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.
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.
I’ve heard that AirVPN and IVPN are good for port forwarding.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
Probably overkill, but AstrillVPN is the one I have been using for the past several years and it never failed me.
Same, and it’s the best if you’re in China.
My vote goes to ivpn and Proton (in that order).
ProtonVPN has been solid for me. Switched to wireguard recently and have been able to completely saturate my 1gbps fiber link
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.
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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