I’m thinking about paying for a VPN, I currently don’t use one.
I’d like to use Mullvad but they don’t seem to have regional prices, while Proton does.
I wonder if Proton is still a reliable option, Proton is 60% cheaper in my country, probably because regional pricing (but I didn’t check if it’s really the case).
If anyone has any other suggestion I’d like to hear it.
Mullvad. Excellent service, never had an issue. Used to use Proton, but their CEO sucks ass
Proton had a Black Friday sale and that’s the reason it prevailed over Mulvad. Every penny matters when you’re a pensioner.
Mullvad.
All you are to them is an account number. that’s it. no name, no email, nothing. you can even pay in cash. while mullvad’s GUI is still meh their CLI is top notch and very quick.
Mullvad because it accepts cash payments.
FYI, Proton also accepts cash.
I’ve never tried Mulvad, but Proton, while it has LOTS of exit nodes, which is good for avoiding blocks, is quite bad at any individual node remaining up and recovering automatically on an outage. If your use case is actively connecting for watching youtube or netflix or whatever in another country on a laptop that’s mostly off or not VPNed and you don’t care, that’s great, but if you want to VPN for bittorrent or another always connected purpose from a server or VPS…
That surprises me because I’ve been running Proton behind a Gluetun container for months without any issues.
I use both (not suggesting that). I mostly use Proton because it’s already included in my plan, and they seem to have more connections to choose from, but I frequently have to switch because the one I’m on starts to get really slow. I like Mullvad’s flat pricing and lack of commitment (they even accept cash), and it was an easier setup on Linux (at least Arch).
The main difference I see between the two is that Mullvad no longer offers port forwarding services and ProtonVPn does offer port forwarding services.
This can make a big difference based on your use-case scenarios. If you are gaming and need port forwarding or are torrenting and need port forwarding Protonvpn is the better choice.
“On 29 May 2023, Mullvad announced that they would be removing support for port forwarding, effective on 1 July 2023.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullvad
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports
PIA is also a good option if port forwarding is important to you.
What do the downvoters recommend if port forwarding is important?
Heads up PIA got acquired by an ad company a bit ago
An ad company owned by an Israeli billionaire.
They still don’t have any history of providing logs to LE because they don’t keep logs.
When was that, apparently I missed that. Apparently a few people know about it because at least 3 people downvoted for it haha.
When was that, apparently I missed that.
A quick search says November 2019.
I use PIA and it’s cheaper than both of the other options.
You won’t fit in with the losers on these forums, but you’re probably better off for it.
I’ve been using them for years, it’s been good for all of my uses. Their prices are cheaper than what I see from other companies. I haven’t used their dedicated IP service yet, but if it is as decent as the rest of their services it should be good.
I use Mullvad and game. Split tunneling lets you bypass the VPN to game. Port forwarding is useful for torrenting. Probably a few other things too.
Vote for the unlisted AirVPN because extremely easy to use, very moderate pricing, and specifically why I needed it, port forwarding.
Why do you want a VPN? Is it just for some light piracy? Staying safe on public wifi? Or do you actually NEED to maintain your privacy, with real consequences if you can’t?
If you need true privacy, the answer is Mullvad. But there’s also more required than just switching on a VPN if you want privacy. If you want a convenient and easy VPN that’s part of a bigger privacy-focused suite of tools, then I’d recommend Proton. They make some pretty good products.
Not your problem.
Why do you want a VPN? Is it just for some light piracy? Staying safe on public wifi? Or do you actually NEED to maintain your privacy, with real consequences if you can’t?
Nice try, FBI.
Any reason Private Internet Access (PIA) isn’t in the running? I’ve been using it for years now with no complaints or issues.
Owned by an ad-targetting company, which itself is owned by an Israeli billionaire with ties to the military.
Oof, seriously? I had no idea. Fuck.
Edit - just looked it up, Kape Technologies via parent company owned by Ted Sagi.
I personally prefer the Mullvad client since, at least on MacOS, it allows you to exclude specific apps from the VPN, while the ProtonVPN client does not! I still use ProtonVPN instead though, since it’s also significantly cheaper for me.
I like mullvad i use their dns filtering and their socks5 proxies however it does lack port forwarding so it sucks for torrenting.
Mullvad VPN is more private but I find I’m being asked to prove I’m human more often. Proton VPN I don’t trust with anything like piracy because they’re a large company with too much to lose by being overly private.
EDIT: Oh, and reminder that you should use the Mullvad browser too if you want to keep anything private.
I chose Mullvad because they don’t ask for any personal details and you can pay anonymously, which means that their service is privacy protecting by design. You don’t have to rely so much on trust.
Proton seems to be a large and rapidly expanding company which looks like it’s trying to be a more privacy respecting competitor to Google’s many services. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I prefer companies that value stability over rapid expansion. I also don’t like relying on a potential single point of failure for everything. I have a Proton e-mail account but I don’t use any of their other services because I don’t want everything in the same place.
Mullvad is more private but Proton VPN still supports port forwarding.
