VyprVPN Review

VyprVPN is a VPN provider that gets almost everything right. Its focus on privacy is apparent: it offers a proprietary protocol that works well in China, and it can break through streaming blocks like they never existed. That said, VyprVPN’s limited server locations and slow speed keep it from being the best VPN. 

In this VyprVPN review, we’re going to take a look at the VPN’s recently updated website and app, while also judging its features, speed, security and more. Along the way, we’ll compare VyprVPN to elite VPN services, such as ExpressVPN and NordVPN, seeing how well it can stand up to the providers that dominante the space (read our ExpressVPN review). 

Surprisingly, VyprVPN holds up well. Although it’s still missing a few critical pieces, VyprVPN gets most of the way there, and does so with a low monthly cost. The VPN is not perfect, and we’ll explain why, but it’s certainly worth a look. You can try it yourself with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

VyprVPN Video Review

VyprVPN Review 2019: Security and Netflix, But What’s the Catch?

Strengths & Weaknesses

Alternatives for VyprVPN

Features

As we’ll get to in the “user-friendliness” section below, VyprVPN has a very streamlined interface. Despite that, the development team managed to cram in a ton of features. From startup options to DNS settings, the VPN is highly configurable. That said, it’s missing a few features that services like TorGuard offer (read our TorGuard review). 

The range of startup settings allow you to automatically connect to the VPN when you turn on your machine, as well as automatically connect on public WiFi networks. Moving down the list of essentials, VyprVPN also includes a configurable kill switch. You can set the kill switch to block traffic on your entire connection or only on specific apps. 

Additionally, you can fiddle with some advanced settings, such as what DNS servers you want to use and the TAP adapter that establishes the connection, but it’s fairly standard fare. We’re disappointed, though, that VyprVPN removed so many advanced settings in this most recent version of the app. 

In previous versions, you were given fine control of your connection, down to the route delay time and verbosity of the connection log. These settings are now gone. Although most users won’t miss them, it’s a bit disappointing for us techies. 

Linux, Routers and More

VyprVPN’s features are great, though they’re a bit stock. What isn’t stock is platform support. Sure, VyprVPN covers Windows, macOS, Android and iOS, but the big addition is Android TV. 

VyprVPN is one of the few VPNs with an app designed specifically for smart TVs, which is huge. VPNs are often used for streaming, and with an Android TV app, you can protect the device you’re likely using for streaming. 

There’s one big problem with its platform support, though. VyprVPN doesn’t have a native app for Linux, which is absurd. Nearly all top-tier VPN services have a native Linux app, so there’s no excuse for VyprVPN. You can get the service running on Linux through a manual installation, but that’s a hassle. 

Thankfully, VyprVPN makes up for that with a router app. Like nearly all VPNs, you can install VyprVPN on your router. However, it has a dedicated app available for MIPS- and ARM-based routers, allowing you to configure your connection settings and choose which devices use the VPN tunnel.

VyprVPN Features Overview

Pricing

VyprVPN used to have a confusing pricing structure, with a more expensive plan including its Chameleon protocol and a cheaper one with only the essentials. Thankfully, it has done away with the two tiers of service in favor of a single subscription available in multiple durations. Now it’s one of the cheapest VPNs out there.

One Month Unlimited GB Bandwidth 5 Included Devices	1-month plan $ 12.95/ month 1-year plan $ 3.75/ month $45.00 billed every year Save 71 % 2-year plan $ 2.50/ month $60.00 billed every 2 years Save 81 %

The price still can’t rival the best free VPN, Windscribe, but it beats most other services (read our Windscribe review). On the annual end of things, VyprVPN is cheaper than ProtonVPN and Surfshark, with an attractive two-year option for only $15 more. The monthly price isn’t very good, but it’s still cheaper than Astrill, at least.

For the price, you get five simultaneous connections, which is fine considering you can install VyprVPN on your router. As far as simultaneous connections go, five is usually the baseline. It’s not a bad thing, but VyprVPN didn’t make the cut in our best VPN for multiple devices guide. 

When it comes time to pay, VyprVPN accepts PayPal, credit cards and UnionPay, but not bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. There’s really no way to buy the VPN anonymously, which is disappointing. Crypto is the standard for anonymous payment, with some services, such as Mullvad, going as far as to accept cash (read our Mullvad review). 

Does VyprVPN Have a Free Trial?

In addition to overhauling its pricing structure, VyprVPN has done away with its three-day free trial in favor of a refund policy. Previously, you could sign up for an account and use the service for three days free of charge. As we’ve seen with services like Astrill, though, these trial periods are hard to enforce without some sort of device fingerprinting. 

It’s disappointing there isn’t a trial period, but in its place is a 30-day money-back guarantee. Instead of a mere three days, you have a full month to try it out. You’ll have to spend some money upfront, but that’s better than only trying the service for three days and potentially running into some sort of device fingerprint (read our Astrill review for an example of that).

User-Friendliness

VyprVPN’s redesigned site and app has done wonders for the service. Miraculously, VyprVPN has managed to remove the rough edges from its former app while retaining most of the character. It’s now easier than ever to use, with a streamlined checkout process, to boot. 

The Windows application has a familiar form factor to other popular VPNs. It’s laid out like a smartphone app, similar to ExpressVPN’s local application. Out of the box, VyprVPN selects the fastest server for your location. All you need to do is click the large “connect” button to protect your connection. 

Outside of the main screen, there are two tabs: “customize” and “servers.” The server list is easy to get around, with VyprVPN offering multiple filtering options and showing the latency next to each entry, but we like its settings screen more. A combination of icons next to each setting and an overall spacious design makes this setting menu feel more accessible than most. 

That said, the app isn’t perfect. There’s a severe lack of information on the connection screen. VyprVPN shows the location you’re connected to and session time, but nothing else. Furthermore, when you have the “fastest server” option enabled, it doesn’t show what location you’ll be connecting to. 

Thankfully, that’s a small issue, and one that’s easy to look past, given how well the app is designed otherwise. VyprVPN doesn’t pull any punches with its usability, and it doesn’t need to. The app is familiar, it ensures users are connected quickly and it doesn’t go too far down the rabbit hole of settings. 

Speed

VyprVPN has never been the fastest VPN service, and when testing it this time around, things were no different. Inconsistent speeds across the network and large drops in download speeds lead to a sluggish experience overall. It’s serviceable, as long as you’re not doing anything too network-intensive, but otherwise, it’s not great.

The tests above were run with OpenVPN and AES-256 encryption using VyprVPN’s own DNS servers. This is the configuration that comes out of the box, and it’s what we use to compare providers. 

As you can see, VyprVPN takes a hefty tax on the download end of things, though it’s not consistent across locations. For example, Chicago performed better than New York, while the Netherlands was better than both of them. 

Whenever we see poor performance, we investigate the protocol first (read our CyberGhost review for another example of a service that doesn’t take kindly to OpenVPN). We switched over to the Chameleon protocol — more on that next — and reran the first few tests.

Thankfully, there was a performance improvement in Chicago and New York, nearly doubling the OpenVPN download speed. This is strange, though, because Chameleon is essentially just OpenVPN. Latency shot up in the New York location, as well, so if you’re going to use VyprVPN for gaming, it’s best to stick with OpenVPN. 

Finally, we ran a third series of tests using IKEv2, which is usually much faster than OpenVPN. Sure enough, we came out with massively improved results, with download speeds well above 100 Mbps in Chicago and New York, and just shy of that mark in the Netherlands. If you need speed, IKEv2 is the best option.

VyprVPN isn’t fast, with mediocre OpenVPN performance and inconsistency between locations. IKEv2 solved all of our problems, though, delivering much higher download speeds and a gradient across locations, which is the behavior we expect. We’ll retest and update this review with WireGuard results once it’s released on Windows. Based on what we’ve seen from other services, WireGuard should perform much better than OpenVPN. 

IKEv2 with IPSec is a fine choice in the majority of situations, which we’ll get to in a minute. However, we’ve seen much better performance from OpenVPN with other services (read our Private Internet Access review for just one example).

Security

VyprVPN installs with the cocktail of VPN security we’re always looking for: OpenVPN with AES-256. As we saw in the speed tests, this isn’t the best choice for squeezing the most performance out of VyprVPN. 

However, when it comes to security, OpenVPN reigns supreme (read our VPN protocol breakdown for more on that). Beyond that, you can use IKEv2 paired with IPSec and VyprVPN’s own Chameleon protocol (more on that in a moment). 

When paired with IPSec, IKEv2 is just as secure as OpenVPN when it comes to encryption, able to use AES-256 and even newer ciphers, like ChaCha20 (read our description of encryption for more on those two). However, because it encrypts in the IP layer and not the transport layer, it’s more susceptible to firewall blocks.

Between the two, OpenVPN is generally considered more secure, given that it’s open source and handles like standard SSL/TLS traffic. Given its poor performance, though, you might want to switch over to IKEv2. 

This is where a newer protocol like WireGuard would come in handy, which multiple other services have already started implementing (read our NordVPN review for one example). VyprVPN has WireGuard in its beta release, though that’s only on iOS at the moment. 

Thankfully, you can use IKEv2 without too much risk. We ran DNS leak tests for OpenVPN and IKEv2, and in both cases, there were no redirects to our ISP. That said, we noticed that VyprVPN’s DNS sends requests to multiple private companies with cloud infrastructure, most notably Amazon and DigitalOcean. 

Torrenting With VyprVPN

VyprVPN earned a high spot in our best VPN for torrenting guide on the back of its excellent security. The speeds are rough, but VyprVPN doesn’t treat peer-to-peer traffic any differently than it would other traffic. Because of that, you’re free to torrent on any server you like, unlike NordVPN and CyberGhost, which restrict torrenting to a certain set of locations. 

Even with the slowdown, it’s better to have VyprVPN enabled while torrenting than to not. Torrenting is illegal in most countries, and after a few DMCA notices from your ISP, you’ll be susceptible to fines. As long as you’re connected with a VPN, though, you’ll be fine. Your ISP won’t have any way of knowing what you’re doing online. 

VyprVPN in China and Other High-Risk Countries

We can talk about OpenVPN and IKEv2 all day, but VyprVPN’s main attraction is Chameleon. This proprietary protocol uses the guts of OpenVPN for negotiating the connection and handling encryption. However, each packet passes through an obfuscation layer, too, scrambling the metadata inside. 

For countries with strict censorship, such as China, that’s huge. The manual censors in these oppressive countries can often detect a VPN connection through a process known as “deep packet inspection” (DPI). The Chinese government, in particular, monitors traffic around the clock, blocking anything it deems harmful to Chinese citizens (this usually includes VPN traffic). 

VyprVPN earned a spot in our best VPN for China guide on the back of its Chameleon protocol. By scrambling packet metadata, Chameleon offers all the security benefits of OpenVPN without the risks of being caught by a censor inspecting packets. 

Although it’s always a risk to use a VPN in countries with deep-internet monitoring, VyprVPN is a better choice than most other options. 

Privacy

VyprVPN says at the top of its privacy policy that it’s a “zero log VPN service.” That’s not just a claim without support, either. It sought out Leviathan Security to audit its no-logs policy, ensuring that there was absolutely no user data stored in logs generated by the servers. It found a few things, which VyprVPN promptly fixed. 

In short, VyprVPN doesn’t know your source IP address, destination IP address, browsing history, traffic contents or anything else. Furthermore, VyprVPNoffers its VyprDNS servers, which don’t keep logs, either. 

We encountered some DNS requests going to third parties, though. We don’t know for sure, though we’d assume these requests are to cloud nodes that VyprVPN maintains and rents from a larger company. 

Your VPN connection is private, but VyprVPN still has some information about you on record. Namely, its parent company, Golden Frog, holds your name, email, billing country and postal code on record. This information is necessary for payments, but it wouldn’t be if VyprVPN accepted anonymous payment methods. 

It’s unclear what Golden Frog does with this information, outside of promotional emails and the like. The privacy policy doesn’t state if Golden Frog sells the data or not. 

That said, Golden Frog is based in Switzerland, which might be the most privacy-friendly country in the world. With strict laws protecting user data on the books, there’s little risk in trusting Golden Frog with some basic information. 

Does VyprVPN Keep Logs?

VyprVPN knows nothing about your VPN, which was proved through a third-party security audit. Unlike IPVanish, which claimed no-logs only to be caught lying later, VyprVPN truly knows nothing about what you’re doing online (read our IPVanish review). 

At most, someone could figure out that you signed up for VyprVPN, but not that you used it, much less how you used it. Even that’s unlikely, given how strict privacy laws are in Switzerland. In short, you shouldn’t worry about VyprVPN logging data.

Streaming Performance

VyprVPN had no problem breaking into streaming platforms. On the first try, we broke through to Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix and BBC iPlayer. VyprVPN is certainly among the best VPNs for streaming, though you should take into account its often sluggish speeds. 

We started our streaming tests on OpenVPN. However, after a few lengthy loading times, we quickly switched to IKEv2, which was much faster and just as capable of bypassing VPN blocks. Netflix was responsive on both protocols, though, which is why VyprVPN earned a high spot in our best VPN for Netflix guide. 

Despite the slow speeds on OpenVPN, we enjoyed the streaming experience with VyprVPN. Unlike NordVPN, where you have to sift through a list of servers to find one that works, VyprVPN just worked right away. That said, we recommend switching to IKEv2 if streaming is your main concern. 

VyprVPN With Kodi

In addition to the streaming giants, VyprVPN works well with Kodi. Although using Kodi isn’t illegal, streaming copyrighted content without a license is, so it’s best to use a VPN when browsing one of Kodi’s many add-ons. Thankfully, it’s easy to protect your Kodi sessions with VyprVPN. 

You can, of course, install it on your router, but VyprVPN is among the few VPN services to offer an Android TV app. That means you can install Kodi and VyprVPN on, say, your Nvidia Shield, just like you would on your phone. It’s a painless setup process, making VyprVPN an ideal Kodi VPN.

Server Locations

VyprVPN maintains more than 200,000 IP addresses assigned to over 700 servers around the world. The vast majority of locations are in Europe, though VyprVPN has a decent spread in Asia, the Middle East and South America, which don’t usually receive the same treatment as North America and Europe. 

Not all of those locations are physical, though. Like the HideMyAss VPN, VyprVPN uses virtual servers in restrictive and remote countries (read our HideMyAss review). These locations provide you with a local IP address, but the server itself is located in another country. 

We’re not opposed to virtual servers, but it should be clear which locations are virtual and which are physical. As it stands now, there’s no way to tell which type of server you’re connected to in-app. Furthermore, VyprVPN doesn’t maintain a list of virtual locations on its website, so there’s really no way to know if the location you’re connecting to is physical or not. 

Customer Service

With VyprVPN’s redesigned website, the support area is much more accessible. A live chat icon follows you around the site, and you can easily navigate to the knowledgebase using the “support” button on the homepage. This is customer support in its best form: accessible and easy to understand.

The knowledgebase is excellent, filled with articles that range from setting up VyprVPN to managing your account. No matter where you are in the knowledgebase, you can get additional customer support by clicking the “need assistance” button at the top of the screen. That’ll open live chat, which initially has you speaking with a bot. 

We don’t care too much for support bots, but VyprVPN knows what it is: a glorified search bar. The bot will redirect you to some knowledgebase entries based on your question. Thankfully, you can quickly click through to speak with an actual support rep, and we found them to be very helpful during our testing. 

There’s email support, too, as well as a community forum. The forum is a little cluttered, as it groups all of Golden Frog’s customers into a single area, but it’s still nice to have around. 

Any gripes we have with customer support are so small that they really don’t matter. Golden Frog clearly understands the mechanics of customer service, giving you plenty of support options and letting you choose between them rather than forcing you to use one resource before accessing another. 

The Verdict

VyprVPN has improved considerably since the last time we tested it. The app looks much nicer, the website is way easier to use and the pricing is streamlined. Unfortunately, not all aspects of the service have improved. Speed still puts a huge damper on what is otherwise one of the better VPN providers around. 

Thankfully, you can circumvent the speed issues with IKEv2, at least until VyprVPN releases WireGuard for every platform. VyprVPN isn’t quite there yet, but it’s a service to keep an eye on in the future. 

Do you plan on signing up for an account? Let us know about your experience in the comments below and, as always, thanks for reading.

VyprVPN FAQ

• Is VyprVPN Good for Torrenting?

  VyprVPN is traffic agnostic, meaning you can torrent on any of the servers in its network. That said, its slower speeds aren’t ideal for large downloads.

• How Much Does VyprVPN Cost?

  VyprVPN costs $12.95 per month and includes protection for up to five devices. You can save on the monthly cost with a long-term subscription, though. An annual subscription runs $45 every 12 months, and a biennial subscription costs $60 every 24 months.

• How Secure Is VyprVPN?

  VyprVPN is a highly secure virtual private network that uses OpenVPN with AES-256 encryption. You can also use VyprVPN’s proprietary Chameleon protocol, which offers the same level of encryption as OpenVPN while scrambling packet metadata.