VyprVPN Review Overview
Devices
Unblocks
Pros
- Extra security features
- Streaming capabilities
- Military-grade encryption
Cons
- Lackluster support
Pricing
- 24 month plan - $2.5 per month ($60.00 total cost)
- 12 month plan - $3.75 per month ($45.00 total cost)
- 1 month plan - $12.95 per month ($12.95 total cost)
Review scores
VyprVPN’s parent company (GoldenFrog) created the VPN after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ignored their formal complaint regarding the infamous Room 641a incident, where AT&T was found to be actively spying on users for the NSA.
This makes VyprVPN sound appealing. But of course, we don’t believe in taking anything at face value – so we decided to test the VPN ourselves in our own VyprVPN review.
And you might be surprised by our conclusion.
EDIT: Recently, VyprVPN stopped offering their “basic/standard” subscription. Currently, they only offer the premium version (at premium cost). We’re not sure if this will change after the holiday season, but we will update accordingly.
How VyprVPN Compares to the Competition
Take a look at How We Rate VPN Providers!
Good Jurisdiction Turns Iffy
Some people look at us like we’re conspiracy theorists when we mention not recommending VPNs located in a 5 Eyes, 9 Eyes, of 14 Eyes jurisdictions.
Never mind the fact these countries spy on their citizens and share that kind of data with each others intelligence agencies, right?
Well, VyprVPN is based in Switzerland, which isn’t one of those jurisdictions. But that doesn’t mean it’s a great location for a VPN company.
Contrary to popular belief, Switzerland actually has some rather draconian data retention laws.
And that doesn’t exactly promote trustworthiness in our opinion.
Strict No-Logs Policy
VyprVPN didn’t always have a no-logs policy. Golden Frog didn’t think it was necessary, so long as they were upfront with their clients about logging:
- Your original IP address
- The VyprVPN IP address you were using while connected
- Connection times (start and stop)
- Total bandwidth used
Turns out all it took was a Twitter exchange in 2018, revealing Wirecutter (another VPN comparison site) excluded VyprVPN from a “Best VPN” review due to this logging.
By November, a new Privacy Policy was published – together with an independent audit proving VyprVPN has since become a strictly no-logs VPN.
Encryption and VPN Protocols Vary
The only thing VyprVPN’s site says (on the Features page) is they use “High-End Encryption/NAT Firewall.” That’s not good enough for us, so we went digging around their Support section too.
It felt a little like walking in a circle though, with most articles telling us to find more information on the Features page.
Eventually, we turned to VyprVPN’s chat support to try sussing out their encryption:
It took 15 minutes to get this far, and the only part of the chat we left out was the email address.
Another 10 minutes were spent waiting for the agent to tell us he didn’t know what we meant by AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), or its variations Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) and Galois/Counter Mode (GCM).
Then another 10 minutes before he admitted not having any answer at all:
Not a good sign.
It also turns out the encryption standard used depends on your VPN protocol, as per the link support gave us:
- PPTP only offers 128-bit
- L2TP/IPSec (IPSec/IKEv2 for iOS users) offers 256-bit
- OpenVPN offers either 160-bit or 256-bit
- Chamelon offers 256-bit
In our opinion, Chameleon (a VPN protocol developed by Golden Frog as a slightly updated version of OpenVPN) is the best option, as it also prevents your traffic from being recognized as coming from a VPN.
But if you want it, you’ll have to pay for a premium subscription.
Kill Switch and DNS Leak Protection
Encryption standards and VPN protocols are just the first step. VyprVPN also advertises having their own VyprDNS leak protection and briefly mentions a kill switch on their Features page.
So, once again, we went hunting for information that should be readily available.
The reason for this is a kill switch is very important for preserving your online security while using a VPN.
If your connection to their server is interrupted – even for less than a second – your IP address and information on your activities becomes exposed. A kill switch automatically detects this interruption and kills your connection to prevent any leaks.
Bad news is, VyprVPN’s kill switch is only available for Windows, macOS, and Android, with no iOS kill switch on the horizon.
And you have to enable it yourself – another bad sign. We’d rather have that protection by default, with the option of switching it off.
Features Missing
Besides the kill switch missing on the iOS app, there are a few other features and capabilities VyprVPN doesn’t offer.
Rather than following in the footsteps of other VPN comparison sites by not mentioning them at all, we wanted to let you know about them in the spirit of full transparency.
First up is split tunneling, which allows you to choose which apps and websites run through your normal internet connection even when the VPN is active.
This is just a “nice-to-have,” so its omission isn’t a train wreck. But if you’re a heavy-duty VPN user, it can lead to some frustrations.
Secondly, VyprVPN doesn’t have any DoubleVPN feature. Also known as a Multi-Hop, a DoubleVPN allows you to route your internet traffic through 2 VPN servers for extra security.
It can slow your connection speed down a bit, but if you’re in a country with draconian censorship laws (like China), it can be a life saver.
Thirdly, VyprVPN isn’t compatible with The Onion Router (TOR), a proxy browser that routes your traffic through 3 servers to obfuscate your location.
We typically advise readers with serious security concerns to use TOR via a VPN only if a DoubleVPN feature isn’t available, as TOR can slow your connection speed drastically. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option with VyprVPN.
Server Connections
VyprVPN’s lack of a DoubleVPN feature is perhaps partially explained by the fact the provider has so few servers. Despite being in business since 2009, VyprVPN only has 700+ servers in their network.
This is understandable for newer VPN providers, but we typically expect any VPN that’s been around as long as VyprVPN to have at least 1,500+ (preferably 2,000+).
Granted, those 700+ servers are spread out between 73 server locations in 64 countries, which is a decent figure.
But such a low server count immediately makes us doubt the claim that VyprVPN is “the fastest VPN service worldwide” because of a little thing called network overload.
Network overload is what happens when a server is “overloaded” (handling more data than it should).
If you’ve got more than 2 million users – like VyprVPN claims – sharing only 700+ servers, the chances of experiencing network overload is drastically increased. And it will slow your connection speed just as drastically.
We should add the caveat that we’re not suggesting you’ll definitely get network overload while using VyprVPN. But let’s take a look at the speed results we did get.
Speed
Before we start rattling off numbers, it’s important you understand testing a VPN’s speeds will never give universal results. The speed you get while using VyprVPN could differ from ours by quite a margin.
This isn’t only because of network overload, which varies from server to server and even from hour to hour.
More tangibly, your original connection speeds, the operating system of the device you’re using, and your physical proximity to the VPN server will all have an effect on those results.
We try to create as holistic a representation as possible for our reviews by always testing VPN speeds with the same devices, connection, and server locations, regardless of provider.
With all that out of the way, here’s what we got with VyprVPN:
No VPN
US Server
UK Server
It’s worth mentioning many other VPN comparison sites boast of VyprVPN having fast speeds. We didn’t have the same luck during our tests, as you can see. There was just over a 50% speed reduction.
However, as mentioned above, you might have better luck.
Device Compatibility and Connections
VyprVPN has an app for most devices:
- Windows
- macOS
- Android
- iOS
- QNAP
- Blackphone
- Anonabox
- Smart TVs
- Routers
The only notable exceptions are browser extensions, Linux, and an app for gaming consoles.
How many of those devices you’ll be able to connect at the same time depends on whether you pay for a Basic Subscription Plan or the Premium version.
Basic subscribers can only use 3 simultaneous connections (which is rather low), while Premium allows you to connect up to 5 devices simultaneously.
We don’t like that using your router to try to connect more devices is considered “prohibited use,” which VyprVPN’s Terms of Service say “can result in immediate termination” of your account.
5 simultaneous connections is about the same as most other VPNs are offering, but many of them do allow you to use your router for unlimited connections.
Subscription Plans and Pricing
Basic vs Premium subscription plans just don’t seem to gel with the VPN industry. The more common practice is to simply differentiate between the length of your subscription.
At most, some providers might offer a free proxy version with fewer features than their paid plans.
Not VyprVPN, though:
You’re also rather limited in payment options: card, PayPal, or UnionPay only. We’d like to see VyprVPN catch up with the industry’s leaders by offering cryptocurrency payments for added privacy.
Unblocking Websites
We tried a few different options after making sure we had VyprDNS activated and had mixed results.
The US and UK servers worked for unblocking Netflix most times, but none of the other regions we tried.
Other than getting links to support articles on “What Streaming Services Does VyprVPN Currently Support?” and “Trouble Accessing Geographically Restricted Streaming Services,” support wasn’t able to help us much (again):
We nearly gave up after 20 minutes before getting the closest thing to a straight answer: we’d have to try all the servers every time we wanted to connect.
Torrenting
All VyprVPN tells you in the only knowledge base article on the topic is they allow peer-to-peer (P2P) and BitTorrent traffic. But “you can review our Terms of Service” if you want to know more.
Like any self-respecting VPN company, VyprVPN makes the legal caveat that while they don’t prohibit torrenting, doing so to download copyright material “can result in an immediate termination” of your subscription.
And it seems that’s happened to users who tried torrenting via VyprVPN in the past.
The knowledge base article “How Does VyprVPN Handle DMCA Notices?” suggests they can no longer do so because they don’t log user’s original IP addresses or connection times.
We’d be cautious using VyprVPN for torrents regardless. Check out our torrenting VPN guide for a VPN you can trust to torrent safely.
Usability and Support
VyprVPN advertises a quick installation process and we agree. About 5 minutes after starting the download, we were logged into the app.
Usually, at that point, we’d be connecting to a server.
But we did have to spend an extra minute figuring out VyprDNS and activating the kill switch first.
Other than having to turn things on that should be enabled by default, we found the VyprVPN Windows app very easy to use.
Our biggest complaint is there’s a lot of guesswork when trying to find a server for streaming online content.
Support, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. The knowledge base section doesn’t offer much knowledge, so we had to rely on VyprVPN’s live chat support quite a lot. And as you’ve seen, we’re not exactly happy with any of those experiences.
First, there’s the unnecessary process of convincing a chatbot you really do need to talk to a human because no, the knowledge base articles its suggesting don’t answer your question.
The only time that wasn’t the case for us was when it gave the link explaining how VyprVPN deals with DMCA notices these days.
Every other time, we had to confirm we wanted to talk to a human support agent (which is why we clicked the live support button in the first place). Then we had to repeat our question before being added to the queue.
And again, as you’ve seen, our communications with VyprVPN’s support agents weren’t exactly stellar either.
We don’t consider it a good sign when we have to explain VPN encryption standards to “the world’s most trusted VPN” and they still can’t figure out what they’re actually using.
How to Cancel VyprVPN and Get Your Money Back
To be blunt, we’re not quite comfortable recommending VyprVPN even as a budget option. You can get a better VPN, like NordVPN or CyberGhost, in the same price range (if you opt for a longer subscription).
If you’re looking to switch providers, here’s what to do:
- Log into your Golden Frog/VyprVPN account
- Click “Account” and “Cancel Service”
- Confirm by clicking “Cancel” again
- VyprVPN will ask you to provide a reason before allowing you to click “Continue Cancellation”
- Contact Live Support to request a refund if you’re eligible for one under the VyprVPN 30-day money-back guarantee
FAQs
How much does VyprVPN cost per month?
Does VyprVPN work for Netflix?
Is VyprVPN legitimate?
Is VyprVPN a good VPN?
Does VyprVPN hide my IP address?
Does VyprVPN charge monthly?
Is VyprVPN a zero-logs VPN?
Can you cancel VyprVPN anytime?
Is VyprVPN safe in China?
