Best VPN for India in 2026

What the 2022 rules did

In April 2022 CERT-In, India’s cyber-incident agency, issued directions under Section 70B of the IT Act requiring VPN providers, along with cloud and data-centre operators, to keep validated customer names, addresses, contact numbers, IP addresses, and “ownership pattern” records for five years, and to produce them on request. The rules applied to any provider with infrastructure in India.

The industry’s answer was to leave. Within weeks ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Surfshark, Proton, PIA, IPVanish and Hide.me announced they were removing their physical Indian servers rather than log users. Most replaced them with virtual Indian locations — servers abroad assigned Indian IP addresses — so users who need an Indian IP for Hotstar, JioCinema or banking still have one, on hardware CERT-In cannot reach.

For Indian users this was, oddly, good news. The providers that stayed are the ones willing to keep five years of your data. The ones that left are the ones on this page.

The 2025 app store removals

Three years later the government moved on the apps themselves, ordering Apple and Google to delist several VPN apps from the Indian storefronts for non-compliance with the 2022 rules. Proton VPN was among them. Installed apps keep working; new installs need the Apple ID or Play region switched, or a sideloaded APK on Android. The providers involved have said publicly they will not comply to be re-listed. This is worth knowing before you buy: check that the app you want is installable on your phone, or install it before an ID-region switch becomes necessary.

What is actually blocked in India

Less than the news suggests, and more than most democracies. TikTok and around 270 Chinese-origin apps have been banned since 2020 under Section 69A. Adult sites are DNS-blocked by ISPs under court orders that have expanded twice since 2018. Individual accounts on X and news posts are removed under government orders that the platforms sometimes contest. The bigger issue is shutdowns: India leads the world in regional internet shutdowns, and in Manipur, Kashmir and during protests the state has cut mobile data for weeks. No VPN helps with a total cut; during partial ones, obfuscated protocols occasionally get through.

Price, and the free tiers that are worth using

At US prices a two-year plan is a meaningful sum in India, and the market shows it: free VPN apps dominate the Indian app stores, and most of them are ad-funded operations with no identifiable company. Two free tiers are worth having instead. Proton’s has no data cap, no ads, and no country choice. Windscribe’s gives 10 GB a month across ten locations. Both work on Jio and Airtel and both come from companies that pulled out of India rather than log. If you pay for anything, Surfshark’s two-year plan is the cheapest of the providers on this page.

Speed from India

Since no reputable provider has Indian servers, the nearest exits are Singapore (40–70 ms from most of India), then the UAE and Hong Kong. A virtual Indian server hosted in Singapore adds no more latency than a plain Singapore one — it is the same machine. For Indian streaming from abroad, pick the virtual Indian location; for general use from inside India, pick Singapore directly.

What we have not tested

Statuses and speeds are from user reports and provider statements. Our own tests from an Indian line — the same test suite published on this site — are not yet scheduled, and the date at the top is the last time the facts were checked.