The 3 Best VPN Services of 2025
Better known for its antivirus products, Bitdefender Premium VPN costs a compelling $7 per month or $70 per year. If you let the free trial expire, you can continue using a limited version of Bitdefender’s VPN with a data limit of 200 MB per day. That’s probably not enough data for most people, however.
The Brave browser can also double as a VPN, similar to the VPN option offered by the Opera browser that we evaluated previously. Unlike Opera, Brave doesn’t offer a free version of its VPN. Although Brave’s monthly plan is only $10, its annual plan tops $100. Our picks offer more for less, and we don’t love the idea of needing to use a particular browser to control your VPN.
Alternate search engine DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro offers a VPN alongside a data-removal service and other privacy tools for $10 a month or $100 a year. That pricing makes sense for a bundle of services you want, but it’s a lot to ask if you want only a VPN. Like Brave and Opera, it also requires you to use its browser to access VPN features. We also looked at DuckDuckGo Privacy Pro’s data-removal service in our guide to those products.
Hide.me VPN costs $10 per month but only $55 per year. It also is one of the very few VPNs that don’t place a data limit on its free subscribers, which puts it in tight competition with Proton VPN. However, we weren’t impressed with the design of its apps, which we found confusing.
Mozilla VPN is from the nonprofit behind the Firefox browser but uses Mullvad’s infrastructure. Those are both points in its favor, but it’s hard to recommend because it costs $10 per month—nearly double Mullvad’s price. However, it’s a good app, and it offers an opportunity to support a company with a deep history of promoting a free internet.
NordVPN is perhaps the most well-known VPN service, and it has grown enormously to now include a password manager, secure file storage, and numerous other services. It has a large network of VPN servers, and it includes advanced features such as multi-hop connections and access to Tor via VPN. Its unique Meshnet tool lets you route your traffic between your own devices (or a trusted friend’s devices) and send files securely. But NordVPN is expensive at $13 per month, and the average person probably doesn’t need NordVPN’s slew of advanced features. The company belatedly acknowledged a 2018 security incident and has made public commitments toward better security and transparency.
Norton Secure VPN was a refreshing surprise. The company has clearly invested in its apps, which worked smoothly in our tests and have been redesigned with a bold and cohesive style. Norton Secure VPN also performed well in our speed testing. Without a monthly-subscription option it’s a steep up-front cost that renews at $80 per year.
NymVPN is by far the most unusual service we’ve tested. It offers two modes: multi-hop connections that use two VPN servers or a Tor-like mixnet option that’s intended to defeat exotic attacks that try to match you to online activities. Although its annual plan is very affordable, its mixnet option was extremely slow, and we have concerns about its first round of audit results. We’ll check back on this one after it has had some time to mature.
Surfshark is owned by the same company as NordVPN but operates independently. It offers servers in about 100 countries, allows unlimited simultaneous connections, and has a highly polished family of apps. It’s also one of the most expensive VPNs, at over $15 per month, and it’s increasingly leaning on upselling a collection of other privacy features — such as the Incogni data-removal service — that go beyond what most people need from a VPN.
ExpressVPN releases frequent audits and has colorful, retro-styled apps. It also ranks among the most expensive VPNs we looked at, costing $13 per month for its Basic plan, with an annual fee of $100. ExpressVPN — along with Private Internet Access and CyberGhost — is owned by Kape, which used to be called Crossrider and previously supplied technology that was used in adware. In 2024, a representative for ExpressVPN told us, “Crossrider was a cross-platform development platform for browser extensions, that was unfortunately abused by third-party developers and misattributed to Crossrider (even though there’s no direct involvement on Crossrider’s part in the creation of adware/malware).”
Windscribe has a devoted following, and it’s easy to see why. It’s affordable at $9 per month, $69 per year, or as little as $3 per month if you use the service’s custom plan option. Its free subscription provides 2 GB of data per day or 10 GB if you verify your email address. We found it a little too quirky, however, and would like to see the company commit to annual third-party audits.
We also eliminated many other VPNs for not meeting our criteria or not meeting the standard of quality and value represented in our picks. This group included: 1.1.1.1 +WARP, Apple Private Relay, Astrill, Aura, Avast SecureLine VPN, AVG Secure VPN, Avira Phantom VPN, ClearVPN, Cryptostorm, CyberGhost, F-Secure VPN, Fastest VPN, FrootVPN, Goose VPN, HideIPVPN, HMA! VPN, Hola VPN, Hotspot Shield VPN, IPVanish, iTop VPN, McAfee Secure VPN, Njala, nVpn, OVPN, Perfect Privacy, personalVPN, Planet VPN, PrivadoVPN, Private Internet Access, PrivateVPN, PureVPN, Steganos Online Shield VPN, StrongVPN, TorGuard, TotalVPN, Trust.zone, Turbo VPN, Urban VPN, VPN Unlimited, VPN.AC, VPN.ht, VPNArea, VyprVPN, and Webroot Secure VPN.
This article was edited by Caitlin McGarry and Arthur Gies.
