Pete Zaborszky

Pete Zaborszky

June 22, 2018

As one of the biggest and most established Virtual Private Network (VPN) review sites, BestVPN.com is continually looking for better ways to test and compare VPN providers.

We know that the number one issue that people care about with regards to VPNs is speed.

Unfortunately, most VPN comparison sites don’t test speed in a scientific way. Testing a VPN from home or an office, via Wifi, via a speed testing website doesn’t give accurate and repeatable scientific data. So what’s the solution?

BestVPN.com’s testing methodology:

  • We have testing servers in four areas worldwide: the US, Australia, the UK, and Hong Kong
  • These servers test all VPN company speeds every eight hours (three times a day)
  • We test various locations across the VPN companies
  • We average these out to give a speed score to each VPN

3898

Tests done last 7 days

16377

Tests done last 30 days

142554

Total tests done

  • We test downloading the same amount of data in the same way across VPNs, so the measurement is scientific.
  • We store all historic data and make the last seven days’ figures available to the public.

This method means that all speed tests are done in exactly the same way for every VPN, without WiFi connections, internet connections, or speed test websites affecting the results – which they do, massively.

The Results – The Five Fastest VPNs

* Other provider’s speeds are shown lower down on the page

Average Scores Over the Last Seven Days

Which VPNs Do We Test?

We test the following VPN services, and their average speeds over the last 7 days are shown in (brackets):

  • IPVanish (71.94 Mbit/s)
  • ExpressVPN (68.61 Mbit/s)
  • HideMyAss (64.61 Mbit/s)
  • CyberGhost (63.13 Mbit/s)
  • BlackVPN (61.48 Mbit/s)
  • VyprVPN (61.08 Mbit/s)
  • Buffered (59.3 Mbit/s)
  • NordVPN (59.07 Mbit/s)
  • SaferVPN (55.6 Mbit/s)
  • PrivateVPN (55.44 Mbit/s)
  • hideme (54.37 Mbit/s)
  • PureVPN (52.73 Mbit/s)
  • TunnelBear (51.6 Mbit/s)
  • PrivateInternetAccess (50.96 Mbit/s)
  • ProtonVPN (46.26 Mbit/s)
  • ProxySH (41.68 Mbit/s)
  • ibVPN (41.19 Mbit/s)
  • vpnunlimited (25.03 Mbit/s)

If you would like us to test a VPN that isn’t on the list, send us a message.

What Are Average Speed and Max Speed/Burst?

Weighted Speedtest Result is the average of all speed tests across countries, weighted towards local connections, as we’ve found slightly more people use VPNs within their own country. It is a great indication of performance, as it contains hundreds of readings from across the globe. These readings push VPNs as fast as they go, so the results are not restricted by the speeds of our  servers, which all use ultra-fast 1Gbit/s connections. Basically, this means we push the VPNs as fast as they will go!

For those who are curious, our weighing calculation is as follows: 60% of the speed measurement is local connections (same country), since that’s how most people use a VPN typically, and 40% of the measurement is cross continent. We cap all measurements at 100Mbit since users are unlikely to use more than that. Except for the burst measurement of course.

Max Speed/Burst is a local download via a content distribution network (CDN), so a download from a Hong Kong server to a Hong Kong server, for example. This gives a max speed indication for nearby traffic. This is not as indicative of quality performance across the board, but it’s still interesting to see.