Whether you’re a downloader, a streamer or simply a user who likes a smooth browsing experience, speed is everything. In this guide we’re ranking the fastest top five VPN services this year. So wave goodbye to buffering, slowness and unreliable VPN services.
As the internet has become more useful the size of content has increased considerably. No longer are we content with streaming low-quality video or browsing plain boring websites.
All of this comes at a speed cost and to watch high-quality video, download or use interactive websites fast speeds are essential. Any VPN will lead to some speed loss due to the encryption used but by using a quality VPN service you can minimize this loss.
Some lower quality services suffer from poor speeds leading to buffering, connection issues and an altogether poor internet experience. We wanted to find out which VPN services were the fastest, so we put them to the test.
Here are some of the fastest VPNs currently available.
Fastest VPN of 2020
We tested each service connecting to the nearest server to our location. We then downloaded a test file. Our connection speed was: 63.2 Mbps.
Below are the top five fastest VPN services we tested.
| RANK | PROVIDER | PRICE | COUNTRY LOCATIONS | SIMULTANEOUS CONNECTIONS | AVERAGE SPEED | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. |  | $3.75 /mo | 21 | 6 | 60.90 Mbps | VISIT |
| 2. |  | $2.99 /mo | 62 | 6 | 60.55 Mbps | VISIT |
| 3. |  | $6.67 /mo | 94 | 3 | 59.84 Mbps | VISIT |
| 4. |  | $6.49 /mo | 60 | 10 | 59.68 Mbps | VISIT |
| 5. |  | $5.00 /mo | 64 | 5 | 56.84 Mbps | VISIT |
1. VPN.ac
Top of the speed league, we have VPN.ac, a premium VPN service which provides excellent speeds and security during your online browsing session. The service was created by security professionals with many years of experience in the sector, while it remains quite cheap, depending on the plan you choose.
It offers servers in over 20 countries around the world, while it also allows you to connect up to 6 devices at once, all while using the same service.
It has no limits in regards to speeds, and it features multiple speed optimizations. They were the fastest service we tested, just ever so slightly pipping NordVPN to the top spot.
VPN.ac does hold minor logs but only for 24 hours and they’re encrypted and stored in a safe location, so that its customers know that they are safe even from the service itself.
It works on a wide variety of devices and systems, making it perfect for those who travel a lot, or even entire families who need to connect all of their devices.
Fastest VPN of 2020
2. NordVPN
Next, there is NordVPN, which is another excellent choice for browsing the web and bumping into no borders while doing it.
The service guarantees complete privacy, as well as advanced security. It is also quite cheap, and depending on the plan you take — you may end up only paying it $2.99 per month.
Unlike VPN.ac this one also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, just in case you do not like it.
However, not many people choose to take this option, as the service features excellent speeds, and it provides access to over 5,400 servers in 61 countries around the world. Their speeds were only ever so slightly slower than VPN.ac to the point it would be barely noticeable.
A high number of servers means less load, which results in greater speeds. You can even use this service for achieving lightning-fast downloads or stream online movies, shows, and other types of content from services like Netflix with no buffering involved.
3. ExpressVPN
Next, ExpressVPN is one of the top-speed VPN services around. On its website, ExpressVPN prides itself as #1 trusted leader in the entire VPN industry. Apart from high speed and not over-crowded servers, this service also provides great security and an easy-to-use interface, which makes it perfect for experienced users and novices alike.
It also features a 24/7 customer service, and it offers several plans, with a 30-day money-back policy.
However, another important aspect that you must consider is the service’s reach. ExpressVPN offers a vast network with over 3,000 servers around the world, all of which you can use with no threats of throttling or limitations regarding the bandwidth. Their speeds were just 1 Mbps slower than our top choice which is next to nothing.
With it, you can access over 160 cities in 94 countries, which makes it safe to say that there is pretty much no content on Earth that you won’t be able to reach.
4. IPVanish
Once again, the name says it all — IPVanish can make your IP address completely hidden and masked by one owned by the service itself. This allows you to reach unlimited content while having fantastic speeds achieved through private connections.
IPVanish is the world’s only Top Tier VPN service provider, according to its website, and it owns over 1,200 anonymous servers in over 60 countries around the world. This results in more than 40,000 shared IPs, meaning that you can pretty much reach anything online, despite censorship introduced by the government, work, school, or any other entity.
Downloading or streaming will be no issue as again there was very little difference in terms of speed between IPVanish and the top 3 options.
The service is also quite cheap, with its base package being only $10 per month, while it allows anonymous torrenting, unlimited bandwidth and P2P traffic, and it keeps no traffic logs. It also offers a non-stop customer support, as well as a 7-day money-back guarantee.
5. VyprVPN
Finally, the last on our list is VyprVPN — a service that claims to provide total internet privacy and complete online freedom at blazing speeds.
This service can keep you protected from the prying eyes of the government, your internet service provider (ISP), or even hackers who might be monitoring your online traffic. Especially as they’ve recently become a completely no-log VPN service.
VyprVPN offers servers around the world, in over 70 different locations, which puts it among the top services for accessing foreign content. This includes over 700 servers in total, which makes the service extremely fast due to the servers not being overcrowded.
In total, VyprVPN offers over 200,000 IP addresses, meaning that you can use it to access pretty much anything on the internet. They are the slowest of our top 5, but I say that with a little smile as at just three and a half Mbps slower than our top choice you’re not going to notice it.
Meanwhile, it also provides non-stop customer support, unlimited server switching, and zero restrictions. The best part is that you can test it before paying for it, as it grants its users a free trial that lasts three days.
How did you test the services?
All of the mentioned services are tested and confirmed to offer top speeds. We have tested them and others not mentioned ourselves by enabling the services and downloading test files.
During the downloads, we kept a close eye on the download and upload speeds, all of which performed greatly under the circumstances.
This confirmed the claims made by the services, about them offering top speeds while still keeping their users secure and anonymous.
Meanwhile, it also confirmed that any of these services could be used for anonymous streaming and downloading content from the web without running into buffering issues or slow downloads that plague many VPN services.
Why is a fast VPN necessary?
This is one of the most commonly asked questions, and the answer is quite simple.
Over the years, as technology continued to develop, so did things like the better quality of the camera, meaning that movies and shows which you might want to stream online now require more internet speed to view them without buffering while keeping the high quality.
The same happened to files that many of us are downloading all the time — they simply got bigger due to better quality and more offered content. As such, you can only unlock, stream and download content safely with a VPN. However, VPNs also protect you by encrypting your traffic, which slows down the speed even further.
Because of this, you need to pick a fast VPN service to mitigate against this type of issues.
All of the listed VPN services are very much affordable, and their ever-growing user base seems to confirm this, so you don’t need to break the bank to get a VPN with fast speeds.
Are VPN speeds guaranteed?
Premium VPNs can guarantee greater speeds, particularly when compared to free VPN services.
Free services will not cost you money, but they still take their toll in terms of collecting your private data and selling it to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, they remain quite slow, and using them can be irritable.
While premium service will slow down your speed a bit (when compared to no VPN), they are much faster.
However, you should notw that fluctuations are possible, and you might experience different speeds at different times of the day. However, this should not affect you too much, since premium services do not oversell themselves, which results in servers not being overcrowded.
Is there anything I can do to get better VPN speeds?
Of course, there are a few tricks which you can use for improving the speeds even more. However, it should only be done by those users who do not worry about their online privacy and security.
The trick revolves around lowering encryption. As most services tend to use 256-bit OpenVPN as a default, this means that traffic is getting strong encryption, but it also slows down the speed of your connection. To combat this, you can scale down to 128-bit encryption, or switch from OpenVPN to L2TP or PPTP if privacy is not an issue for you.
Final Thoughts
As mentioned, reaching online content of your choice can be a bit troublesome with all the censorship that internet users need to deal with these days. This means that the use of VPNs is necessary to unlock blocked content. However, to fully enjoy it, you also need to choose a service with decent speeds.
All of the services we mentioned offer excellent speed, a large number of servers in a different location, as well as great protection. Meanwhile, they are affordable and they will give you a chance to test them, and return your money if you are not satisfied with their service.
We tested more than 20 services for this guide and while we found VPN.ac to be the fastest it was only marginal when compared to the other four. You can be safe in the knowledge that regardless which VPN from above you choose you’ll get the best speeds available.
Fastest VPN of 2020
