PrivateVPN

The first thing to say about PrivateVPN? It’s underrated. This is a great little VPN with a 7-day trial. It doesn’t stand out as a provider with a shiny and big suite of security. However, despite not being among the most famous VPNs, this service competes with market leaders… and often wins!

PrivateVPN offers features that are an effective asset to your safety and a pleasant browsing experience. You will find it great for torrenting, as it offers an HTTP and SOCKS5 proxy Also, streaming services won’t bring up stress anymore by limiting your desired content. The app is customer-friendly and you will get sturdy protection. And just to put a cherry on top – your activity logs won’t be collected.

Got hooked and burning to find out more? Well, in my PrivateVPN review, you’ll learn it all. From speed and performance to privacy and customer support – here’s what you should consider before getting PrivateVPN.

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PrivateVPN pros and cons

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Streaming: does PrivateVPN work with Netflix?

If you dig deep in the forums looking for a good VPN for streaming, you will find that PrivateVPN gets mentioned quite often. It didn’t take too long for me to find out why.

It took no effort to unblock geo-restricted YouTube videos and BBC iPlayer, making PrivateVPN a valid option for many of your streaming needs. Not to mention that even some more popular providers struggle with iPlayer.

Although Netflix worked, and the VPN helped to unblock restricted videos, the streaming quality was poor. It’s unclear who is to blame for this: the VPN or the service itself, as Netflix lately has had some issues with heavier loads on their servers.

So, during our tests, PrivateVPN got us through to every geographically restricted service that we tested. This isn’t something that you see every day, even when reviewing top-shelf VPN service providers.

Unblocking Netflix with PrivateVPN

PrivateVPN is one of the best VPNs to work with Netflix. During our tests, a variety of libraries was successfully unblocked and videos loaded very quickly thanks to speedy servers.

It might happen that PrivateVPN starts struggling with unblocking certain libraries on Netflix, as Netflix itself constantly tries to block VPNs. However, the issue doesn’t stay too long because PrivateVPN overcomes it fast. Also, keep in mind that if you decide to choose a server located far from you, then the video quality might be poor.

What’s great is that PrivateVPN performs nicely either on the web version or mobile app version of Netflix. Most of the time you are able to access a variety of content and enjoy Netflix effortlessly.

Unblocking BBC iPlayer with PrivateVPN

Even though PrivateVPN only has 6 servers in the UK, you are still able to enjoy BBC iPlayer with it comfortably. The videos do load a bit longer but after they do, everything goes fluently.

If you come across a low-quality video, don’t fall for panic as it gets fixed quickly and you are back to HD quality.

Considering the price of PrivateVPN services, the possibility to unblock BBC iPlayer is fantastic. You are even able to unblock BBC iPlayer straight from the website.

Nevertheless, the low quantity of servers might not satisfy every user. And we get it. Streaming services are able to offer a colorful wide range of content, so having unlimited access to them is very attractive. In this case, you can always check our top list of best VPNs for streaming.

Is PrivateVPN good for Torrenting?

Yes, PrivateVPN is good for torrenting as it supports P2P traffic. Though, to use it with torrenting clients to download files, you’ll have to connect to Dedicated IP/Torrenting servers.

It took a while for the speed to max out, but it ended up very good. The maximum speed was 15MB/s (120mbps), which is great (but of course, it depends on many variables, including the leechers/seeders ratio). You’ll have to get their free trial to get the actual picture. Port forwarding support is there and can be used for torrenting.

The only problem that I could potentially see with the service is that the specialized servers are not so numerous. This means that you could have to deal with overloaded servers. If this issue seems to cause you too much trouble, you can check our list of the best VPNs for torrenting and find the best option for you.

Plans and pricing

All PrivateVPN plans give you the same features. The only difference will be the duration, with better savings on longer subscriptions. It’s a VPN market staple, you’ll see this approach with almost all providers.

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The shortest and the most expensive option is their monthly plan for $3.30. If you commit for two months more (three months plan), the price is $17.99, so you save almost 39%. The longest plan also provides the best deal with $59.99 a year. So, the prices are on par with the competition.

With each plan, you’re getting 10 simultaneous connections, and you can try the service with a 7-day free trial. You’ll have to write to their official support email address (support@privatevpn.com) to get a gift code. It doesn’t require any payment information, so you won’t feel caught off guard when your subscription “accidentally” renews. Still, you can also take advantage of a 30-day money-back guarantee.

You can pay with:

• Credit cards
• PayPal
• Cryptocurrencies

However, if you decide to pay via PayPal, you’ll have to pay a 5% handling fee, which raises the price a bit. So, if you’re buying the longest subscription, the price may increase by $3. It’s a minor thing, but it’s something to take into consideration.

If the prices of PrivateVPN don’t seem good enough for you, take a look at the best current VPN deals we offer and find the most suitable for you. Secure your wallet alongside online security!

Servers and locations

PrivateVPN counts its servers in hundreds, not in thousands. This translates into a modest fleet of 200+ servers in 63 countries.

So, even though the country variety is good, the number of server locations is somewhat of a bottleneck. PrivateVPN is highly susceptible to overcrowded servers, which can hurt your user experience. I hope that they’ll increase their fleet size, as most competitors are rocking much higher numbers. Plus, the fact that each user gets 10 simultaneous connections can quickly make the overcrowding worse.

The upside is there are some exotic locations like Hong Kong or Russia, which might be just the locations that you won’t find anywhere else.

Does PrivateVPN work in China?

Yes, PrivateVPN does work in China. It has a special Stealth VPN mode which is designed to bypass the Great Firewall. To do this, PrivateVPN uses the L2TP protocol and AES 256-bit encryption.

To get the best speeds, you can choose from the closer servers that are located in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, and so on.

Interestingly, you can have a decent streaming experience in China too. Yes, the speed and video quality might be a bit poor but not poor enough to destroy your joy!

And, of course, it’s always great to have extra options to bypass China’s restrictions. So, keep in mind our list of the best VPNs for China.

Speed and performance: Is PrivateVPN fast?

Data period:11.10 – 11.24

	Download	Upload
United States	169 Mbit/s	306 Mbit/s
Canada	176 Mbit/s	322 Mbit/s
United Kingdom	166 Mbit/s	376 Mbit/s

See live VPN provider data on our VPN speed test tool

PrivateVPN’s speeds aren’t that impressive, and there are certainly faster VPNs on the market. One of the reasons for that could be the absence of the WireGuard protocol, which offers robust security and some of the fastest speeds.

So, to determine the speed of service, I measured the drop-off percentages. The lower they are, the faster your VPN will be. Since PrivateVPN doesn’t have many tunneling protocols but allows changing the encryption, I ran multiple speed tests with different OpenVPN configurations:

Regarding the UDP variant of OpenVPN (AES-128-GCM), these are pretty good OpenVPN speed scores. Although on their own, they’re nothing to write home about. The latency times were pretty high across the board, which could introduce lag or stuttering if you connect to locations further away.

As for the TCP variant, it isn’t any faster. The results are in line with what you could expect from TCP, but no one is ever using this mode for speed. It’s worth noting that in some cases, ping times were excessive. For example, Singapore and Australia exceeded 500 milliseconds. That’s a half a second difference, which could be noticeable.

The upload speed of OpenVPN UDP (AES-256-GCM) is much faster than the download speed. However, ping times are still above average with either OpenVPN version. So, if you’re wondering whether encryption makes the speeds worse – it’s a complicated answer.

As for the TCP variant, it’s somewhat on par with the AES-128 encryption. While the download speed drops are identical, the upload speed is a bit faster with AES-256.

In short, the AES algorithm version is the most relevant to those who are using devices that don’t support AES hardware acceleration. So, this may be more important when setting up PrivateVPN on a router.

I didn’t test PPTP and L2TP, mainly because I didn’t manage to get them to work. Both of them are pretty outdated and not very secure anyway, so you should stick to OpenVPN.

It has been two years since it was announced that PrivateVPN has WireGuard in beta, but for now, all you can do is configure the protocol manually.

So, while OpenVPN is the best option that the provider has to offer, speed isn’t one of PrivateVPN’s fortes.

Interface and ease of use

PrivateVPN has done a great job developing a user-friendly interface for its application. Even though the appearance of an app varies on different operating systems, it remains similar and offers a decently personalized program.

Sure, there are some clunky spots that might be annoying. But are they going to make an impact on your experience? Let’s find out down below.

Windows

I found the Windows app simple to use. It pushes notifications for everything that is going on, so you’ll always know your connection’s status.

The main screen windows are customizable, allowing you to switch between simple and advanced views. The former only shows the status of your connection, with the ability to change the country you are connected to. Meanwhile, the advanced view gives access to customize the connection type and encryption, allowing you to access the app settings.

There were some weird issues. For example, the Streaming Services tab didn’t show any servers. And although I liked the addition of port forwarding every time, it would assign a different port each time you connected. That means you would need to reconfigure your routers and other potential software to use a different port each time. Plus, you cannot disable it.

For a comparison, you can always check our list of the best VPNs for Windows.

macOS

macOS app is almost identical to the Windows version, with more rounded buttons to better fit Apple’s UI. However, there are some trade-offs, and not all the features you can use with Windows are there.

You shouldn’t shed your tears for some of them – one of the losses is PPTP. This is more of a security vulnerability than a tunneling protocol. Others, however, are quite useful additions like DNS leak protection and the ability to kill certain apps when disconnecting from a VPN server.

If you want a more personalized VPN for macOS, see our top VPNs for macOS list.

Linux

PrivateVPN doesn’t offer an option to have a desktop app for Linux users. So, they only get a manual on how to set up OpenVPN connections using PrivateVPN services.

And since you don’t get a standalone app, you’ll have to set up everything using OpenVPN stack with a command-line terminal. Sure, it’s not the nicest experience compared to what Windows and macOS users get. But the program itself still offers you trustworthy security and possibilities.

PrivateVPN mobile apps

The app mirrors the design principles present in the desktop versions. The key difference is that the desktop apps seem smoother, while the mobile counterparts seem a bit choppy. This means a different level of user experience when compared to desktop devices, which shouldn’t be the case.

The app for both Android and iOS looks plain and only offers the bare minimum of what you could expect from a mobile VPN service. I appreciate a built-in kill switch on the Android app, which solves the problem if you’re using an older device without its native support. Sady, the kill switch isn’t available on iOS.

You can toggle Stealth VPN and switch the used port. So, aside from the ability to change tunneling protocols and encryption, there isn’t much that you can tweak.

The app itself only switches between the all servers list and dedicated IP address, so you get to avoid the glitchy streaming services list.

If you need more Android or iOS VPN options, consider checking out our lists of the best VPN apps for Android and top VPN apps for iOS.

PrivateVPN features

PrivateVPN isn’t able to brag about a feature-rich suite of security. Yet, it offers some unique tools for increasing security and browsing possibilities across the world.

Port forwarding

PrivateVPN is unique in its approach to port forwarding. When you’re connected, a random port number pops up, which you can then enter in your torrent client. So, if you’ll be using a VPN for torrenting, it’s a godsend. You may also use the feature when setting up a remote server.

The feature is always automatically enabled. Whenever you connect to their server, you get assigned a random port number without the option to disable it.

Proxies

All of their servers have support for HTTP and SOCKS5 proxies. They’re both useful but in somewhat different scenarios. The HTTP proxy will work only with HTTP and HTTPS traffic, so it’s primarily concerned with browsers.

If you need support for another kind of traffic, you’ll have to use SOCKS5. They’re fairly flexible and secure, so many use them with torrent clients to add extra security. You can find the whole list of available servers with appropriate server addresses with corresponding ports here.

Stealth VPN

Stealth VPN is an incredible thing to break down geo-restrictions. It hides your online traffic from your ISP and government, and bypasses censor-heavy locations, for example, China.

Moreover, it’s an amazing tool for streaming services as it’s an obfustication tool. With its help, Netflix, Disney+, and everyone else won’t know that you are using a VPN. Yet, don’t get surprised if your connection speed decreases since you get an extra layer of encryption. But isn’t it worth it for the sake of security and fresh episodes of Money Heist?

Is PrivateVPN safe?

PrivateVPN is a safe VPN regarding its encryption and tunneling protocols. There are no IP or IPv6 leaks. However, port forwarding cannot be disabled. Using this VPN for the most privacy cautious individuals might be out of the question. The VPN service’s business location is in a Fourteen Eyes Alliance country (Sweden), which doesn’t help their case.

Encryption

Encryption is what makes your online traffic incomprehensible to anyone intercepting it. This includes your government and ISP. With PrivateVPN, you’re even able to customize the encryption level.

You can pick between:

• AES-256-CBC
• AES-256-GCM
• AES-128-CBC
• AES-128-GCM

These choices boil down to picking between 128 or 256-bit versions and CBC or GCM modes.

128 and 256 mean different encryption key lengths – the longer it is, the more potential combinations it can have. More potential combinations are always better because hackers’ computers would have to guess more to crack the encryption, making the whole process unviable.

The CBC and GCM difference is a bit more subtle. They both involve scrambling block cipher data, but they do it a bit differently. Theoretically, CBC is less safe because it depends on previous data blocks when encrypting data. GCM randomizes the blocks making it harder to put back as pieces of a puzzle.

Tunneling protocols

PrivateVPN won’t blow you away with their long list of tunneling protocols. You can choose these:

• OpenVPN (TUN+UDP+1194) – the default setting uses UDP, which is faster but less secure than TCP. It uses 1194, which is a fairly common port, so it should fit most use cases.
• OpenVPN (TUN+TCP+443) – sacrificing speed for security, this option should be your go-to if UDP/1194 doesn’t work. Plus, it uses the 443 port, which is the same one that web browsers use for web connectivity. So, if Internet connectivity is available, this port should also be open.
• OpenVPN (TAP+UDP) – is the only tunneling from the list with a big flair and the words “not recommended”. The reason is that connected TAP devices function almost as if they were on LAN. This could also give a method to access your device if a hacker connected to the same server, provided that there’s a vulnerability. Since port forwarding is also always enabled, this is a real cause for concern.
• PPTP – severely outdated and shouldn’t be used. With it, your connection won’t be any safer.
• L2TP/IPSec – considered secure, but OpenVPN provides much better security options.

There is also an option to enable Stealth VPN. Think of it as a VPN mode that disguises VPN traffic as regular web traffic. It sends extra data packets, burying your VPN connection underneath them. This allows you to access the Internet in countries like China.

WireGuard is already in their beta client, so soon, it could be expected to appear in the regular app as well. Until that happens, you’re stuck with OpenVPN, which will be your only real choice when you’re using PrivateVPN.

Kill switch

The kill switch is a safety precaution when your connection drops. So, we try to emulate such disruptions in our tests. In the first, we use a special router that blocks access to particular IP addresses, cutting off the connection to the server. In the second, we’re disabling necessary application processes, seeing how the client acts in both cases.

None of my connections leaked outside of the VPN tunnel in the first test. The app notified me that the kill switch was enabled. The app was unable to reconnect, as the access to that server was blocked. It didn’t attempt to connect to a different server, so you’ll have to do this manually. Your IP address remains safe.

Logging

PrivateVPN is located in Sweden. This isn’t an optimal location for privacy purposes, as the country is a member of the 14-Eyes surveillance alliance. In addition, Sweden enforces data retention laws. ISPs keep user logs, which can date back for up to two years. So, it’s a complication between the service provider and the legislation.

Despite this, PrivateVPN promises no logs when you’re using the service. However, there is a line in the privacy policy that claims:

The personal data is not saved longer than necessary given the purpose of the processing, unless a longer storage time is required or permitted by law.”

In short, this service is sending mixed signals about how personal data is handled. More transparency would go a long way towards making this service more trustworthy. Users that are most concerned about privacy should take this into account.

During the second test, the app reacted to the OpenVPN process being killed very quickly, and the kills witch worked as expected.

When I killed just the front end of the app, it closed all of the background processes and disconnected me from the VPN server without engaging the kill switch. This means that in some rare scenarios, the app might crash and expose your real IP address. However, it handled every other situation flawlessly.

I also found it weird that there was no option to enable the kill switch as the app is connecting to a server, leaving me no option but to have my IP and connections exposed while I wait for the app to connect.

Audits

Unfortunately, PrivateVPN hasn’t gone through any independent audits. And we could overlook this fact but we choose not to, as this provider is located in a country that is a member of the 14 Eyes Alliance. Moreover, PrivateVPN claims to have a strict no-logs policy that protects your online privacy. But how can we trust this claim if no one from the outside assured us, right?

Nevertheless, there are no IP and IP6V leaks and there haven’t been any recent scandals regarding PrivateVPN. Also, they allow you to customize your encryption level and take advantage of obfusticated servers. So, we believe that PrivateVPN is worth our trust but an independent audit would really improve it.

Customer support

When it comes to customer support, I had a mixed experience with PrivateVPN. While they do have a live chat available, it’s quite slow. I waited for 10 minutes and didn’t get a response.

That being said, I received a response in around 3 minutes when I wrote them an email. And considering I received an in-depth response in such a short time, it’s a huge plus for me.

I found the PrivateVPNs knowledge base a bit lacking. Some features could have been explained a bit better. For example, they didn’t go into detail to explain how their port forwarding works. To find out anything about it, you have to go and check manually.

But we couldn’t skip mentioning that PrivateVPN has separate guides that show how to set up its VPN on different devices step-by-step. You can find it in the Getting Started section.

So, while email support is one of the fastest I’ve ever seen, their live chat and knowledge base could use an upgrade.

Is PrivateVPN good?

As it seems from our PrivateVPN review, the service has some benefits that can also be seen as liabilities. You may appreciate their port forwarding. And they offer several varieties of encryption and you can customize the levels of it.

Also, PrivateVPN unblocks most online media streaming websites, for example, Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon videos. But has UI problems with the streaming servers’ selection screen.

In turn, this puts PrivateVPN a step below the top VPN services. Therefore, they could benefit from adding features like split tunneling and increasing the server count.

Let us know your opinion and experiences with PrivateVPN in the comment section below!