VyprVPN Review: Venomous or Defanged?

VyprVPN is an independent VPN service owned and operated by Switzerland-based Golden Frog. It has a strong reputation for privacy and also is at the forefront of efforts to fight internet censorship. I took it for a spin to see how it performs.

When compared to the best VPNs, VyprVPN performs well but not without some small issues. Thanks to its censorship-busting Chameleon protocol, it’s a great pick for people trying to use the internet from China or similarly restrictive regimes. However, it falls short in some other areas, most notably its inability to unblock Netflix.

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VyprVPN’s Interface

Let’s kick off this review by taking a look at how VyprVPN handles. Like many VPNs, it uses a small, mobile-sized app regardless of operating system. Currently, it’s available for Windows, Mac, iPhone/iPad, and Android. It also can be installed on QNAP NASes, Blackphone, and a wide selection of VPN-enabled routers.

For this review, I tested VyprVPN on a laptop running Windows 10, and I have to say that I rather like the interface. Like most other VPNs, it’s a simple design with just a handful of buttons: one that switches on the VPN, another that lets you pick a location (the one that says “fastest server” in the screenshot below), and then a few more below that for settings and the like.

I like this approach a lot—I laud ExpressVPN for it, too—since it basically makes it so that there’s no figuring out what to do on your end. For example, as much as I like Proton VPN, its interface is a bit of a nightmare for anybody new to VPNs with just too many switches and dials. VyprVPN avoids this type of issue.

The settings menu is just as simple and intuitive. However, for some reason, two important features are off by default. The first is the kill switch, which many VPNs have disengaged by default despite it being an extremely important safety measure.

The second is what VyprVPN calls its public Wi-Fi protection. I’m not exactly sure what this is supposed to do since VPNs, by their nature, protect you while on public Wi-Fi, but VyprVPN advertises this feature very heavily across its website, so I’m surprised to see that users need to turn it on themselves. Then again, I wouldn’t worry too much about it, especially since public Wi-Fi isn’t the security issue it used to be.

VyprVPN Servers

VyprVPN has a large number of servers available across 70 locations, though it should be noted that you can’t pick individual servers in those locations. The spread is pretty decent, with locations across the world well represented, though, as usual, the center of gravity is in Europe and North America.

Server selection is pretty easy; You just scroll down the list and pick the location you want. My only issue here—besides not being able to pick individual servers—is that there are no submenus. So a country like the United States has several entries. It makes the list longer than it needs to be, but it’s no deal breaker.

VyprVPN and Netflix

VyprVPN doesn’t exactly advertise as a VPN that can crack streaming services, but it does mention here and there that it can do so. In my experience, this is untrue. I tested five servers with Netflix, and not one of them got through. Normally I test 10 or so, but five times goose egg was disheartening enough that I gave up. If you’re looking for a streaming VPN, VyprVPN is not it.

Speed

VyprVPN’s speeds are pretty good. I tested the VPN’s speeds the way I usually do by first determining what my unprotected speed was from my home in Cyprus and then connecting to four locations around the globe. I try to always use the same locations at staggered distances. The results are below.

As you can imagine, I was pretty impressed with VyprVPN until I got to Japan. My connections to Israel, the U.K., and the U.S. showed excellent results, on par with IVPN, but then fell flat once I connected to Tokyo. This bars VyprVPN from being called truly fast, though, at the same time, it could also be an unpleasant fluke. There’s a lot that can influence a VPN’s speed, after all, though subsequent testing didn’t show much of a difference.

That said, overall, the showing was quite good, and VyprVPN seems to be one of the few services that has good servers in Israel. Usually, my results there, despite being just a few hundred miles away, are terrible. The latency, or ping, is terrible, of course, but I have yet to find the VPN that can fix that issue.

Pricing

VyprVPN’s pricing is straightforward, offering just one plan that includes full functionality. The only choice here is if you want to go month-to-month and pay $10 per month or sign up for a full year and pay $60.

At $60, VyprVPN fits exactly in the middle of the market, making it easy to compare to its competitors. For example, it’s $40 per year cheaper than ExpressVPN but costs the same as two of my favorites, Mullvad and IVPN.

When compared to those two, VyprVPN is an okay buy: it doesn’t offer the same speeds as Mullvad or IVPN do, for example, though none of them are particularly good for getting through to Netflix. If that’s a priority, you could always pay $10 per year more and get Windscribe. Though it’s not as fast or as easy to use, it does a much better job of streaming.

At $5 per month when paying annually—seriously, never go month-to-month with VPNs, it’s a terrible value—VyprVPN is a good buy. If it were a buck or two cheaper, it’d be an even better one, though.

Security and Privacy

When it comes to security and privacy, VyprVPN seems a solid choice—the only good yardstick is whether or not a VPN has had any scandals in its past. VyprVPN doesn’t have any skeletons like that in its closet, thankfully, but there are a few things consumers should be aware of.

For one, VyprVPN requires your full name at signup. Though few VPNs will allow you to sign up anonymously, I feel this goes further than absolutely necessary. On top of that, you can’t pay in cash or cryptocurrency—okay, crypto is pseudonymous, but the point still stands—so it’s not like you can use a fake name, either. If anonymity is important to you, VyprVPN is not a good pick.

Other than that, though, VyprVPN dots all of its i’s and crosses all its t’s. The privacy policy is a succinct and clear document. VyprVPN is a no-log VPN, meaning any records of your activity are destroyed. However, the company makes no bones that it will operate with law enforcement when presented with a legal warrant. While this is nothing new, VyprVPN does know your name, so there’s a chance that could be shared if you’re caught doing anything illegal, like torrenting.

Security and Protocols

When it comes to security issues, the picture is a little better: you have everything in place to make for a safe browsing experience, though you should make sure to engage the kill switch yourself.

When it comes to VPN protocols, VyprVPN defaults to WireGuard, which is one of the best out there. As a secondary choice, it offers OpenVPN, which is also very good, IPSec, which isn’t all that great, and of course, its proprietary Chameleon protocol.

This last one is interesting as it was designed as a way to punch through the Great Firewall of China by disguising your VPN connection as regular traffic. It’s not the only VPN to do this—Proton VPN, for example, recently unveiled its Stealth protocol—but VyprVPN definitely was one of the first.

The only bad news in this section is that I feel VyprVPN hammers a bit on the wrong things in its marketing material. For one, it goes on a lot about how it can be used to protect you while using public Wi-Fi, which seems a little outdated if I’m honest. It also claims it “protects online activity,” a common claim, but then doesn’t explain exactly what this protection entails.

However, this seems more an issue with the marketing team than with whoever is responsible for security. As far as I can tell, VyprVPN is perfectly safe to use, though I feel some worry about the lack of anonymity.

Should You Subscribe to VyprVPN?

Going over the whole picture, there’s a lot to recommend VyprVPN, but I get this nagging feeling that you could do a lot better, too. For example, if evading internet censorship is your top priority, VyprVPN seems to be the ticket. The Chameleon protocol, in conjunction with its other security features, should make it ideal for cracking China or Russia’s defenses, to name just two.

However, personal experience and reports from other sources show that, well, any good VPN does a similar job; it’s not a reason to purchase VyprVPN. At $60 a year, which is a reasonable price, you can get faster VPNs. Pay a few bucks more, and you can get one that can even crack Netflix.

While there certainly is a niche for VyprVPN—I really like the interface, for example—I would recommend Mullvad,  IVPN, or even ExpressVPN before I do VyprVPN.