VPN Recommendations?

pirat@lemmy.dbzer0.com to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 68 points –

I've been using Mullvad for the past few months. Have not had many issues with it aside from the 5 device limit and the removal of port forwarding. I'm currently looking at Private Internet Access as a potential replacement. It looks like it offers 10 device limit and port forwarding included with the price.

Anyone using PIA? How's the experience?

Edit: Probably should have mentioned, feel free to offer any other recommendations, I'm not attached to, or against any specific recommendations. I would like it to have a GUI available on Linux though if possible.

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I was on PIA for a few years before it was bought out by Kape.

Kape has a poor track record with keeping user data safe, and has reported shady business practises.

I switched to Mullvad and have been happy, excluding the limited devices which I bump into pretty frequently.

Basically 3 good choices

ProtonVPN AirVPN IVPN

Proton has a 50% off student discount bringing the price down to $5 a month for all proton services.

IVPN is probably the best but most expensive.

Where do you see Proton being 50% off for students?
I can't find anything about that.

They don't advertise it, just message support from your .edu email and tell them your username. They'll apply it and let you use the STUDENT promo code. It's 50% off the year plan so $5 a month.

Oh alright. I'll have to do that then.
Thanks for the info.

Airvpn is my go-to. Tho I also have an account with pia. Airvpn for PTP is pretty simple to set up, has great support for Linux, and you can choose from multiple protocols and ports pretty easy. Their port forwarding is way simpler to setup on a server then pia.

Pia is great for me to use on my phone/laptop tho. Their client is much more ment to be interactive as opposed to set and forget.

Airvpn certainly isn't the fastest but the community is awesome and support is amazing.

IVPN, no contest.

ivpn looks nice, it looks like they are taking a similar approach/structure to account creation like mullvad does. I don't like the 7 device limit though, but it is still 2 more than mullvad.

+1 for GUI on linux.

Another vote here for ProtonVPN, though it doesn’t support port forwarding via a GUI on Linux, only OpenSSL and Wireguard configs. I set it up with gluetun, qBittorrent, and qBittorrent-natmap and and it just works.

I've heard that the open port rotates. Is that true? Because it will affect seeding.

You dynamically request "a port" from the vpn gateway and it returns your port number.
As long as your nat-pmp-client keeps refreshing the port, it should stay the same. The timeout is rather low (60s afaik) so it probably wouldn't survive restarts.

There's a docker image that automates this for qbittorrent, but it shouldn't be overly complicated to adapt the script to other clients, if they can be configured via an API.

ProtonVPN has been solid for me. Switched to wireguard recently and have been able to completely saturate my 1gbps fiber link

I've heard that AirVPN and IVPN are good for port forwarding.

I moved off PIA after they were bought by a former ad-ware distributor, and I've been on Proton VPN since.

They do currently have a Linux GUI, though it's extensively lacking compared to the Windows client, and the CLI / DIY methods for using their service is much more flushed out.

That's not to say it's a bad client, it's just very much not what they advertise feature-wise. The speeds and server-availability are all great, and these days it's all bundled into a "Proton Account" that gives you VPN, Email, and Cloud Storage based on your tier.

I switched to AirVPN after finding out that Mullvad disabled port forwarding. I have heard rumors that the did that because of people hosting cheese pizza via their VPN accounts.

The performance of AirVPN does vary, I had to try a couple of countries before I found a server that didn't throttle me (and I only have a 50MBit connection).

Maybe I will try Proton in the future, but then I would have to commit to a 2year subscription or pay a lot more.

Loving ProtonVPN, but note that if you also use ProtonMail, the account is shared, meaning no one else can use your VPN if you don't want people to have access to your email. I've tried to use vopono, and vopono needs access to your account to automatically configure VPN connections which, again, is not great because access to my VPN = access to my email 😐

Yeah, that kind of sucks, I originally bought surfshark a few years ago just for this. Unlimited devices is a +1 for me

Protonvpn Unlimited subscriber here. Pretty amazing ngl. I get 10 vpn connections, 500GB E2EE cloud storage, simplelogin premium, calendar, and whatever else they have that I haven't used yet or still in development.

Edit: and ofc, I use their e2ee mail serveice

Proton unlimited is pretty enticing with the email and drive, especially since I'm using Zoho for free custom domain email, I wouldn't mind using proton.

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Moved from PIA to Mullvad when it was sold to a new owner with bad reputation

I've been using PIA for a long time.

PIA only offers port forwarding with servers in certain regions. For example I'm in the USA and I have to connect to a server in Canada for port forwarding. Works fine though.

I don't use PIA on multiple devices so I'm not sure if there are device limitations, but I don't think there are (don't quote me on that).

PIA has a no-logs privacy guarantee by external audit which is the best you can ask for.

In general I'm pretty happy with the software and service. It's the cheapest game in town if you go with the the three year sub, last time I renewed it worked out to $2.33 a month.

The one negative is a change in ownership a few years ago. It was bought by a company with a less than stellar reputation (Kape Technologies). Though honestly I've not seen any negatives come of it myself. For some people it's a deal breaker. I was going to find a new provider when my sub ran out last, but I took the easy route and renewed.

Just looked it up and found this post (link here) by PIA from a few months ago, looks like unlimited devices is a recent addition to their service.

I've used PIA for five years now. Never had an issue. It's plenty fast for my needs; I've seen sustained ~450 Mbps downloads from a transatlantic endpoint. (I honestly don't know what is typical with other VPN services but I'm not feeling choked out so I've never investigated.)

They run frequent deals and you can stack a promo code, check slickdeals and/or set an alert if there is not a current promotion. I believe my current three year sub worked out to ~$1.80/month. It is suspiciously cheap.

I'm sure others are "better" and "you get what you pay for" but PIA is good enough for the price for me.

"Better" or "you get what you pay for" aside, the owner of PIA is patently sketchy.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/what-is-kape-technologies-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-parent-company-of-cyberghost-vpn/

I use mine exclusively for torrents, so I don't really care what is happening on the other end as long as they are masking my IP address. If you were using it for general browsing I could see that mattering more. But it's really hard to beat the speeds + port forwarding for $2.22/mo ($80 for 3 years). That's less than half the price of any comparable alternatives.

I've used PIA for probably close to 10 years now. They removed the 10-device limit recently and just give you unlimited devices now. I've found the connection to be very stable. If there's ever a problem, it's usually due to a specific server getting overloaded, so I switch to a different one. Lots of countries and port forwarding options to choose from. The promotion they have going right now is the best I've seen ($79 for 39 months).

I use PIA currently because it was cheap and I wanted something easy to use mostly for streaming reasons. It's fine, not great, not awful. Connection drops more than I would like. I attribute that to Comcast knowing their IP addresses and dropping traffic in an attempt to catch any leaks. They got bought out by an iffy company not too long ago, and I plan to move to mullvad once this sub runs out

Mullvad is getting rid of port forwarding on July 1st so if you torrent you may want to look elsewhere.

I started with PIA and dropped them when the new owners took over. Moved to Mullvad which I've been happy with but now had to cancel due to port forwarding. I'm on AirVPN now and it's been working fine so far and has port forwarding, but it's only been a week or so of usage.

I use Windscribe with a lifetime plan and I've been more than happy with it.

Torguard. Sticky IPs with port forwarding. Wireguard support for fast speeds. Lots of coupons around the 'net to purchase for $30/year.

The ease at which Torguard is willing to give me a persistent IP is something I haven't found in other VPN providers

Probably overkill, but AstrillVPN is the one I have been using for the past several years and it never failed me.

I've been using Windscribe for a couple years and really enjoyed it. I started on the dirt cheap $1 or $2 plan and then bought a static IP for port forwarding. You can get ephemeral port forwarding with pro I think, but that's more expensive. Can't speak for the linux GUI as I use CLI, but I've been satisfied.

Proton’s good but they seem to neglect Linux a lot. Command line version is okay but missing split tunneling so I’m seriously thinking about flicking it for something else.

The official linux cli is pretty garbage, but the community one written in python is really really good.

I thought about proton, for about $12/month you get premium access to all proton services, like mail and drive. not a bad deal if you like the ecosystem, but no linux GUI is a pretty big -1 for me.

They’ve got GUI, it’s just very basic and lacks a lot of the features you would choose them for.

I'm using Astrill. Flawless router integration if you have a supported model (i.e. most somewhat modern ASUS and a bunch of others), works with Android, iOS, Linux (tested on Xubuntu, clean and functional GUI, identical to Win) and Windows.

Huge list of servers, generally high speeds, works well with Netflix and Disney+ (don't use any other streaming services), has a DNS Leak block and a killswitch (disconnect internet if VPN fails). Feeling pretty good about it, been using it for well over 5 years now.

Sure is a bit on the pricey side, but you get 1 router + 5 client installations as per the terms & conditions, and they don't begin kicking out devices if there's fewer than 7 connected simultaneously. So if you share it among 2-3 people, it's already a bargain.

And if you happen to live in China, it's kinda without alternatives to begin with (which is my main use case).

Damn, that pricing is tough. It makes ExpressVPN look like a cheap option, lol

Express is rubbish though, especially in China. Hardly ever works. Neither do any other OpenVPN applications, really. They simply block the handshake. Astrill has a proprietary protocol that's somehow not been blocked.

Been using PIA for years. Never had any issues. As others have said I've bought bulk subscriptions and you can get insanely low prices for it. I have it set up on multiple devices. Mobile app also works good as it has a built in DNS level as blocker.

Port forwarding works super well. They have clients for a ton of Linux flavors but you can always just use the ovpn files.

All in all, despise getting bought out by a pretty shady company I haven't found enough of a reason to switch off.

If you are willing to pay a bit more, I highly recommend IVPN. Stay away from PIA, they are no longer trustworthy. AirVPN is also good, and Proton is good now as well.

I've enjoyed MozillaVPN because it's made by Mozilla.

And, honestly, not really any other reason, i just trust the company that makes it over the others. In fact, it has a significant downside in that it doesn't have an app kill switch like NordVPN, so your torrent app can keep running unprotected.

Bind your torrent client to the VPN so that doesn't happen. Qbit has an easy enough interface to figure out how to do it pretty easy. Plenty of guides a quick Google should return

I've really enjoyed Torguard so far, althought I switched very recently.

If you decide to use Torguard, USE AN AFFILIATE CODE FOR 50% OFF. I used Tom Spark's (YouTubers) code, but Torguard makes it really easy for any creator to generate a code so use whoever's you'd like to support.

EDIT: It has a linux gui, which oddly must be run at root. I added a line to create an exception for only my user to be allowed to run /usr/bin/torguard as root without a password in /etc/sudoers, and it works as expected.

Seems like Mulvad gets a lot of love on here and reddit. Being able to pay anonymously is pretty cool. I use Windscribe and like it a lot. They have an annual sale that is dirt cheap. PIA used to get a lot of love until they were bought out a few years back.

I have been using NordVPN since forever to be honest.

Never had any problem (servers always up and good speed too), but people say that it is very expensive in comparison with other VPN providers, so I don't know.

Nord is such a weird case. It almost never gets recommended. It even gets negative comments as soon as someone mentions it. And yet, even the comparison table at r/VPN hast Nord at the top spot with full points for almost all criteria. So do people hate Nord just because they see other people hating it and go along? Or is r/VPN also just an ad for NordVPN?

I myself started using Nord quite a while back and I also never had any problem whatsoever. Speed is super good, availability was never a problem, it just works. Still, if someone would point me to some specific flaws with Nord and showed me how some other VPN is an improvement, I´d be happy to reconsider once my Nord subscription runs out in september.

I think people hate Nord because they spam their ads all over YouTube along with not offering things like port forwarding which is crucial for torrenting.

Nord does do a lot of sponsoring, that´s right. But that doesn´t make it a bad service automatically. If I want to believe that comparison table I mentioned, Nord might even be a pretty good service, so maybe they "need" this big marketing to rake in enough users to make it profitable and affordable.

About that port forwarding though, what´s the deal with that? I´m asking because I lack the tech background here. You say, it´s crucial for torrenting. And obviously, many look for alternatives to mullvad because they don´t offer it any more. Others though say they don´t really need port forwarding.

Without port forwarding, you can't make incoming connections meaning you won't be seeding your files back to anyone and it also limits outgoing connections which means downloads will be slower and may fail all together on torrents with few seeders.

Some people run without it using public trackers since you can just hit and run without seeding the files, but this would get you quickly banned on private trackers. It also goes against the principles of p2p if you're never seeding your files back to anyone.

So you are saying, if I would torrent something while using Nord, there would be no upload / seeding happening at all? I use a seedbox, so I don´t know. In the seedbox though, I always keep the files up. I have an overall ratio of over 13, so I´m very much in favor of seeding.

Pretty much correct that (most) others wouldn't be able to connect to your torrent client so you wouldn't seed except in certain circumstances. Any private tracker would show you as unconnectable.

Indeed, looks like that´s correct. Just to test it, I fired up Q on my own machine, with Nord connected to a swiss server, and while I have no restrictions in place, there´s almost no upload.

Allow me to ask one further question: If I had a VPN which supported port forwarding, how would I go about to usilise that for torrenting? I know port forwarding from my internet router, where I can forward an external port directly to a specific internal IP. Is that similar?

Yes it's similar but instead you configure Qbit to listen on that port in the settings. Each VPN does port forwarding in their own way but with Mullvad and AirVPN, you request a port forward, they assign one to you and then you input that into Qbit. You should see the green checkmark at the center bottom of the main UI window. If yellow, you don't have incoming connections, and if red you don't have incoming or outgoing connections.

Additionally, you can check ipleak.net and download the magnet torrent to make sure everything is working and that you're not exposing your real IP in any way.

This message has been sponsored by NordVPN

Also, it doesn't seem to be much more expensive than something like ExpressVPN, though that is pretty expensive at about $13 USD monthly. Way cheaper to buy yearly though. In comparison, Mullvad is a flat 5 Euro (about $5.20 - $5.40) per month. Other VPNs seem to be about $10-$13 per month.

I have not tried them, but always stayed away from them due to aggressive marketing that really put me off. there was a good year or two where I was bombarded with NordVPN ads and sponsors, and still get the occasional advert about them. It may be worth trying though, I have colleagues that use it.

It may be worth trying

You mentioned removal of port forwarding as an issue with Mullvad, why would you consider migrating to a much spammier VPN that has never had port forwarding? LOL that message really does sound like it was sponsored by NordVPN :P

Didn't know they don't have port forwarding, thanks for pointing it out, I did a google search and here's the link stating they don't offer port forwarding.

"Port forwarding and triggering could work with a VPN protocol in general, but not with NordVPN. Our apps block almost all port communication from within your device except for the ones most commonly used by popular applications."

I got the 3 years deal, so it is quite cheap for me.

Surfshark offered a similar deal that I bought a few years back. At the time it worked just fine for me, but they don't offer port forwarding (at least they did not at the time I was using them), and they don't have a Linux GUI.

Surfshark does have a Linux gui now. I got them because they had a really good deal going on at the time but I can't comment if they're the best option.

Ive been using Ipvanish for a few years now, no issues. No logs either assuming they are an honest company.

I hated the 5 device limits of Mullvad. Especially because you could not logout other devices from the app (until recently) but you had to login into web to do it. I was coming from nordvpn where they simply logged out the device that was connected for the longest time. I'm also looking into alternatives and since cost is not really a blocking point I was thinking to go with IVPN

I use Nord and have no issues. Offers a lot of features. Price has gone up since my last renewal I paid like .35 a month it's 3.00/month now.