With the internet abuzz with privacy concerns and the potential changes coming to net neutrality , you’ve likely heard about virtual private networks, better known as VPNs. …
With the internet abuzz with privacy concerns and the potential changes coming to net neutrality, you’ve likely heard about virtual private networks, better known as VPNs. When used correctly, a VPN can greatly strengthen your online privacy, assist in keeping your personal information secure, and even spoof your location in the world—allowing you to access websites or services that would otherwise be off limits due to region-locking. With the increased popularity of VPNs has come an increased number of VPN providers vying for your business. That makes finding the best one to suit your needs difficult. To help you sort out the right provider for you, we’ve committed to extensive research and testing of VPN services that cater to Mac owners. If nothing but the best will do, check out our routinely updated list of category leaders below. Updated 5/17/21 to include our review of ProtonVPN. Scroll to the bottom of this article to see links to all of our VPN reviews. If you prefer to do your own shopping, we’ve got your back there, too: Each of the VPNs we test is thoroughly reviewed, allowing you to make an informed decision on which one to throw your money at. See complete summaries of our picks, and our full list of reviews below. It’s hard not to love NordVPN, and it remains our top pick for Mac users. If your main concern is maintaining privacy and as much anonymity as you can realistically achieve online, NordVPN has gone a long way to improving user trust in 2020. (Read our full review of NordVPN.) NordVPN offers above-average data encryption to keep their subscribers’ data safe while tunneling. It’s got a large network of servers, too: over 3,000 servers spread across more than 60 countries, allowing you to spoof a wide number of locations and avoid server congestion. Moreover, its software interface is easy to use, making even new VPN users feel like online-privacy experts. While it’s not perfect, NordVPN gets more right than any of the other VPN providers we’ve tested so far. Mullvad is the ultimate choice for users who want to remain as anonymous as possible online. Mullvad runs its own VPN network and wants to know as little about you as possible. Users don’t supply a name and email address to create an account, and you can even pay in cash if you like. The service’s privacy policy is also top notch. You won’t find any special features such as a promise to work with Netflix. Regardless, anyone who cares about privacy and anonymity should seriously consider Mullvad. (Read our full review of Mullvad.) The latest version of ExpressVPN has by far the best overall connection speeds we’ve seen. Its performance in every major region we tested was excellent including Europe, the U.K., the United States, and Asia. ExpressVPN is expensive for a VPN, but you get a lot of value for that money. If you’re interested in connecting to zippy VPN servers located within the continental United States, ExpressVPN is the one to beat. (Read our full review of ExpressVPN.) If you are interested in connecting to servers in other countries, we’ve found the following to be fast options: While VPN services are mostly foolproof, some users want a little more control over their connection. There are numerous VPN services that let you specify a VPN protocol or offer one-click double VPN connections. AirVPN does none of that, but what it does offer is clear information about its network at any given time. This allows people to pick and choose between specific servers based on their current load, number of users on the server, or ping time. You could even monitor network trends to get an understanding of which connections will perform best at a given time of day.
