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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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
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.
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.
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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It looks like IVPN is pretty similar in terms of anonymity
You can literally buy an account anonymously with cash, I don’t think any other provider comes close to that
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Other providers come close, as I would consider Monero to be close to as anonymous as cash in the mail. But I don’t know of any others who accept monero and do not require an email address.
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.
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.
@MedicareForSome @pirat Windscribe
There’s nothing inherently wrong with windscribe but I don’t trust any company that offers a cheap lifetime plan for something that requires so much upkeep.
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.
Note that Mozilla VPN uses Mullvad’s network under the hood. Also, depending on your device you should be able to block connections that don’t use the VPN. On Android, the “kill switch” can be found in the settings as described here: https://mullvad.net/en/help/using-mullvad-vpn-on-android/#block-without-vpn
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.
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).
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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.
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.
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.
