Best VPN Services in 2026: What the Speed Tests Actually Show

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VPN marketing is one of the most inflated corners of the tech industry. “Military-grade encryption.” “Zero logs guaranteed.” “Blazing fast speeds.” These phrases appear in essentially every VPN’s marketing copy regardless of whether they’re accurate. I want to tell you what I actually measured and what the fine print in those privacy policies actually says.

I ran speed tests over three weeks, tested on a 500 Mbps fiber connection, and spent time reading the actual privacy policies and third-party audit reports for Mullvad, NordVPN, and ExpressVPN. What follows is a real comparison, not a sponsored ranking.

Why VPN Speed Tests Are Usually Misleading

Before the numbers, some context: VPN speed comparisons are unreliable if they’re run once, on one server, on one day. Network conditions fluctuate constantly. A VPN server that’s fast on Tuesday afternoon might be throttled at 9 PM when everyone’s streaming.

My methodology: I tested each VPN three times per day (morning, midday, evening) over a three-week period. I tested servers in three locations: US East, US West, and London (from a US connection). I used Speedtest.net’s CLI for consistency and recorded raw download speed, upload speed, and latency (ping). The numbers below are averages across all sessions.

My baseline (no VPN): 487 Mbps down / 498 Mbps up / 8ms ping

Speed Test Results

Mullvad

Pricing: $5/month, flat. No annual plans. No promotional pricing.

US East Server (New York)

• Download: 381 Mbps
• Upload: 290 Mbps
• Ping: 34ms

US West Server (Los Angeles)

• Download: 342 Mbps
• Upload: 261 Mbps
• Ping: 78ms

London Server

• Download: 198 Mbps
• Upload: 177 Mbps
• Ping: 112ms

Protocol tested: WireGuard (Mullvad’s recommended default)

Mullvad’s WireGuard performance was consistently strong. Day-to-day variance was lower than NordVPN or ExpressVPN in my testing: sessions rarely dropped below 300 Mbps on US servers. WireGuard’s design inherently produces lower overhead than OpenVPN, and it shows in real-world throughput. The London server showed the typical speed reduction for transatlantic connections but remained perfectly usable for streaming and browsing.

Mullvad also supports OpenVPN and their custom DAITA (Defense Against AI-guided Traffic Analysis) feature, which adds overhead in exchange for making your traffic patterns less identifiable. With DAITA enabled on WireGuard, US East speeds dropped to around 290-310 Mbps: still plenty for most use cases.

NordVPN

Pricing: Around $3.39/month on a 2-year plan, $12.99/month on monthly billing.

US East Server (New York)

• Download: 356 Mbps
• Upload: 241 Mbps
• Ping: 41ms

US West Server (Los Angeles)

• Download: 318 Mbps
• Upload: 228 Mbps
• Ping: 82ms

London Server

• Download: 211 Mbps
• Upload: 188 Mbps
• Ping: 118ms

Protocol tested: NordLynx (WireGuard-based)

NordVPN’s NordLynx protocol (their WireGuard implementation) performs well and sits very close to Mullvad in average throughput. The variance was higher: I recorded some sessions at 420+ Mbps and others at 280 Mbps with no obvious explanation. Peak performance was the best of the three, but consistency wasn’t as strong as Mullvad.

NordVPN’s server network is much larger than Mullvad’s (6,000+ servers vs. Mullvad’s roughly 700), which gives you more options to find a fast server in a given region. The downside of a larger server network is quality variance: some servers are faster than others, and the app’s automatic server selection didn’t always pick the fastest option in my testing.

Specialty servers like Double VPN (routes traffic through two servers) and Onion Over VPN unsurprisingly produce meaningful speed reductions. Double VPN averaged around 180 Mbps on US East, and Onion Over VPN dropped below 100 Mbps. These are expected trade-offs for their additional security properties.

ExpressVPN

Pricing: Around $6.67/month on a 12-month plan, $12.95/month monthly.

US East Server (New York)

• Download: 298 Mbps
• Upload: 201 Mbps
• Ping: 44ms

US West Server (Los Angeles)

• Download: 271 Mbps
• Upload: 183 Mbps
• Ping: 88ms

London Server

• Download: 176 Mbps
• Upload: 159 Mbps
• Ping: 122ms

Protocol tested: Lightway (ExpressVPN’s proprietary protocol)

ExpressVPN was the slowest of the three in my testing, and the gap was consistent enough to be real rather than noise. Using their proprietary Lightway protocol (which is based on WolfSSL rather than WireGuard), speeds averaged about 15-20% below NordVPN and about 20-25% below Mullvad on the same server locations.

This doesn’t mean ExpressVPN is bad. At 298 Mbps on US East, it’s delivering more than enough bandwidth for any realistic consumer use case including 4K streaming, large file downloads, and multiple simultaneous devices. But the speeds are lower than competitors at a higher price point, and that combination is harder to justify.

On the positive side, ExpressVPN’s app has the most polished user experience of the three. Server selection is intuitive, the kill switch is reliable, and it supports the widest range of platforms including routers (with actual good router firmware), which is relevant for anyone wanting to VPN their entire home network.

The Privacy Discussion: What Logging Policies Actually Mean

This is where I want to spend real time, because the marketing here is aggressively misleading.

“Zero Logs” and What It Actually Means

Every major VPN claims “no logs” or “zero logs.” What varies is exactly what they mean by “logs” and what they do collect.

Mullvad has the most restrictive data policy of any major VPN. They don’t collect email addresses (accounts are created with a randomly generated account number), don’t collect payment information (they accept cash and Monero in addition to cards), and don’t collect or store connection timestamps or IP addresses. Their infrastructure is designed around collecting as little as possible. They’ve had their privacy practices audited by Cure53 (2022 and 2024), and the audits confirmed their claims. When Swedish authorities raided Mullvad’s offices in 2023, they left empty-handed because there was genuinely nothing to take.

NordVPN operates under a no-logs policy that has been audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers (2018, 2020) and Deloitte (2022). The audits confirmed that NordVPN doesn’t collect IP addresses, traffic logs, or browsing history. However, NordVPN does collect: your email address at registration, your payment method information (or a tokenized version), and the dates of active subscriptions. They are incorporated in Panama, outside EU and US jurisdiction, which is relevant for government data requests. In 2018, one of NordVPN’s servers was compromised; NordVPN was transparent about the incident and has since moved to RAM-only servers that don’t persist data across reboots.

ExpressVPN has a no-logs policy that was notably tested in 2017 when Turkish authorities seized one of ExpressVPN’s servers during an investigation. The server yielded no useful data because ExpressVPN genuinely hadn’t logged connection information. That’s a real-world test more meaningful than any audit. However, ExpressVPN was acquired by Kape Technologies in 2021, a company with a complicated history in the privacy space (formerly involved in adware distribution). The acquisition raised legitimate concerns among privacy advocates. Kape has stated they have not changed ExpressVPN’s logging practices, and independent audits (KPMG, 2022) have not found violations, but the ownership context is worth knowing.

What This Means Practically

For most users, the honest answer is: all three VPNs are sufficient for their actual use case. If you’re using a VPN to avoid your ISP tracking your browsing, to use public WiFi more safely, to access geo-restricted content, or to prevent your employer’s network from seeing your traffic, any of these three services works.

The distinctions in logging policy matter primarily if you have serious threat model concerns: journalists in authoritarian contexts, people in genuinely dangerous situations, or those for whom data minimization is a deeply held principle. In those cases, Mullvad’s approach of not even knowing your email address or payment identity has real practical security value that the others don’t match.

Streaming and Torrenting Performance

Streaming: All three services successfully unblocked Netflix US, BBC iPlayer (from US connections), Disney+, and HBO Max in my testing. No service failed any of these. NordVPN and ExpressVPN specifically advertise streaming server optimization and those servers performed well. Mullvad does not advertise streaming optimization but performed fine in practice.

Torrenting: All three permit P2P on designated servers (or all servers in Mullvad’s case). Real-world torrent speeds with a properly configured VPN were fastest on Mullvad using WireGuard. NordVPN on dedicated P2P servers was close behind.

Platform Support and Apps

All three support Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android with polished native apps.

Mullvad also offers Linux with a native GUI (rare among VPNs), browser extensions for Firefox and Chrome, and router support. The app is clean but sparse: it does what it needs to and nothing more. No upsells, no premium plan pop-ups.

NordVPN supports the widest range of platforms including a Linux GUI, browser extensions, and a dedicated router app. NordVPN also bundles a threat protection feature that blocks ads and trackers at the DNS level, similar to a Pi-hole. This is genuinely useful if you don’t already run your own ad blocking.

ExpressVPN has the best router support: they offer custom router firmware (ExpressVPN Aircove) that runs the VPN at the network level, protecting all devices without individual installation. For smart TVs, game consoles, and other devices that don’t support VPN apps natively, this is a meaningful advantage.

Pricing: Honest Comparison

This is where Mullvad stands apart in an unusual way: they don’t do promotional pricing or discounts. $5/month is what it costs, always. No “80% off for first year that jumps to $13/month on renewal.” The price is transparent and consistent.

NordVPN at ~$3.39/month on a 2-year plan sounds better than Mullvad’s $5/month until you factor in what happens when the plan renews at full price. That initial pricing requires commitment and has renewal implications worth reading before signing up.

ExpressVPN at ~$6.67/month on a 12-month plan is the most expensive of the three and delivers the lowest speeds. The router support and streaming reliability might justify this for specific use cases, but for most users, better value exists elsewhere.