VPN recommendations, Summer 2025

First off, sorry if this has been asked a million times in this community already, but the only post I found on this topic when I searched was over two years old.

I've been using PIA vpn for the past two years, but my subscription is ending soon and I was thinking about switching providers. I'm a fairly basic vpn user so I'm not overly concerned about advanced features and bells and whistles. I have a limited budget to work with, and I run Fedora os. Does anyone have any recommendations on what vpn I should be using?

I've seen Mullvad mentioned frequently, but it's a touch expensive compared to others. I've heard some good things about Proton vpn too, but I know there was a controversy with their CEO not long ago. I've also just read something about IVPN and they look good, but I'd like opinions from more sources. I'm open too all other suggestions as well. Thanks for any and all thoughts!

74 comments

Mullvad. I don't even think about alternatives.
- Mullvad doesn’t support port forwarding does it?
  
  How important is port forwarding? I've never really bothered with it. I'm definitely still in the shallow end of the pool when it comes to using vpns.
  
  I don't think it does but I don't care so far.
- Mullvad is the correct answer.
- That was the case, but now that they no longer support port forwarding thinking about alternatives is a good idea. For me, a VPN without port forwarding is not an option (since I use private trackers).
- Mullvad seemed like the perfect choice and I was happy with them until they killed port forwarding, that got me wanting to switch to something else.
  I recently bought a year of AirVPN. Their apps aren't as nice but it works, and port forwarding works with the same port across all their servers.
  I use Wiresock Secure Connect on Windows, and the Eddie app or OpenVPN Connect on Android.
- What is it about Mullvad that makes it superior to all other options? I'm open to it, I just need something to justify the higher price.
  
  higher price
  $5 is a low price for a service that I trust way more than the others. You should wonder why the alternatives are so cheap.
  
  Basically, Mullvad has a great track record, seems to legitimately care about privacy rather than just making money.
  As for your mention on protonvpn, the founder did say some weird stuff last year, but so far the company itself hasn’t demonstrated any questionable behavior in regards to data, so it’s still considered safe.
  
  Few good things:
  They don't have ability to keep logs (even if they wanted)
  Their wireguard speeds can keep up with fiber (800mbps with 1gbps fiber)
  I've not seen any connection drops.
  Downside: No port forwarding, this I've remedied with headscale server and tailscale clients. Port forwarding is needed if u want to access your home network from outside
  
  No information needs to even be provided to them. No login, you just get a number (16 digits I think?). You can pay with untraceable Monero, and use the VPN anywhere as long as you have that number.
  If you want.
- on mint cinnamon, mullvad app prevents auto-suspending and screen timeout, idk if it does that on other distros. spent a full year troubleshooting and lost most of my hair and will to live. accidentally found the solution after switching to ivpn because it became impossible to watch youtube with mullvad
If you aren't concerned with flashy setups, AirVPN might be something to check into. In terms of cost, 3 months of AirVPN cost roughly about the same as 1 month of PIA.
- AirVPN has served me well the past 13 years. Their config generator is great, as well as the port-forwarding.
- I tried AirVPN for a couple of weeks but it’s just painfully slow. Bad servers and the better ones are always full.
  I will stick to Mullvad.
  
  That's a valid reason. AirVPN is slower than Mullvad or PIA. AirVPN does fit some use cases better, like multi-port forwarding, but that's not going to be what everybody is doing. PIA does offer port forwarding but only single port for single instance. To do multiple, you'd have to have multiple sessions running which doesn't really work well from one machine.
  So, if speed is your only criteria, don't use AirVPN. Better options exist.
- Been using airvpn for at least a year now (2? Maybe 3, idk...) Wait I checked it's been about 2 years. OK, anyway yeah they're my go to recommendation for anyone moderately technical.
The Proton CEO thing was vastly overblown. He is a privacy advocate and expressed support for Trump's appointment for head of antitrust, as well as criticism of corporate Democrats who stand for big business which was misrepresented as a love of the Republican Party. The only mistake he made was to publish those statements using the official Proton account, which he later apologised for.
Some people, especially the American left, love to virtue signal and predictably they tried to cancel Proton as a result of this pretty minor and irrelevant social media drama. There were some good write-ups at the time which exposed how counterfactual the "pRoToN lOvEs mAgA" arguments were, but I guess feel free to skip over Proton if it really concerns you. It is objectively one of the best choices if you value both privacy and functionality (Proton still has support for port forwarding), which I think are far more relevant areas to be looking at when choosing a VPN for piracy.
- Okay but his criticism makes no sense when the FTC under biden actually started taking antitrust seriously and has since lost its teeth again under trump.
  
  And the Proton CEO tweet about Trump looking out for the little guys is such an insane MAGA echo chamber take. It throws the credibility of the entire post into question. Not to mention that it’s a Medium article. Too many red flags that it undermines OP’s point pretty quick.
  
  It makes a lot of sense if you actually take the time to read his explanation of the context behind his position.
  During the Biden administration, the Democrats lead by Schumer (whose family members are lobbyists for big tech) refused to bring antitrust bills Proton campaigned in support of to a vote. Additionally, the only invited senator to show up to a 2024 antitrust meeting was a Republican - Vance. Those are just two examples he cites of Democrats failing in this area and Republicans stepping up in their place.
  The crazy thing is that Yen's argument, that the Democrats have been captured by the corporate donor class, would be supported in any other context by people on reddit and particularly Lemmy. It's the same thing you guys constantly complain about everywhere else (i.e. Sanders), yet in this one specific instance you ignore all of that and pretend that the Democrats are the good guys who can do no wrong because the idea that they could be as bad as, or worse than, the Republicans in this very specific area triggers you so hard.
Just go with Mullvad
- It has its issues but so far the most reasonable.
  (If you are in a censorship heavy area, go with something else, Mullvad relies on standard protocols that are easy to inspect and shut down)
  
  Nope. Do your homework!!
you might as well assume that any traffic you send to an american vpn is routed directly to the NSA, FBI, etc. get something that physically resides in a GDPR country. as for price, it's either that or just drop the P out of VPN
- GDPR is not relevant to state monitoring. Article 23 provides the provisions to explicitly restrict data protection rights for the purpose of eavesdropping, detection, crime prevention, etc. Its wildly open ended to the point that it makes no difference in choosing a VPN: https://gdpr-info.eu/art-23-gdpr/
I’ve been happy with Windscribe, though I don’t really feel that knowledgeable. They had a case dismissed against them recently, that was suing them for evidence of a user’s activity. They couldn’t provide it because they didn’t keep logs, as advertised
I tried airvpn, but found it confusing in some regards. ProtonVPN is easier to use and it has served me well, despite the recent controversy around it. The only real annoyance is that it randomly selects a new port to forward every time you connect, so you have to manually update that in your client. Quantum is a nifty tool that will read your ProtonVPN logs and automatically complete this step for you, if you use qBittorrent.
What you should also consider, do you need a VPN. If you just want to avoid region blocking, (any) will do. Just need to check if their IP range is blocked by the provider. For normal https traffic you don’t need one. Enable dns over https in your browser and your traffic is as secure and anonymous as with most commercial VPNs.
VPNs have their use cases but we now have a decade of scareware ads from VPNs that implied our traffic is as insecure as it was in 1980. but it isn’t, you’re paying for a lava insurance. And let me say this, you can still be tracked if you use a VPN. It’s just a bit harder, like marginally
I ended up self hosting my own in a privacy-friendly low-cost VPS after trying everything in some censorship heavy locations (SuperVPN, NordVPN, Mullvad, Surfshark, Frog{something}VPN ...) & rotating the address from time to time (I using a domain name so I don't have to change all the clients). My private one uses whatever new obfs protocol pops up and some other things to make fingerprinting very hard. Combining this with residential proxies & TOR+private bridges for browsing works like a charm EVERYWHERE.
Commercial VPNs all fail because they use standard protocols and are very easy to fingerprint if you try enough.
- Must be expensive to use residential proxies, nah? If I can ask, what’s your host?
  Unless you’re not doing anything illegal and just using some friends' IP and stuff
  
  Regarding residential proxy, it will be okay, 1usd per GB in packetstream.
  For VPS, I use AlexHost as they dont require id, plus crypto payments (I wish I could use something else, capsul.org is overpriced and much lower quality)
The eternal loop of looking for the Best vpn
I've been using ovpn.com for a few years. Port forwarding works perfectly for slskd and transmission/gluetun.
Depending on your ISP and router you might be able to install WireGuard on it. More generally self-hosting a VPN is pretty straightforward.
i use expressvpn with a dedicated uk server for streaming (as an anglophile) and mullvad wireguard on my gl ax1800 with port forwarding on the router for educational archival purposes and historical academic studies of long john silver and ive been happy.
i have been trying out windscribe paid but not sold on it
Surfshark, cheap and fast.
- They dropped shadowsocks support and now mostly standard protocols like the rest. Plus logging activity like supervpn. Bro advice: Skip it.
  
  Surfshark does not log anything actually. No-logs VPN: what you do online is your business - Surfshark https://share.google/bvvVGtjs4JCs4HlJn

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