Superb speed, so-so privacy.
Editor's Note: Due to the popularity and interest in our last VPN roundup, we're reviewing five more VPNs this week to see which of them is the best, and have expanded out speed and ping tests. For a beginner's guide on what a VPN is and why you should care, read our introductory article Everything You Need to Know About VPN.
VyprVPN from Golden Frog combines a well-designed desktop app with excellent performance, making it a winning service. It dominated the other VPN services in this roundup -- PureVPN, NordVPN, TorGuard, and TigerVPN -- in my tests for download speeds, however its download dominance didn’t carry over to my latency tests. Still, VyprVPN was still one of the better performers. Its log policy may give some gamers pause, however, and its basic service supports only three simultaneous connections whereas other services allow up to five, but its premium service does allow for five devices.
Pricing
VyprVPN offers two plans, both of which let you pay month-to-month or a discounted rate if you sign up for a year of service. The basic plan costs $9.95 a month if you pay month to month or $5.00 a month for the one-year plan. The premium plan costs $12.95 a month if you pay month to month or $6.67 a month for the one-year plan. Both plans offer unlimited data usage, but the premium plan allows five simultaneous connections while the basic plan allows for three.
The premium plan also includes VyprVPN Cloud, a dedicated cloud VPN server, and the "Chameleon protocol," Golden Frog’s proprietary protocol it claims defeats VPN blocking. Golden Frog offers a free three-day trial for each plan. Payment options are limited and include credit card, PayPal and Alipay. Other VPN services let you pay anonymously via Bitcoin or gift card. VyprVPN has apps for Windows, MacOS, and Linux as well as Android and iOS devices. I used the Windows app and the basic service for my tests.
Features
VyprVPN boasts a well-designed, easy-to-use desktop app. The app opens in a small window but with large, legible text. A big connection button sits at the top, promising to connect you to the fastest server, but you can also browse or search for a server by country (and by city in the U.S. and Australia). You can also sort the list of servers by ping to see the fastest servers, and you can mark servers as favorites so you can easily return to reliably fast servers.
VyprVPN has more than 700 servers in 64 countries. That’s fewer servers than PureVPN, NordVPN, and TorGuard, but they are in the second-highest number of countries in this roundup, behind only PureVPN.
VyprVPN’s basic service supports the big three security protocols: OpenVPN, L2TP/IPsec, and PPTP. The protocol tab in settings has a helpful descriptions for each of the protocols. Elsewhere in settings you can enable a kill switch, which shuts down your Internet connection if the VPN gets disconnected. It also allows P2P torrent traffic and did not block Netflix.
VyprVPN’s log policy merits a closer look. Most VPNs offer a blanket statement saying it keeps no logs of any type stored for any amount of time. VyprVPN does not log a user's traffic or the content of any communications, but it does “retain the following data for 30 days: the user's source IP address, the VyprVPN IP address used by the user, connection start and stop time and total number of bytes used.” It does this “to use with billing issues, troubleshooting, service offering evaluation, TOS issues, AUP issues, and for handling crimes performed over the service.” Gamers looking for the fastest ping likely care less about privacy than someone connecting to public Wi-Fi or engaging in quasi-legal P2P file sharing, but if privacy is your main concern, other VPN services feature blanket "no-logs" policies and claim to not keep logs of your IP address for 30 days.
Performance
Routing your Web traffic through a server adds a detour that can slow down the speed of your network connection, but in some circumstances it can actually improve your ping by connecting you to a fast server close to the gaming server. Your mileage will inevitably vary, depending on your location and the location of the gaming server to which you are connected.
To test the performance of VyprVPN, I ran the SpeedOf.Me test to measure download and upload speeds and also played League of Legends, Overwatch, and Team Fortress 2 to check the VPN’s effect on my ping in real-world multiplayer gaming. Because the speed of your Internet connection fluctuates throughout the day, I ran each test twice -- once in the afternoon and another time in the evening. For the tests, I simply hit the connect button to let VyprVPN choose the fastest server. I live in southern New Hampshire; for each test, VyprVPN selected a server in New York.
On SpeedOf.Me, VyprVPN’s download speeds make it look like Usain Bolt racing against high school kids - it offered the fastest download speeds by a wide margin. In the evening specifically it offered a nearly 3x faster download speed than the next-closed VPN compared in this set. Meanwhile, its uploads speed was second-fastest on the afternoon tests and third-fastest on the evening tests.
Next, I ran three games in the afternoon to test latency. On League of Legends, my ping on the game’s Americas server was so good (40ms) that I choose instead to connect to its “EU Nordic and East” server where my ping was higher to see if the various services could improve my latency. On the afternoon tests, VyprVPN improved my ping on all three games. It was second only to TorGuard on League of Legends and Overwatch when connected to the game’s Americas server. It slipped to a fourth place finish on Overwatch when I switched to its Asia server but then tied TigerVPN for the fastest ping on Team Fortress 2.
Next, I ran the three games again in the evening to see how my ping was affected. VyprVPN finished behind TorGuard on the evening tests with a strong, second-place showing on all tests save Overwatch (Americas server) where it was tied for third. It's worth pointing out that all of these ping tests were close enough to each other that I did not notice any significant differences in how the games felt to play, but it's still good to acknowledge VyperVPN's strong showing here.
On the whole, VyprVPN turned in outstanding performance, from lapping the field with its download speeds to showing competitive pings in my online game tests. Further, it connected quickly and never dropped the connection, and featured an attractive interface that was easy to use and included welcome features and functions.
Purchasing Guide
VyprVPN offers a basic and a premium service, both of which come in at fairly standard VPN price ranges:
VyprVPN basic:
- $9.95 a month billed monthly
- $5.00 a month billed annual ($60.00 a year)
VyprVPN premium:
- $12.95 a month billed monthly
- $6.67 a month billed annually ($80.04 a year)
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The Verdict
VyprVPN is a well-rounded package, offering polished software and fast, stable performance. It's easily the most impressive VPN we evaluated in this set. But privacy-focused consumers should note it keeps logs for 30 days, so if absolute privacy is a must-have this could be a sticking point. That said, the performance was so much better than the rest of the VPNs in this set that it's an easy service to recommend. In that regard, VyperVPN is one of the best VPNs we've tested.
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