monitored at the ISP level -- say, by a government -- they may recognize the signature of a VPN in play, even if exactly what you are doing is hidden.

VPNs are useful in unblocking geo-restricted content and can be a vital tool for accessing information in countries with repressive governments. And they are important services for anyone that wants to maintain a high level of safety and privacy online. However, because they are anonymous (or at least should be) they can also be used to hide illegal online activities such as pirating content.

A fully functioning VPN should protect your privacy and mask your location and IP address. If you're not sure if your VPN is working properly, there are a handful of tools that make checking your VPN's performance easy.

You can find out your IP address and location using whatismyipaddress.com. Just compare the IP address and location when you're connected with a VPN vs. without a VPN. If they are different, then your VPN is doing its job.

It's also possible that your VPN is leaking your data and potentially exposing your online activity. To ensure your VPN doesn't have any issues with DNS leaks or IP leaks, you can run tests on a site like DNS Leak Test. There are plenty of tools that allow you to test for leaks, but many are owned by VPN providers and it may not always be clear who developed the tool, which could be a conflict of interest. So you may want to run tests with several different sites and compare the results.

If you're connecting to a corporate VPN, you may not need to purchase a VPN service. All the major desktop operating systems include VPN capabilities. Here's how to get started using those.

If you're connecting to an existing corporate virtual private network, you may not need an additional service. MacOS comes with native VPN support built right in.

Apple provides VPN support on recent OS versions. Head over to System Settings, the Network tab, and either import the configuration file you were provided or hit the plus button and add a VPN interface. Here's a handy tip sheet from Apple that will walk you through the process.

If you're connecting to an established corporate VPN, all you need to do is add a new Windows VPN connection. Point your mouse at the Start menu, type settings, then select Settings, Network & Internet, VPN, then Add VPN. Make sure you have the connection details provided by work and then click on Add a New VPN Connection. Fill in the form and you're good to go. Here's a handy tip sheet from Microsoft.

Windows also allows you to host a VPN server by creating a new incoming network connection, choosing the users who can connect, and telling Windows that the incoming connection is across the internet. You'll also have to configure your router to allow traffic to your computer. 

Sadly, this simple solution isn't built into the standard Chrome browser. If you're just using the browser on a Mac or Windows machine, you'll need a different solution. 

That said, if you're rocking a Chromebook, all you need to do is open Settings and then Network. Click Add Connection. Then all you need to do is choose between OpenVPN and L2TP over IPSec. Google has a handy cheat sheet right here to guide you through the process. 

WireGuard is Linux's baked-in VPN capability. Its code is relatively simple and small, making it far easier to maintain, test, and debug. 

Also: Linux's WireGuard VPN is here and ready to protect you

So what do you need to set up WireGuard? More and more of the VPNs we spotlighted support WireGuard right out of the box. You can download it for Linux. But you can also download a package for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and FreeBSD. It's like most open source products, in that you'll need to do some reading and thinking to make it work. 

We're highlighting paid services in this article, although some of them offer a free tier or a money-back guarantee during a trial period. In general, fully free VPN services aren't recommended because they may not be secure. 

Operating a good VPN service requires hundreds of servers across the world and a ton of networking resources.  If you're not paying to support that infrastructure, who is? Probably advertisers or data miners. If you use a free service, your data or your eyeballs will probably be sold, and that's never a good thing. After all, you're using a VPN to ensure your data is kept secure. You wouldn't want to then have all that data go to some company to sift through -- it completely defeats the purpose.

Now, before you choose a VPN service, free or paid, it must be made clear that no one tool can guarantee your privacy. First, anything can be compromised. But more to the point, a VPN protects your data from your computer to the VPN service. It doesn't protect what you put on servers. It doesn't protect your data from the VPN provider's VPN servers to whatever site or cloud-based application you use. It doesn't give you good passwords or multifactor authentication. Privacy and security require you to be diligent throughout your digital journey, and VPNs, while quite helpful, are not a miracle cure.

IPVanish is the best VPN for Chrome. We did an in-depth analysis of servers, performance, Chromebook compatibility and locations and IPVanish topped ExpressVPN and NordVPN.

NordVPN is ZDNET's best VPN for the iPhone. We analyzed the number of simultaneous connections, servers, and countries, as well as kill switch ability, logging, speed, ability to unlock streaming services, and price -- and NordVPN came out on top. It's also an easy VPN to set up and use on your iPhone, so you don't need to be a tech wiz to get it up and running.

There are also plenty of free VPNs for iPhone, but as much as you may want to save money, these typically aren't a great option. Free VPNs come with an increased risk of security flaws. Not only that, but free VPNs underperform compared to premium services and are often riddled with ads or have severe data or bandwidth limitations. In the worst cases, free VPN providers may make money selling your data.

If it's your data and you want it to be secure, yes. The same choices are valid regardless of what kind of device you use to transmit and receive data over the Internet.

Yes, in most countries, such as the US, the UK, and the majority of Europe. Some countries, however, have made VPN use illegal or they are severely discouraged and limited to state-approved software. 

At present, countries including North Korea, Iraq, and Belarus, ban the use of VPNs entirely. As noted in NordVPN's country guide, others -- such as China, Russia, and Egypt -- discourage their use and try to stop new adoption by demonizing VPNs as software widely used for criminal activity. 

Workarounds do exist, but they may come with risk.

Some do. Check when you sign up. For non-free plans, none of the providers we recommended limit the amount of data you can use. But almost all limit how many devices you can use at once. 

As a general rule of thumb, free or trial offerings tend to restrict usage, speed, or the number of devices you can connect to the VPN, with access and speed increased for paying customers.

Logging is the recording of data about your usage, and it occurs everywhere. Every website, at minimum, records an IP address, time, and data accessed so they can track traffic. All VPN providers have to check credentials against recorded personal data to make sure you paid, but a few let you sign up with Bitcoin, allowing you to completely hide your identity. When we say a VPN doesn't log data, we mean they don't track what sites you visit and for how long, but they may track how much of their own infrastructure you use.

A VPN for your office only securely links to your office. If you want to securely link to anywhere else, you'll need another VPN service.

So let's say you're surfing along, and all of a sudden, your VPN connection fails. Your phone or computer is likely to immediately try to reconnect and do so directly without going through a VPN. All of a sudden, your data is unprotected. 

A kill switch is a feature in your device's VPN app that detects when a connection fails and immediately shuts down network access. Like with everything, it's not a 100% perfect solution, but these days, I wouldn't recommend using a VPN that doesn't offer a kill switch.

When you have multiple devices -- such as a tablet, laptop, and smartphone -- and you are using these devices for different tasks, you still want to keep your data and connections secure on each machine.

When you have enabled the VPN on more than one device at the same time, this means you are using simultaneous connections. It's always best to have this feature in a VPN to ensure your privacy isn't accidentally compromised through one device or another.  

Using a VPN does add load and can often slow down your connection. That's because your data is encrypted, decrypted, and sent through intermediate servers. Game responsiveness might suffer, for example, or you may notice your streaming service isn't as fast to load as usual. 

However, with many high-quality VPNs now available, the negative impact is often unnoticeable, unless there is a problem with the VPN server you are connecting to. To fix this, try out a server in a different location and see if that improves your connection.

If you've been shopping for a VPN service, you've undoubtedly come across a bunch of names like SSL, OpenVPN, SSTP, L2TP/IPSec, PPP, PPTP, IKEv2/IPSec, SOCKS5, and more. These are all communication protocols. They are, essentially, the name of the method by which your communication is encrypted and packaged for tunneling to the VPN provider. To be honest, while VPN geeks can argue over protocols for hours, you're probably good enough if you just use the default setup by your provider.

If the products that made it into our top five don't suit your needs, there are a number of alternative VPN providers you may want to consider: