The Best Paid VPNs of 2025

Mullvad has earned itself a reputation for respecting your privacy and ensuring anonymity. This VPN allows you to sign up without an email ID and accepts cash payments, which you can physically mail to the company’s address in Sweden. It has servers in 49 countries, which is good enough for most people, and it supports quite a few privacy protecting features. These include a DNS-based content blocker to block trackers, a multi-hop feature to let you connect to Mullvad through multiple servers, and a feature that blocks AI-guided web traffic analysis. This kind of analysis is used to monitor the sites you visit, even if your web traffic is encrypted. Mullvad also has split tunneling support, which lets you keep some apps outside the VPN. 

The company has consistently offered the service at the same price—€5/month (equivalent to $5.60/month). Paying for long durations up-front won’t net you a discount, either. My only complaints are that Mullvad’s interface is a little rough around the edges and that the VPN isn’t the best at allowing you to access streaming services in a different region, since its servers are limited to just a few locations. It also restricts you to five simultaneous connections at a time, which could be better.

Proton VPN is a well-rounded service that has something for everyone. It comes from a company with a great track record for promoting privacy, offers servers from over 110 countries, and has a user-friendly interface that makes the service accessible to pretty much anyone. It’s also pretty good for getting around geo-blocks to access streaming content from other regions. The service allows you to connect from up to 10 devices at a time and it has convenient features such as Secure Core (a form of multi-hop), a built-in adblocker, and the ability to access the Tor network. 

It’s a compelling package overall, but there are some downsides. You need a Proton email address to create an account, which is a lot better than using an unencrypted email service, but it’s not as private as not using an email address at all. If you want to pay month-to-month, Proton VPN is also quite pricey at $10/month, but the company offers discounts if you pay upfront for a year or two. It also doesn’t let you use split tunneling on macOS, at least at time of writing.

IVPN is excellent if anonymity is your top priority. The service allows you to sign up without an email address. It generates a unique account number for you that you can use to access the VPN once you’ve made a payment. You don’t need to create a password or remember any other login information. IVPN also accepts cash payments, which you can physically mail to the company’s office in Germany, which makes it harder to link the transaction to you. This VPN has an AntiTracker, too, which blocks tracking by surveillance companies (such as those that profile you to show targeted ads). It has servers in 42 countries.

But IVPN’s best feature is the flexibility of its plans. If you need a good VPN for a short duration, you can buy access for as little as 3 hours ($0.25), or one week ($2). Having said that, IVPN is on the pricier side overall, since its monthly plans cost between $6 and $10, but there are discounts if you pay for multiple years at once. The standard plan also offers just two simultaneous connections, which is quite low. The Pro plan ups this to seven connections and adds multi-hop, which lets you connect through multiple VPN servers at once to enhance privacy. Limited server locations means this may not be your best bet if you just need a VPN to access streaming services from other regions, but it’s nice to have a flexible pick. IVPN has split tunneling support, which lets you keep some apps outside the VPN, but this feature doesn’t work on its Mac app.

Tunnelbear has a long track record in the VPN industry, and its paid VPN is worth considering. It offers unlimited simultaneous connections, which is great for people who want to use their VPN with multiple devices. The user interface is also incredibly pleasant, making it more accessible to casual users. 

Unfortunately, Tunnelbear lacks support for multi-hop, which allows you to connect through multiple servers to improve your privacy. It also lacks proper split tunneling support on platforms other than Windows. Split tunneling allows you to keep some apps outside the VPN, which is useful when your banking app locks you out because you’ve logged in from another country. If you want to pay every month, Tunnelbear is slightly pricey at $10/month, but paying upfront for a year or two makes it cheaper. 

NordVPN is good for those willing to pay a premium for features not commonly available in other VPNs. It is one of the most expensive VPNs in the market, with prices starting at $12.69/month, and if you look at the price comparison between its plans, you’ll quickly realize that the company’s priced its product to push you towards the highest tier available. For just three dollars more than the Complete plan, you get access to malware protection, adblocking, and 1TB of cloud storage. These prices go down if you pay upfront for one or two years. NordVPN offers VPN servers in 118 countries and works well for accessing streaming content around the world, plus you can access this VPN from 10 devices at a time.

A unique draw here is the NordLynx protocol, which helps with online gaming, where you sometimes need to join servers on another continent for a better community or a different challenge. There’s also Meshnet, a free service that lets you route traffic through your devices (eg: letting your friends browse the internet via your IP, which could help them bypass geo-blocks). While Meshnet doesn’t require a subscription to the VPN, it’s a good example of the useful features in the NordVPN ecosystem. However, there are downsides. Nord VPN is currently facing a class-action lawsuit around renewal pricing, as the company has been accused of making it difficult to cancel its plans. Also, its split tunneling feature is available on Windows, Android, and Android TV, but not on Mac.