Which VPNs Are The Best?

When we ran our recent Hive Five on VPN service providers, we heard from VPN providers begging to be included, angry CEOs who claimed their company was maliciously left out, and others accusing some of the contenders of illegal or unethical behavior. We took at look at the poll and the claims, and while there's no definitive proof the poll was gamed, we decided to come up with our own top five, based on our own research rather than reader feedback, that are great whether you're the privacy advocate, the student, or the downloader.

Private Internet Access

Supports: Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android
Protocols: SSL, PPTP, IPSec, and L2TP. You can also configure Private Internet Access to work on your DD-WRT or Tomato router (via SSL/OpenVPN) for constant security.
Home Country: United States, and has exit servers in the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Romania, and the Netherlands.
Logging Policies: The service keeps no logs of your activity whatsoever (in fact, the only things they do keep are your email address and payment information,) uses shared IPs, and has committed to keeping your data private. Price: Pricing starts at $7/mo to $40/yr, and you can read more about their plans and pricing here.

proXPN

Supports: Windows, OS X, iOS
Protocols: SSL, PPTP.
Home Country: United States, with exit servers in the US, The Netherlands, Singapore, and the UK.
Logging Policies: proXPN keeps minimal logs of your activity. proXPN collects your email address, payment information (if you're a premium user,) bandwidth usage, connection duration, and login/logout times. They've committed to only keeping those logs for 14 days or less, and promise to never share their logs with anyone, period.
Price: proXPN has a free plan, which limits your transfer speeds to 300kpbs and restricts you to one exit location (Miami) in the United States. Premium accounts unlock support for PPTP (if you want to connect a mobile device or a router,) remove the transfer cap, and allows you to choose from any of the company's other exit locations. Premium plans start at $10/mo, and you can read more about their pricing and plans here.

TorVPN

Supports: Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android
Protocols: SSL (they often refer to it as OpenVPN), PPTP, and full SSH tunneling.
Home Country: Hungary, with exit servers in Hungary.
Logging Policies: The service doesn't log your connection aside from bandwidth usage to compare against your quota, and your payment details. They also are committed to your privacy, and specifically say they won't surrender their data without a Hungarian court order.
Price: Free TorVPN users are limited to 1GB/mo downloaded before they're cut off, and Premium accounts start at 5 EUR/mo ($7mo) for 5GB/mo and go up to 30 EUR/mo ($38/mo) for 100GB. Keep in mind they have a no-refunds policy, and that even though you ride the Tor network, they're a separate entity from the Tor Project. You can read more about their pricing and plans here.

TorGuard

Supports: Windows, OS X, Linux, and iOS and Android via built-in VPN
Protocols: SSL (OpenVPN), PPTP, and L2TP, (with 256 bit security)
Home Country: Panama, with exit servers in The Netherlands, Romania, Ukraine and Panama.
Logging Policies: TorGuard wholeheartedly supports privacy, so you can feel a bit more secure that your connection is secure and anonymous. They purge their logs daily, and only keep payment information and registration info. They don't even keep login/logout times.
Price: Depending on whether you're the privacy advocate, the downloader, or a combination of the two, TorGuard offers plans specifically for anonymity (starting at $6/mo), for torrenting (starting at $5/mo), or for overall VPN services ($10/mo). You can read more about TorGuard's pricing and plans here.

WiTopia

Supports: Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, webOS, Chromebooks.
Protocols: SSL, PPTP, IPSec, and L2TP (with 256 bit security)
Home Country: United States, with exit servers in 10 US cities, and countries in Latin and South America, Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East—way too many to list here.
Logging Policies: WiTopia does not log information that can be attributable to individual users, purges logs weekly, and only saves registration information and payment details when you sign up.
Price: $50/yr to $70/yr depending on the level of encryption and protocols you need. They also sell a VPN router you can take with you when you travel. You can read more about WiTopia's pricing and plans here.

Alternatively, Roll Your Own VPN

We've shown you how to roll your own VPN using Hamachi, and even how to set up Privoxy to secure your web browsing once you have your personal VPN set up. Hamachi isn't the only option: you can also download and configure OpenVPN (a free SSL VPN) on your own home server,, or if you have a router that supports it, enable OpenVPN on your home router so you can connect back to it when you're abroad. Combined with Privoxy, you get the privacy and anonymity benefits of a VPN without spending a dime.
Both of these options put control in your hands, and while they're not quite as anonymous as subscription methods or offer international exit locations, they do give you the the most important benefits of a VPN: security, privacy, and anonymity while you're away from home.

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Samara Lynn is Lead Analyst, Networking and Small Business at PCMag.com. You can follow her on Twitter at @samaralynn. She graciously volunteered her expertise for this post, and we thank her.
Title image remixed using konmesa (Shutterstock) and Toria (Shutterstock).