PrivateVPN review

The first thing to say about PrivateVPN? It's underrated. This is a great little VPN with a 7-day trial. It doesn’t stand out as a provider with a shiny and big suite of security. However, despite not being among the most famous VPNs, this service competes with market leaders… and often wins!

PrivateVPN offers features that are an effective asset to your safety and a pleasant browsing experience. You will find it great for torrenting, as it offers an HTTP and SOCKS5 proxy Also, streaming services won’t bring up stress anymore by limiting your desired content. The app is customer-friendly and you will get sturdy protection. And just to put a cherry on top – your activity logs won’t be collected.

Got hooked and burning to find out more? Well, in my PrivateVPN review, you'll learn it all. From speed and performance to privacy and customer support – here's what you should consider before getting PrivateVPN.

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⭐ Rating:	4.5 ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
🥇 Overall rank:	#4 out of #32
📖 No logs policy:	No logs
💵 Price:	from $2.00/month
🖥️ Servers:	200+ servers in 63 countries
🍿 Streaming services:	Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Video, and more
🔥 Coupons:	PrivateVPN coupon 85% OFF

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PrivateVPN pros and cons

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Streaming: does PrivateVPN work with Netflix?

If you dig deep in the forums looking for a good VPN for streaming, you will find that PrivateVPN gets mentioned quite often. It didn't take too long for me to find out why.

Platform	Status
Netflix	✅ Yes, with US Netflix
BBC iPlayer	✅ Yes
YouTube	✅ Yes
DAZN	✅ Yes

It took no effort to unblock geo-restricted YouTube videos and BBC iPlayer, making PrivateVPN a valid option for many of your streaming needs. Not to mention that even some more popular providers struggle with iPlayer.

Although Netflix worked, and the VPN helped to unblock restricted videos, the streaming quality was poor. It's unclear who is to blame for this: the VPN or the service itself, as Netflix lately has had some issues with heavier loads on their servers.

Even DAZN, which only a couple of VPN manages to unblock, was accessible with PrivateVPN. So, during our tests, PrivateVPN got us through to every geographically restricted service that we tested. This isn't something that you see every day, even when reviewing top-shelf VPN service providers.

Unblocking Netflix with PrivateVPN

PrivateVPN is one of the best VPNs to work with Netflix. During our tests, a variety of libraries was successfully unblocked and videos loaded very quickly thanks to speedy servers.

It might happen that PrivateVPN starts struggling with unblocking certain libraries on Netflix, as Netflix itself constantly tries to block VPNs. However, the issue doesn’t stay too long because PrivateVPN overcomes it fast. Also, keep in mind that if you decide to choose a server located far from you, then the video quality might be poor.

What’s great is that PrivateVPN performs nicely either on the web version or mobile app version of Netflix. Most of the time you are able to access a variety of content and enjoy Netflix effortlessly.

Unblocking BBC iPlayer with PrivateVPN

Even though PrivateVPN only has 6 servers in the UK, you are still able to enjoy BBC iPlayer with it comfortably. The videos do load a bit longer but after they do, everything goes fluently.

If you come across a low-quality video, don’t fall for panic as it gets fixed quickly and you are back to HD quality.

Considering the price of PrivateVPN services, the possibility to unblock BBC iPlayer is fantastic. You are even able to unblock BBC iPlayer straight from the website.

Nevertheless, the low quantity of servers might not satisfy every user. And we get it. Streaming services are able to offer a colorful wide range of content, so having unlimited access to them is very attractive. In this case, you can always check our top list of best VPNs for streaming.

Is PrivateVPN good for Torrenting?

Yes, PrivateVPN is good for torrenting as it supports P2P traffic. Though, to use it with torrenting clients to download files, you'll have to connect to Dedicated IP/Torrenting servers.

It took a while for the speed to max out, but it ended up very good. The maximum speed was 15MB/s (120mbps), which is great (but of course, it depends on many variables, including the leechers/seeders ratio). You'll have to get their free trial to get the actual picture. Port forwarding support is there and can be used for torrenting.

The only problem that I could potentially see with the service is that the specialized servers are not so numerous. This means that you could have to deal with overloaded servers. If this issue seems to cause you too much trouble, you can check our list of the best VPNs for torrenting and find the best option for you.

Plans and pricing

All PrivateVPN plans give you the same features. The only difference will be the duration, with better savings on longer subscriptions. It's a VPN market staple, you'll see this approach with almost all providers.

Version	Price
1-month plan	$11.99
4-month plan	$4.50/month
36-month plan	$2.00/month

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The shortest and the most expensive option is their monthly plan for $8.99. If you commit for two months more (three months plan), the price is $17.99, so you save almost 39%. The longest plan also provides the best deal with $59.99 a year. So, the prices are on par with the competition.

With each plan, you're getting 10 simultaneous connections, and you can try the service with a 7-day free trial. You'll have to write to their official support email address (support@privatevpn.com) to get a gift code. It doesn't require any payment information, so you won't feel caught off guard when your subscription “accidentally” renews. Still, you can also take advantage of a 30-day money-back guarantee.

You can pay with:

• Credit cards
• PayPal
• Cryptocurrencies

However, if you decide to pay via PayPal, you'll have to pay a 5% handling fee, which raises the price a bit. So, if you're buying the longest subscription, the price may increase by $3. It's a minor thing, but it's something to take into consideration.

If the prices of PrivateVPN don’t seem good enough for you, take a look at the best current VPN deals we offer and find the most suitable for you. Secure your wallet alongside online security!

Servers and locations

PrivateVPN counts its servers in hundreds, not in thousands. This translates into a modest fleet of 200+ servers in 63 countries.

Regions	Number of countries	Number of servers
Europe	35 countries	41 servers
The Asia Pacific	13 countries	16 servers
Americas	9 countries	23 servers
The Middle East and Africa	5 countries	5 servers

So, even though the country variety is good, the number of server locations is somewhat of a bottleneck. PrivateVPN is highly susceptible to overcrowded servers, which can hurt your user experience. I hope that they'll increase their fleet size, as most competitors are rocking much higher numbers. Plus, the fact that each user gets 10 simultaneous connections can quickly make the overcrowding worse.

The upside is there are some exotic locations like Hong Kong or Russia, which might be just the locations that you won't find anywhere else.

Does PrivateVPN work in China?

Yes, PrivateVPN does work in China. It has a special Stealth VPN mode which is designed to bypass the Great Firewall. To do this, PrivateVPN uses the L2TP protocol and AES 256-bit encryption.

To get the best speeds, you can choose from the closer servers that are located in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, and so on.

Interestingly, you can have a decent streaming experience in China too. Yes, the speed and video quality might be a bit poor but not poor enough to destroy your joy!

And, of course, it’s always great to have extra options to bypass China’s restrictions. So, keep in mind our list of the best VPNs for China.

Speed and performance: Is PrivateVPN fast?

PrivateVPN’s speeds aren’t that impressive, and there are certainly faster VPNs on the market. One of the reasons for that could be the absence of the WireGuard protocol, which offers robust security and some of the fastest speeds.

So, to determine the speed of service, I measured the drop-off percentages. The lower they are, the faster your VPN will be. Since PrivateVPN doesn't have many tunneling protocols but allows changing the encryption, I ran multiple speed tests with different OpenVPN configurations:

OpenVPN (AES-128-GCM)	Download speed drop	Upload speed drop
UDP	56%	44%
TCP	80%	89%

Regarding the UDP variant of OpenVPN (AES-128-GCM), these are pretty good OpenVPN speed scores. Although on their own, they're nothing to write home about. The latency times were pretty high across the board, which could introduce lag or stuttering if you connect to locations further away.

As for the TCP variant, it isn’t any faster. The results are in line with what you could expect from TCP, but no one is ever using this mode for speed. It's worth noting that in some cases, ping times were excessive. For example, Singapore and Australia exceeded 500 milliseconds. That's a half a second difference, which could be noticeable.

OpenVPN (AES-256-GCM)	Download speed drop	Upload speed drop
UDP	61%	38%
TCP	80%	87%

The upload speed of OpenVPN UDP (AES-256-GCM) is much faster than the download speed. However, ping times are still above average with either OpenVPN version. So, if you're wondering whether encryption makes the speeds worse – it's a complicated answer.

As for the TCP variant, it’s somewhat on par with the AES-128 encryption. While the download speed drops are identical, the upload speed is a bit faster with AES-256.

In short, the AES algorithm version is the most relevant to those who are using devices that don't support AES hardware acceleration. So, this may be more important when setting up PrivateVPN on a router.

OpenVPN configurations	Speed	Security	Connection stability
UDP (AES-128-GCM)	Medium	Medium	High
TCP (AES-128-GCM)	High	Medium	Medium
UDP (AES-256-GCM)	Medium	High	High
TCP (AES-256-GCM)	High	High	Medium

I didn't test PPTP and L2TP, mainly because I didn't manage to get them to work. Both of them are pretty outdated and not very secure anyway, so you should stick to OpenVPN.

It has been two years since it was announced that PrivateVPN has WireGuard in beta, but for now, all you can do is configure the protocol manually.

So, while OpenVPN is the best option that the provider has to offer, speed isn't one of PrivateVPN's fortes.

Interface and ease of use

Platform	Experience
Windows	The richest version of PrivateVPN
macOS	Well personalized for the OS but lacks some features
Linux	No graphical application
Mobile	Comfortable and solid apps for Android and iOS
Browser	No browser extension

PrivateVPN has done a great job developing a user-friendly interface for its application. Even though the appearance of an app varies on different operating systems, it remains similar and offers a decently personalized program.

Sure, there are some clunky spots that might be annoying. But are they going to make an impact on your experience? Let’s find out down below.

Windows

I found the Windows app simple to use. It pushes notifications for everything that is going on, so you'll always know your connection's status.

The main screen windows are customizable, allowing you to switch between simple and advanced views. The former only shows the status of your connection, with the ability to change the country you are connected to. Meanwhile, the advanced view gives access to customize the connection type and encryption, allowing you to access the app settings.

There were some weird issues. For example, the Streaming Services tab didn't show any servers. And although I liked the addition of port forwarding every time, it would assign a different port each time you connected. That means you would need to reconfigure your routers and other potential software to use a different port each time. Plus, you cannot disable it.

For a comparison, you can always check our list of the best VPNs for Windows.