Fastest VPN of 2023 – CNET [CNET]

Most VPNs will cut your speeds in half; get one that won’t. Here are the fastest VPNs we tested in 2023.

Using our cutoff for “fast” — no more than 20% speed loss on the OpenVPN protocol — NordVPN and ExpressVPN are the two current kings of the hill. That said, our other overall top VPN picks — Surfshark, IPVanish and Proton VPN — all have the capacity to deliver speeds adequate for just about any online activity. Their inconsistent speed performance during our testing dropped each one out of consideration for the fastest VPN crown.

IPVanish

• 26% speed loss in February/March 2023 speed tests (faster than 58% in 2022)
• Fastest speed tested: 14% speed loss (WireGuard)
• Fastest VPN connections: New York
• Slowest VPN connections: Singapore

When we tested IPVanish, we lost 58% of our speeds when connecting through OpenVPN from the US and 19% from Budapest. What was especially maddening was that the app didn’t always connect us to the fastest possible server when using IPVanish’s Quick Connect feature. While IPVanish’s speeds within the US were fairly consistent, speeds to other locations fluctuated dramatically. Speeds to Europe, for example, peaked as high as 317Mbps and dropped to as low as 40Mbps. We got faster and more consistent speeds when abandoning the Quick Connect feature and choosing servers manually while connecting via OpenVPN.

IPVanish’s WireGuard speeds were better, dropping our speeds by only 14.5% on average. During one round of testing IPVanish in Budapest, the ISP we were connected through was noticeably throttling our speeds, causing many of our VPN speed readings to be faster than our non-VPN readings, which ultimately resulted in a mere 3% average speed loss for that round. Despite that anomaly, the inconsistent nature of IPVanish’s speeds along with how unreliably Quick Connect performed was what put it out of the running for the fastest VPN.

Proton VPN

• 36% speed loss in February/March 2023 speed tests (slower than 17% in 2022)
• Fastest speed tested: 23% speed loss (WireGuard)
• Fastest VPN connections: New York
• Slowest VPN connections: UK

Proton VPN was by far the most inconsistent of the bunch. The peaks and valleys we experienced in terms of speeds were staggering, regardless of protocol or testing location. Speeds would go up to 328Mbps and drop to 3Mbps in the same round of testing. Overall, Proton averaged a 36% speed loss, which is unexceptional, at best. If you’re looking for a VPN that consistently delivers fast speeds, Proton VPN is decidedly not the VPN you’re looking for.

Surfshark

• 40% speed loss in February/March 2023 speed tests (slower than 19% in 2022)
• Fastest speed tested: 8% speed loss (WireGuard)
• Fastest VPN connections: Europe
• Slowest VPN connections: Singapore

You can typically expect to lose about half of your base internet speeds through most VPNs, so we were surprised to see that we lost a whopping 76% of our base speeds connecting through OpenVPN with Surfshark. We conducted more than 250 individual OpenVPN speed tests with Surfshark over the course of several weeks in case what we were seeing was an aberration, yet speeds were poor across the board through each location we tested, each time we tested it. By comparison, Surfshark’s sister company NordVPN only cut our speeds by 9% when connecting through OpenVPN.

We reached out to Surfshark to inquire about the issue with its OpenVPN speeds and a representative from the company told us that the poor speed performance must have begun recently because speeds have been consistently good over the past few months. The representative told us that the development team is investigating the issue and hopes to have it resolved soon. We will retest Surfshark’s speeds once the issue has been resolved and update our fastest VPN list as appropriate at that time.

That said, Surfshark’s WireGuard speeds were respectable. In our two rounds of testing Surfshark’s speeds through the WireGuard protocol, we calculated a 22% speed loss on average. In one round of testing, we measured only an 8% drop in speeds — which was actually among the fastest we measured. Surfshark is fast if you use WireGuard, but its OpenVPN speeds leave much to be desired, and ultimately bumped it out of the fastest VPN race. We recommend using OpenVPN for anything privacy critical, so if you want to use OpenVPN for your heightened privacy needs but don’t want to lose more than three-quarters of your internet speeds in the process, NordVPN or ExpressVPN would be a better bet at this time — based on our tests.

In the past, we tested VPN speeds strictly through the OpenVPN protocol because of its speed, security and ubiquity. With all the top VPNs now offering speedier protocols, we’ve begun testing speeds through WireGuard and, if available, the VPN provider’s own proprietary protocol.

We conducted our latest speed tests in February and March of 2023 from testing locations in Cleveland, Ohio, and Budapest, Hungary. In addition to testing OpenVPN speeds from these locations, we tested speeds through WireGuard for Surfshark, Proton VPN and IPVanish. Additionally, we tested ExpressVPN’s speeds through its proprietary Lightway protocol and NordVPN’s speeds through its NordLynx protocol. We conducted five rounds of testing on each VPN, consisting of five separate tests each to five locations around the world. Five rounds of testing for each VPN from both testing locations using multiple VPN protocols added up to more than 2,500 individual speed tests overall.

Prior to each round of testing, we measured our non-VPN speeds five times to calculate the average speeds we were getting from our ISP. Then, we tested speeds five times each to VPN server locations in New York, the UK, Australia, Europe (France and Germany) and Singapore. This way, we’re able to get a good read on VPN speeds to popular locations across the globe. Once we completed the five rounds of testing at each location, we calculated our average VPN and non-VPN speeds to determine the percentage of speed lost overall through the VPN. 

Calculating the percentage of speed lost through the VPN allows us to present a clear representation of how you can expect these VPNs to perform for you. Your base internet speeds may be a lot faster or a lot slower than what we got through the internet connections we used during our testing, so saying that we achieved speeds of 341.5Mbps with NordVPN doesn’t paint the full picture without putting it into the proper context of how much of a speed drop that was in relation to our base speeds.

We conducted all of our tests through the Ookla speed-testing platform because it’s user-friendly and among the most widely used speed-testing sites. It’s also the tool that most VPN users are likely to use to measure their own speeds.