The Great Firewall kills plain OpenVPN and WireGuard. What still works, per current research.
Short answer: Mullvad VPN is our top pick as of 2026-09-28 (8.9/10) - read why, and who we ranked below it and why.
The most honest VPN on the internet, and in 2026 still the one this industry is measured against: numbered accounts, cash or Monero accepted, open-source client
The anti-affiliate champion candidate holds up: no affiliate program (stated out loud on the homepage), flat honest pricing, quarterly warrant canary, annual th
The most honest mainstream deal in 2026: open-source apps, real audits, a genuinely usable free tier with no data cap, and a transparent renewal model - and in
A genuinely interesting infrastructure story wrapped in a jurisdiction problem: Golden Frog built one of the few fully self-owned server networks and invented C
Community-run Italian operator with the best power-user transparency stack in the business: fully open-source Eddie client (GPL-3.0), 258 bare-metal entry IPs a
The only consumer VPN with a real metadata-protection architecture - a 5-hop noise-generating Sphinx mixnet with cover traffic - and it costs just $4/mo on the
The freemium that actually respects you: a 10 GB free tier, transparent $9/$69 pricing with no renewal rug-pull, open-source Linux CLI, and a CEO who publicly f
A marketing machine with a real 45-day refund and honest-ish renewal math ($56.94 stays $56.94) - but it has the weakest trust story of the Kape brands: Romania
The quiet overachiever: hide.me ships dynamic port forwarding, multihop, split tunneling, a real free tier and the widest crypto-payment list of the ten (BTC th
The most expensive mainstream VPN ($300 per 2 years, $30/mo monthly) with the most hostile refund stance: 'All sales are final and refunds are not possible once
A small, quiet Swedish outfit with an honest-ish pitch: no audit, no circus, 10 simultaneous devices, port forwarding, AnyConnect-style obfuscation and a 30-day
Unlimited devices and a genuinely documented 2025 Deloitte ISAE 3000 no-logs audit - the strongest paper trail in the Kape/Nord orbit. But it is half of the Nor
The most expensive VPN in the room wearing the most auditing laurels: $8.33/mo forever after a $2.99 teaser, owned by Kape Technologies (ex-Crossrider adware, a
The most polished sales machine with the most compromised track record: a 2017 CDT complaint to the FTC - built on Carnegie Mellon research - documented undiscl
A privacy veteran with real strengths - 8 devices, serious obfuscation stack (Stealth/Stunnel/Shadowsocks/OpenConnect), crypto payments, dedicated IPs and port
The most successful VPN marketer on earth: polished apps, huge network (7,664 servers / 150 countries verified from their own API on 2026-09-27), strong streami
Reliably is doing heavy lifting. Astrill StealthShell, providers shipping VLESS/Reality and AmneziaWG have the best track record; the GFW detection waves can cut any tool during sensitive periods. There is no "set and forget" - check our country page before you travel.