In the United States your online data privacy is always at risk, and because at any point lawmakers could vote to surrender your browsing history to the FBI, now is the time to start using a VPN—a virtual private network that conceals your IP address from unwanted spectators including your internet service provider and the US government. That is, assuming you can trust your VPN service provider to keep your personal information under wraps.
As someone browsing the web unprotected (without a VPN), I asked our readers earlier this week to help me find the best VPN in terms of features, pricing, customer service, and security. And, as always, you brought the heat. Apart from some of the more in-depth responses breaking options down by infrastructure and performance, I’ve aggregated the most popular comments here so that you, too, can join the VPN gang—an infamous band of Extremely Online roughneck posters with a newfound enthusiasm for anonymity.
Private Internet Access | $3/Month for 1 Year + 3 Months Free
Multifactor Support: Yes
Pay by: Credit Card, PIA gift card, or through a variety of other gift cards for privacy. Multiyear discounts!
Supports all common OSes and 10 devices connected simultaneously under 1 account.
Support for UDP or TCP connections to ensure compatibility with different networks.
Tons of VPN gateways and no bandwidth restrictions.
Privacy protections, no traffic logs, helps block ads, trackers, and malware.
Check it out, I have been using for years with consistent reliability. - financialcogs
+1 for Private Internet Access.
Now I have no comparison since this is the only VPN that I’ve used, but it’s been rock solid for over 2 years now. Good value and not a single crash that I can recall. Good features such as the killswitch and easily switching to different areas. Speeds have been really good overall. I’m running this on a MacBook Pro, a Mac mini, and a Windows desktop (or get up to 5 machines with a single license). - elchappie
IPVanish | $5/Month for 1 Year
The only VPN I’ve tried was IPVanish and have had zero issues, so they’re an easy recommendation for me. - Moosen10
ExpressVPN | $10/Month for 1 Year
If privacy and a desire for both streaming content from other countries then nothing tops ExpressVPN. Their servers are all over the world and you’ll rarely have issues streaming Netflix or other content from anywhere you’d like.
It’s pricier than some of the options others will likely mention but IMO you get what you pay for and you’re paying for a service that does its job well and who has excellent support. For a review check out the Restore Privacy review. - bangishotyou
NordVPN | $4/Month for 3 Years
Nord is actually pretty solid for one of the more marketed VPNs.
But really Mullvad is probably number one. Nobody ever talks about it, though, because it doesn’t advertise.
I used to use AirVPN, it was good, too. - Gigith
Mullvad VPN | $6/Month
Mullvad VPN is great, they were independently audited to be 100% no-log. In addition, the company is outside of the jurisdiction of the United States and has many high-speed servers all over the world. I pay about $6 per month. - GomerPyle