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A VPN does not make you anonymous; it moves trust from your ISP to the VPN company. So the only question that matters for privacy is whether that company deserves it: who owns it, what a court can compel from it, whether anyone independent has checked the no-logs claim, and whether you can pay without telling it who you are. This page weighs those at 50% and ignores streaming entirely.
Mullvad68 The provider that designed out the identity problem: accounts are random numbers with no email, payment is cash by post or Monero if you want it, price is a flat €5 with no tracking-laden affiliate programme, apps are open source and audited, servers are RAM-only, and when Swedish police arrived with a warrant in 2023 they left with nothing because there was nothing.
Proton VPN77 Controlled by a Swiss non-profit foundation since 2024, the only ownership change in this market that moved away from investors; open-source apps audited by Securitum; Secure Core routes through hardened Swiss and Icelandic servers before the exit; and Proton has fought legal demands in Swiss court and published transparency reports on what it could and could not refuse.
IVPN68 Gibraltar-based, publishes its team and ownership by name, no email needed, accepts cash and Monero, runs no affiliate programme, and commissions Cure53 audits regularly.
Flat €5 a month, no email required, accepts cash; the privacy benchmark.
68
Owner
Amagicom AB
Jurisdiction
Sweden · Fourteen Eyes
No-logs audit
None — apps audited by Cure53, 2024
Price
from $5.40/mo
Runs oniOSAndroidMacWindowsLinuxRouterBrowserTV
The provider that designed out the identity problem: accounts are random numbers with no email, payment is cash by post or Monero if you want it, price is a flat €5 with no tracking-laden affiliate programme, apps are open source and audited, servers are RAM-only, and when Swedish police arrived with a warrant in 2023 they left with nothing because there was nothing. Founder-owned in Sweden, outside the alliances.
Not a streaming VPN and does not pretend to be; port forwarding removed in 2023.
Privacy & trust
65
Price & renewal
83
Features
76
App quality
63
Account is a random number, no email or name
Same price forever, no intro-vs-renewal games
Accepts cash by post and Monero
Streaming unblocking is unreliable by design
Port forwarding removed in 2023
Smaller server network
Lab test pending — scored on public dataiOS app score 63/100 from 1,441 ratingsFull reviewVisit Mullvad
Swiss, non-profit-controlled, open source, with the only free tier worth using.
77
Owner
Proton Foundation
Jurisdiction
Switzerland · Outside the alliances
No-logs audit
None — apps audited by Securitum, 2025
Price
from $4.49/mo
Runs oniOSAndroidMacWindowsLinuxRouterBrowserTV
Controlled by a Swiss non-profit foundation since 2024, the only ownership change in this market that moved away from investors; open-source apps audited by Securitum; Secure Core routes through hardened Swiss and Icelandic servers before the exit; and Proton has fought legal demands in Swiss court and published transparency reports on what it could and could not refuse. The privacy pick that also does everything else.
An email is required for the account, though it can be a Proton one created anonymously; renewal is higher than the intro.
Privacy & trust
73
Price & renewal
77
Features
98
App quality
68
Controlled by a Swiss non-profit foundation since 2024
All apps open source and independently audited
Free tier with no data cap and no ads
Renewal is higher than the intro price
Free tier cannot choose a country
Speeds trail NordVPN and ExpressVPN in most tests
Lab test pending — scored on public dataiOS app score 68/100 from 101,311 ratingsFull reviewVisit Proton VPN
Gibraltar-based, transparent about its team, no affiliate programme; small and honest.
68
Owner
IVPN Limited
Jurisdiction
Gibraltar · Outside the alliances
No-logs audit
None — apps audited by Cure53, 2022
Price
from $5.00/mo
Runs oniOSAndroidMacWindowsLinuxRouterBrowserTV
Gibraltar-based, publishes its team and ownership by name, no email needed, accepts cash and Monero, runs no affiliate programme, and commissions Cure53 audits regularly. Smaller and quieter than Mullvad with the same philosophy, and one of the few providers whose marketing tells you when you do not need a VPN.
Small network; streaming and port forwarding are not supported.
Privacy & trust
68
Price & renewal
84
Features
78
App quality
49
Publishes its team, ownership and a transparency report
No email needed to sign up
Regular Cure53 audits
Small network
Not a streaming VPN
Port forwarding dropped
Lab test pending — scored on public dataiOS app score 49/100 from 250 ratingsFull reviewVisit IVPN
Open-source apps, court-proven no-logs, unlimited devices; US-based and Kape-owned.
52
Owner
Kape Technologiesalso owns review sites
Jurisdiction
United States · Five Eyes
No-logs audit
Deloitte, 2022 (report not public)
Price
from $2.03/mo · renewal price unconfirmed
Runs oniOSAndroidMacWindowsLinuxRouterBrowserTV
US-based, which is why it is fourth and not first, but its no-logs claim is the only one on this page tested twice in US federal court — in 2016 and 2018 — with no data to produce either time, and every app is open source. Accepts gift cards for semi-anonymous payment.
US jurisdiction inside the Five Eyes; Kape ownership, whose review-site conflict is the reason this site exists.
Canadian, founder-owned, with a generous free tier and unusually flexible pricing.
60
Owner
Windscribe Limited
Jurisdiction
Canada · Five Eyes
No-logs audit
None found
Price
from $5.75/mo
Runs oniOSAndroidMacWindowsLinuxRouterBrowserTV
Founder-owned with no investors, no email required, crypto accepted, and a candid public account of a 2021 server seizure in Ukraine that found no logs but exposed a key-management weakness, which it then fixed. Honesty about a mistake is rarer in this market than an audit.
Canada is a Five Eyes country; one full independent audit so far.
Three ownership changes in five years, a 2017 FTC complaint over traffic redirection, an ad-supported free tier that shares data, and no no-logs audit.
Handed logs to US authorities in 2016 under previous ownership; current owner also runs PCMag and Mashable. The record disqualifies it here.
What we weighed for privacy, and the exact weights
Ownership and jurisdiction
A provider owned by a conglomerate that also runs review sites, or based in a Five Eyes country, has incentives and obligations a privacy user does not want. Non-profit or founder ownership outside the alliances scores highest.
No-logs claim, verified
Audits by named firms, published in full, and better still a court case or seizure that found nothing. A claim nobody has checked is marketing.
Open source and RAM-only
Open-source apps can be inspected for what they send home; RAM-only servers hold nothing when powered off or seized.
Anonymous signup and payment
No email, cash or Monero accepted, and a random account number mean there is no identity to hand over even under compulsion.
Weights on this page: Privacy & trust 50% · Price & renewal 12% · Features 12% · App quality 10% · Censorship bypass 8% · Speed (our tests) 4% · Support & refunds 4%. Formula.
What privacy means here
Most “most private VPN” lists rank on encryption, which every provider has, and on marketing language about logs, which every provider uses. Neither distinguishes anyone. What does: who owns the company and what incentives that creates; which country’s courts can compel it; whether the no-logs claim has ever been checked by someone who was not paid to say yes; whether the app’s code can be read; and whether you can be a customer without being identified.
Those five things are the privacy dimension of the site’s score, weighted at 50% on this page — the highest of any dimension anywhere on the site. Streaming is weighted at zero. If you want a VPN that does both, Proton is second here and top five on the streaming page; if you want the most private VPN, the top of this list has never been a streaming VPN and does not want to be.
The evidence hierarchy for “no logs”
Every provider says it keeps no logs. The evidence for the claim comes in levels. At the top: a real-world test — Mullvad’s 2023 police search that found nothing, PIA’s two US court appearances with nothing to produce, Proton’s Swiss court cases. Next: an independent audit by a named firm whose report is published in full, which lets a reader see the scope — Proton, Surfshark, IVPN, Windscribe. Then: an audit that exists but whose report is available only on request — NordVPN’s Deloitte series. At the bottom: a policy page. Providers with only a policy page are not on this list.
Ownership, and why this site exists
Kape Technologies owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost and Private Internet Access — and vpnMentor, WizCase and SafetyDetectives, three of the largest VPN review sites. Ziff Davis owns IPVanish, PCMag and Mashable. Gen Digital owns Norton VPN, Avast, AVG and Avira, and Avast was fined in 2024 for selling browsing data. Ownership is not a technical property, but it decides what a company is for. The picks above are owned by a non-profit foundation, by their founders, or, in PIA’s case, by Kape with a court record strong enough to earn the exception. The ownership map has every provider.
Beyond the VPN
A VPN with everything on this page right still leaves your browser fingerprint, your logins, and your behaviour. The fingerprint test shows how identifiable your browser is without an IP at all. For the highest-stakes uses — journalists, activists, people in the countries on our censorship pages — Tor Browser over the VPN, a separate browser profile for sensitive work, and never logging into anything personal are the rest of the answer. The VPN is the first layer. It is not the only one, and no provider on this page would tell you otherwise.
What we have not tested
Audits, court records and ownership are documented facts, checked at the date above. What we have not done is our own leak testing of each provider’s default settings, which is the one privacy property we can measure ourselves; that is scheduled, and any provider whose defaults leak DNS or IPv6 will move down this list when it lands.
iPhone app rating is far below every established provider in this catalogue
Frequently asked questions
Does a VPN make me anonymous?
No. It hides your IP address from websites and your browsing from your ISP, and replaces both with the VPN provider, which now sees what the ISP saw. Your browser fingerprint, your logins, your cookies and your behaviour still identify you. A VPN is one layer; Tor Browser, a hardened browser profile and not logging in are the others. The fingerprint test on this site shows what a VPN does not hide.
What does 'no logs' actually mean?
That the provider keeps no record of which user connected to which server when, or what they did. Every provider claims it. The evidence hierarchy is: a court case or police seizure that found nothing (Mullvad, PIA, Proton), then a published audit by a named firm (Proton, NordVPN, Surfshark, IVPN, Windscribe), then an audit whose report is not public (NordVPN's Deloitte reports), then nothing. This page ranks on that hierarchy.
Why does jurisdiction matter?
Because a company obeys the courts of the country it is in. A provider in the US can receive a National Security Letter with a gag order; one in the UK can receive a Technical Capability Notice; one in Switzerland can receive a Swiss court order, which Swiss courts have limited narrowly for VPNs. Outside the Five, Nine and Fourteen Eyes alliances the sharing of what is collected is also more limited.
Is a free VPN ever private?
Proton's free tier is the same infrastructure and policy as its paid one, funded by paying users, and is the only free VPN we would call private. Windscribe's free tier is honest about its limits. Almost every other free VPN funds itself by selling exactly what a VPN is supposed to hide.
Should I pay with crypto or cash?
If your goal is that the provider cannot identify you even if compelled, yes: Mullvad and IVPN take cash by post, and Mullvad, IVPN, Proton and Windscribe take Monero or Bitcoin. For most people a card payment to an audited provider outside the alliances is a reasonable trade, and paying anonymously does not protect you from anything a logged-in browser reveals.
Is NordVPN private?
It is well audited — four Deloitte no-logs audits — with RAM-only servers and a Panama entity, and it ranks well on the overall list. It sits below the picks here because the audit reports are not published, the apps are not open source, and Nord Security is a large commercial group with an affiliate programme that pays most of the sites ranking it. None of that is disqualifying; it is why it is not top five on a privacy-weighted page.
