Private Internet Access review: the strongest evidence and the weakest jurisdiction

Two facts that pull in opposite directions

Private Internet Access is based in the United States, inside the Five Eyes, subject to National Security Letters, FISA orders and the CLOUD Act. It has also, twice, been subpoenaed in US federal court for user data — in 2016, over a hoax bomb threat, and in 2018, over a hacking case — and both times had nothing to hand over, because it keeps nothing. No other US provider has that record, and few foreign ones have anything comparable.

This review holds both facts. The court record is the strongest evidence for a no-logs claim short of a police raid; the jurisdiction is the weakest of any provider recommended on this site. Which weighs more depends on what you are protecting against.

Ownership

Kape Technologies bought PIA’s parent in 2019, adding it to CyberGhost and later ExpressVPN — and to the review sites vpnMentor, WizCase and SafetyDetectives, which Kape bought in 2021. Those sites rank PIA, and the relationship is not disclosed where a reader would see it. PIA’s founder, Andrew Lee, had a strong privacy reputation and the company’s practices — open source, the court record — predate the sale and have continued under it. But the incentives of the owner have changed, and this site scores that.

Audits and open source

Every PIA app, on every platform, is open source on GitHub, so the software can be inspected as well as the policy. Deloitte audited the no-logs policy in 2022 and again in 2024. Servers have been RAM-only since 2020, run on PIA’s own infrastructure. The 2016 and 2018 court cases remain the strongest real-world evidence.

Protocols, network and features

WireGuard and OpenVPN, with a Shadowsocks proxy option. PIA advertises around 35,000 servers in 91 countries, the largest raw count anywhere, though the count reflects how PIA numbers its instances. Port forwarding on non-US servers. A firewall-level “always” kill switch. Per-app split tunnelling with per-IP rules. MACE ad and tracker blocking. Dedicated IPs. Unlimited simultaneous connections. The Linux client is a full GUI application, the best of any provider.

What it costs, honestly

The yearly plan is one of the few among the majors that renews at the price it starts at, which makes it the honest option. The long plan is the cheapest intro on the site among full-featured providers, but PIA does not clearly state what it renews at, and this site will not guess. A 30-day money-back guarantee applies.

Streaming and censorship

User reports have PIA working with Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu; BBC iPlayer and Prime Video are patchy. It works in the UAE for most users and is unreliable in China, Russia and Iran, where it has no purpose-built obfuscation. India is served by virtual servers after the 2022 withdrawal.

The iPhone app

This month’s App Store analysis of 2,200 recent reviews makes PIA’s the top-scoring iOS VPN app of any we track, with the lowest critical-complaint rate and no billing flag. Reviewers praise reliability and value. Full breakdown.

What we have not tested

Speed and leaks. Published tests put PIA’s WireGuard behind NordLynx but improved since its 2023–24 infrastructure upgrades. Our own tests are pending; the speed dimension is excluded from the score until they land.