Signature data · updated monthly
iPhone VPN rankings from 26,264 App Store reviews
Every month we pull the most recent App Store reviews of 17 VPN apps across six countries, classify what each one complains about or praises, and score the app. No provider has any say in it. This is what iPhone users are actually experiencing, this month.
Most billing complaints
- IPVanish 18.4%
- NordVPN 16.8%
- Astrill VPN 16%
Most connection-drop complaints
- Astrill VPN 14.2%
- IVPN 10.9%
- Mullvad 10.4%
Sentiment moving
- IVPN ▼ 1.03
- Proton VPN ▲ 0.41
- PrivadoVPN ▼ 0.41
The ranking
| # | App | Score | Store rating | Critical complaints | Top complaint | Flags | Sample |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Private Internet AccessKape Technologies · v3.35.0 | 4.69★ (149,197) | 11.7% | Crashes & bugs (4.1%) | 2,218 | ||
| 2 |  ExpressVPNKape Technologies · v12.71.0 | 4.68★ (418,418) | 20% | China / censorship (8.9%) | billing | 2,870 | |
| 3 |  CyberGhostKape Technologies · v8.6.0 | 4.23★ (39,394) | 14.1% | Billing & auto-renew (5.1%) | 2,673 | ||
| 4 |  Hotspot ShieldPango Group (Aura) · v8.46.2 | 4.58★ (359,655) | 21.4% | Ads / misleading (7.3%) | 2,700 | ||
| 5 |  AdGuard VPNAdguard Software Limited · v2.10.3 | 4.55★ (13,350) | 12% | Connection drops (4%) | 50 | ||
| 6 |  WindscribeWindscribe Limited · v3.13.1 | 4.64★ (34,861) | 23.8% | Crashes & bugs (7.7%) | 961 | ||
| 7 |  Proton VPNProton Foundation · v7.5.2 | 4.64★ (101,311) | 23.5% | Connection drops (7.6%) | 2,085 | ||
| 8 |  SurfsharkNord Security · v4.7.2 | 4.70★ (128,114) | 32.3% | Billing & auto-renew (10%) | billing | 2,145 | |
| 9 |  MullvadAmagicom AB · v2026.4 | 4.14★ (1,441) | 35% | Connection drops (10.4%) | 577 | ||
| 10 |  TunnelBearMcAfee LLC · v4.16.0 | 4.67★ (84,811) | 19.5% | Billing & auto-renew (5.6%) | 2,500 | ||
| 11 |  hide.meeVenture Ltd · v6.1.4 | 4.53★ (7,560) | 27% | Billing & auto-renew (9%) | billing | 222 | |
| 12 |  Norton VPNGen Digital Inc. · v26.14.1 | 4.45★ (120,837) | 15.1% | Billing & auto-renew (4.7%) | 2,609 | ||
| 13 |  IPVanishZiff Davis · v4.32.0 | 4.55★ (104,280) | 41.7% | Billing & auto-renew (16.1%) | billing | 1,281 | |
| 14 |  NordVPNNord Security · v9.12.0 | 4.66★ (699,424) | 41.3% | Billing & auto-renew (14.4%) | billing | 2,000 | |
| 15 |  PrivadoVPNPrivado Networks AG · v4.0.1 | 4.00★ (734) | 33.5% | Crashes & bugs (11.9%) | 227 | ||
| 16 |  IVPNIVPN Limited · v2.14.2 | 4.07★ (250) | 41.1% | Privacy concerns (11.6%) | billing | 129 | |
| 17 |  Astrill VPN· v2.3.8 | 3.70★ (640) | 52.2% | China / censorship (35.7%) | billingstale | 1,017 |
Click a column header to sort. "Critical complaints" is the share of sampled reviews raising crashes, drops, billing, refunds, support, privacy or misleading ads. Sample is the number of recent reviews analysed, which Apple caps per storefront.
What the whole market complains about
Aggregated across all 17 apps, weighted by sample size. This is the shape of iPhone VPN frustration in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best VPN app for iPhone?
On this month's analysis Private Internet Access has the healthiest iOS app: an App Store score of 81/100 built from 2,218 recent reviews, with 11.7% of them raising a critical problem. ExpressVPN and CyberGhost follow. The score measures the app, not the VPN service behind it — for the overall ranking see the best VPN for iPhone list.
Where does the data come from?
Apple publishes the most recent reviews of every app as a public feed, up to 500 per storefront. We pull the six English-language storefronts (US, UK, Canada, Australia, India, Germany) on the first of each month, dedupe, and analyse the lot — 26,264 reviews this month. We do not scrape anything Apple does not publish.
How is the App Store score calculated?
Four parts: 35% the listing rating shrunk toward the category average so a few hundred ratings cannot beat a few hundred thousand; 25% the sentiment of reviews from the last 90 days; 20% the inverse of the critical-complaint rate (crashes, drops, billing, refunds, support, privacy, misleading ads); 10% how recently the app was updated. The remaining 10% is reserved for our own device testing and sits at zero until we have done it. Full method on the methodology page.
Why does NordVPN rank lower here than on your main list?
Because this page measures the iOS app as its users experience it, not the service. The App Store feed leans toward recent reviewers, and recent reviewers of any big app skew toward people with a problem. Billing and auto-renew complaints dominate for several large brands. The main ranking weighs ownership, audits and pricing, which the app score does not.
Are these reviews real?
They are the reviews Apple shows on the app's page. We cannot verify each reviewer, and neither can anyone else; what we can do is analyse thousands at once so a handful of fake ones do not move the number. Any quote shown is 15 words or fewer and attributed to the date it was posted.
How often is this updated?
Monthly, automatically. This edition was generated 2026-09-06. Month-to-month score swings above eight points are checked by hand before publication.