VyprVPN review

A VPN with some bite on the performance front

By Utilities 

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Our Verdict

This service offers speedy performance levels, native clients and quality tech support if you need it.

For

  • Impressive in our performance tests
  • No 'single IP address' limit for device connections
  • Good value yearly plans
  • Free plan

Against

  • Single month plans are expensive
  • Strictly no refunds
  • Exclusive VyprVPN Deal: For TechRadar readers only, get 25% off VyprVPN annual plans ($45 USD for 1 year). VyprVPN is a fast, highly secure VPN without third parties. Get VyprVPN here

VyprVPN is a popular VPN which is based in Switzerland, due to their favorable privacy laws that respect the rights of Internet users, and comes from the same stable of companies as US ISP Texas.net,  Data Foundry, and top Usenet provider Giganews.

The service grabbed our attention with some impressive specs: 73 server locations, unlimited data usage, over 200,000 IPs, secure DNS servers, a kill switch, along with various auto-connect options (on application launch, when connecting to untrusted Wi-Fi).

Also, there are apps and setup instructions to run the service almost anywhere: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux, smart TVs and multiple router types. A free 500MB/month plan gives a basic sampling of the service, or you can opt for one of the commercial plans.

The standard VyprVPN plan allows three simultaneous connections, includes a NAT firewall and supports VyprVPN's Chameleon protocol, which may help bypass VPN blocking. It's priced at $9.95 a month (£8, AU$13), dropping to a very reasonable $5 a month (£4, AU$6.50) if you sign up for a whole year.

VyprVPN Premium ups the limit to five simultaneous connections for $12.95 per month (£10.40, AU$17), or $6.67 per month (£5.30, AU$8.75) billed annually.

Unlike some of the competition, VyprVPN doesn't restrict your connections by IP address. You can be accessing your service over a router, and your mobile phone network, and a 4G tablet, without any issues at all. (Though beware, accounts are for "single user, individual use only", so you should only be using these yourself.)

There are cheaper VPNs around which offer five connections, but if you can live with three, VyprVPN offers a lot of privacy power for a very fair price. The company has a 3-day trial, too, so you can easily check the service quality for yourself.

Privacy

VyprVPN's privacy policy is clear, straightforward and extremely short, far better than the lengthy legalese you'll often be bombarded with elsewhere.

The document heads each section with simple text explaining exactly what it's aiming to answer: "What data Golden Frog retains from VyprVPN sessions", or "How Golden Frog responds to criminal investigations", and so on.

Each section provides only brief details, but they still manage to cover what you need to know. In particular, the service doesn't log your traffic, perform any packet inspection on it, discriminate against devices or protocols, and it doesn’t throttle or limit your internet connection.

The terms of service page is a little lengthier, but follows the same basic rules, and it's easy to locate the section you need.

VyprVPN's core clauses are very familiar: don't use the service to do illegal stuff, you bear the responsibility for your actions, services will automatically be renewed unless you cancel your account, and so on.

The closest we could find to a catch was the 'Refund Policy', which says you'll never get one, ever, under any circumstances. That's stricter than some companies, but we can also see how it might be abused, and as VyprVPN offers a free plan and a trial there's more than enough opportunity to make sure the service works for you.

Performance

VyprVPN has clients for almost every device (except Windows Mobile), and detailed manual setup instructions for 60+ separate device and OS configurations.

The Windows client installed easily enough on our test PC. The bulky interface didn't appeal, but it's simple to use – connect with a click, your new IP address and connection status are clearly displayed, and a settings dialog gives speedy access to the tweaks you need.

We found the app wouldn't connect using 256-bit encryption on our test system, but it worked on a nearby PC, so probably wasn't VyprVPN's fault. 

We took the opportunity to test the company's support, without telling them who we were, and were happy to get a first reply within an hour, and very detailed troubleshooting advice 12 hours later.

One fixed system later, VyprVPN was connecting as normal. The connection process took a few seconds longer than usual, but after that performance was generally very good in our testing*. 

Our London-California tests showed a not-too-bad 96% increase in latency and a 68% drop in upload speeds, but download speeds were 2.48x faster than with the VPN turned off.

Final verdict

That’s a seriously impressive boost in download speeds on the performance front, and VyprVPN's powerful features and native clients are also major highlights. Factor in the new lower prices and this is a VPN which needs to be on your shortlist. Go take the 3-day trial, see how it performs for you.

*Our testing included evaluating general performance (browsing, streaming video). We also used speedtest.net to measure latency, upload and download speeds, and then tested immediately again with the VPN turned off, to check for any difference (over several rounds of testing). We then compared these results to other VPN services we've reviewed. Of course, do note that VPN performance is difficult to measure as there are so many variables.