The Best iPhone VPNs for 2022

Why Should You Get a VPN for Your iPhone? 

Apple did a good job of protecting its mobile platform from the worst malware. However, a VPN, or virtual private network, goes beyond malware protection by making it harder for advertisers, ISPs, and snoops to monitor your online activities.

Modern cellular communication is thoroughly encrypted and not easily tapped without police-level tools such as a Stingray-like device or data dumps from cell towers. That said, there are well-documented attacks that can intercept cell transmissions, and phony cell towers may be a bigger problem than you think. There are also fake Wi-Fi networks that mimic networks your iPhone already trusts, enticing them to connect without your knowledge. We’ve seen this attack in action—it’s a staple of security researchers showing off their tricks.

More About Our Picks

Best for Free

Bottom Line:

Proton VPN has the best free subscription we’ve yet seen, and its paid offering has excellent features at an affordable price. The iPhone app is simple and nicely customized for mobile use.

Pros

• Best free subscription
• Numerous advanced privacy tools
• Strong customer privacy stance
• Slick, accessible client
• Excellent Speedtest scores

Cons

• Awkward Chrome OS implementation
• Complicated pricing structure

Best for Privacy Hawks on a Budget

Bottom Line:

IVPN bakes privacy into its product and offers VPN protection at a very affordable price. Its barebones design is a little cleaner on iPhone, making for an excellent experience.

Pros

• Flexible, affordable pricing
• Unique multi-hop system
• Privacy baked into its account system
• Strong stance on transparency

Cons

• Offers few server locations
• Multi-hop and Account ID might confuse some users

Best for the Super Privacy Conscious

Bottom Line:

Mullvad VPN offers excellent features at a very affordable price. Its iPhone app lacks some of the grace of the competition, but it’s simple and perhaps a little easier to use than Mullvad’s desktop client.

Pros

• Requires no email or account information
• Extremely affordable
• Radically transparent
• Some advanced features, including multi-hop and port forwarding

Cons

• Awkward desktop interface
• Servers in a small range of countries
• Pay-as-you-go system may confuse some customers

Best for Those Who Need Everything

Bottom Line:

While expensive, NordVPN has a hefty collection of privacy tools and a very large number of servers across the globe. The company did an excellent job translating its snazzy VPN app to iPhone, along with many of its privacy tools.

Pros

• Uses WireGuard VPN technology
• Multi-hop, split tunneling, and Tor connections
• Numerous server locations
• Unique Meshnet features

Cons

• Expensive
• Poor malware-blocking results
• Occasionally cramped interface

Best for Device-Heavy Households

Bottom Line:

Surfshark VPN may cost a lot, but its a quality product throughout. On iPhone, it smartly adapts its desktop design for a familiar, and highly polished, mobile experience.

Pros

• Unlimited simultaneous connections
• Large global server presence
• Multi-hop and split tunneling tools
• Intriguing potential in Surfshark Nexus

Cons

• High monthly price
• Privacy policy needs clarification
• Confusing long-term subscription pricing

Best for First-Time VPN Users

Bottom Line:

Don’t let its cuteness fool you: TunnelBear VPN is serious about privacy and transparency. It’s bright colors are especially welcoming on iOS.

Pros

• Affordable
• Excellent privacy policies
• Annual independent audits
• Friendly, approachable design
• Bears

Cons

• No WireGuard support
• Few advanced features

Best for Frequent Travelers

Bottom Line:

CyberGhost offers the largest collection of servers we’ve yet seen and its new visual design is now available on iPhone.

Pros

• Large, well-distributed server fleet
• Allows up to seven simultaneous connections
• Several add-ons, including antivirus
• Outstanding speed test scores

Cons

• Expensive
• No third-party audit
• Confusing privacy policies

Best for World Travelers

Bottom Line:

ExpressVPN boasts a large and robust network of servers, making it ideal for real or virtual travelers. A visual redesign has invigorated this service across all platforms, including iOS.

Pros

• Large, diversely distributed fleet of servers
• Strong privacy and security practices
• Split tunneling
• Stylish interface

Cons

• Expensive
• No multi-hop connections

Best for Consumers of Conscience

Bottom Line:

The creators of Firefox enter the world of VPNs with Mozilla VPN. Under the hood, this app is powered by privacy hawk Mullvad VPN and supports the new WireGuard protocol. Mozilla VPN fits right in on iOS with its simple but snazzy app.

Pros

• Helps support nonprofit Mozilla
• Powered by privacy hawk Mullvad
• Simple, snazzy design
• Multihop and split tunneling

Cons

• Few server locations
• Expensive, limited compared with Mullvad

Best for Bitdefender Customers

Bottom Line:

Bitdefender Premium VPN offers 10 simultaneous connections at an extremely reasonable price. Behind the scenes, this app is powered by Hotspot Shield VPN and uses Hotspot’s custom Hydra protocol as well as OpenVPN. Its iPhone app is simple, clean, and consistent in appearance with its Windows counterpart.

Pros

• Extremely affordable
• Clean design
• Split-tunneling
• Part of the larger Bitdefender app ecosystem

Cons

• Confusing pricing
• Confusing privacy policy
• Few additional privacy features
• High latency in test results

The real day-to-day problem is companies who are out for your data. Advertisers track your movements across the web and can build up detailed records of your preferences that they can transmute into cash with the dark alchemy of targeted advertising. Facebook, Google, and other big-name companies have driven an industry built on hyper-specific ad targeting. Even your own ISP can aggregate and sell anonymized information.

Using VPNs for Encryption and Location Spoofing

When your VPN is active, all your network traffic—whether from browsers, apps, or iOS itself—gets encrypted before it leaves your phone. This encrypted data travels to a server owned by the VPN company, where it’s decrypted and sent on its way.

Encrypted web traffic isn’t the only reason you need a VPN. With a direct, no-VPN connection to a website, your IP address identifies you to not only that site but also your geographic location. When you’re using a VPN, however, the IP address that others see is that of the VPN server you’re connected with, not your own.

Beyond protecting your traffic, VPNs can also let you spoof your location and tunnel past local internet restrictions. Journalists and political activists working against repressive regimes have long relied on VPNs to communicate safely with the outside world. Just know that in some countries, you may break local laws just by using a VPN. For example, Russia has banned VPNs, claiming a need to block terrorist activities. China has also banned most VPNs, though some still manage to connect.

How a VPN Works

Spoofing your location can also get around restrictions of another kind. It’s not uncommon for online streaming services to offer content in one region but not another. Offerings from Netflix and Hulu differ by country. Brits can watch BBC shows for free, while the same shows require a subscription in the US. Spoofing your location with a VPN can get you access to shows not normally available to you. But take care: Location spoofing may violate your terms of service. In addition, companies like Netflix are cracking down on VPN users. Streaming is often not an option when your VPN is running.

What an iPhone VPN Can’t Do

The widespread adoption of HTTPS means that most of your traffic is already encrypted. That makes it much harder for anyone snooping on your activity to see much beyond what websites you’re visiting. That said, your ISP still has remarkable insight into your online activities, and there is a benefit to hiding your IP address with a VPN.

Remember that using a VPN doesn’t make you invincible to online threats. We highly recommend enabling multi-factor authentication wherever possible, creating unique logins with a password manager, and using antivirus software (although this may make less sense on an iPhone).

Although a VPN makes it harder for you to be tracked online, advertisers have numerous tricks to gather data on your activities. Tactics like browser fingerprinting won’t be stymied by a VPN alone. The privacy settings in your mobile browser can also go a long way toward keeping advertisers blind to your activities. For desktop machines, we highly recommend using a tracker blocker like the EFF’s Privacy Badger.

While the data going to and from your VPN server is encrypted, using a VPN doesn’t get you the level of anonymity obtained by connecting through the TOR network, nor the concomitant ability to dive into the scary depths of the dark web. On the plus side, some VPN services include TOR-specific servers.

Does Using a VPN Slow Down Your Internet Connection?

The short answer is yes; a VPN will almost certainly increase the latency of your internet connection and make your uploads and downloads slower. Anecdotally, the already limited speeds of mobile devices seem to be especially adversely affected by VPNs. We also have noticed, but have not confirmed with testing, that VPNs seem to disconnect and reconnect more frequently with mobile devices than desktop machines.

To get a sense of the impact a VPN may have on your internet connection, we compare the results from a series of Ookla speed tests(Opens in a new window) with and without the VPN active. (Editors’ Note: Speedtest by Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, the publisher of PCMag.) Network speeds can vary greatly depending on the time of day, network conditions, and where you happen to be at the time, so we consider our results to be a snapshot for comparison rather than the final judgment on a service’s performance.

We measure speeds on the PCMag Labs network using a Windows desktop. Before 2021, we tested VPN products back to back, but COVID-19 restrictions have limited our ability to test VPNs in the PCMag Labs. We now use a rolling model and will release new results throughout the year. The latest data is in the chart below.

We rely on a Windows desktop and wired connection for our testing because we’ve found it to be more reliable than testing on individual mobile devices. But as we said above, there appear to be some unique issues with VPNs on mobile. Also, not all VPN providers use the same protocol on every platform, which can impact performance.  

Can You Trust Your VPN Service?

If you’re using a service to route all your internet traffic through its servers, you have to be able to trust the provider. We’re not cryptography experts, so we can’t verify all the encryption claims providers make. Instead, we give special attention to the privacy practices of VPN companies and not just the technology they provide. In our testing, we read through the privacy policies and discuss company practices with VPN service representatives. What we look for is a commitment to protect user information and to take a hands-off approach when gathering user data.

As part of our research, we also make sure to find out where the company is based and under what legal framework it operates. Some countries don’t have data-retention laws, making it easier to keep a promise of “We don’t keep any logs.” It’s also useful to know what personal information the VPN collects and under what circumstances a VPN company will hand over that information to law enforcement.

The best VPN services have a privacy policy that spells out what the service does, what information it collects, and what it does to protect it. Some companies explain that they collect some information but don’t inform you how they intend to use that information. Others are more transparent.

We also liked to see policy backed up by some verifiable effort. Transparency reports and audits are imperfect tools, but we prefer services that have made the effort to at least try and prove their worth to the public.

VPN Features and Extras

The features to look for in a VPN depend on how you intend to use it. If you never travel abroad and don’t need to pretend you’re surfing from Amsterdam, the most important features are a convenient interface and a big selection of servers in the US. Conversely, if you’re a globetrotter needing a secure connection from just about anywhere, you’ll look for a VPN provider whose server locations cover all the continents.

Something easy to overlook is the protocol the VPN service uses to make its secure connection. Many protocols are available to protect a VPN connection, and our favorites at PCMag are OpenVPN and WireGuard. These are both open-source protocols, so many experts have vetted their security. For a long time, few iPhone VPNs provided OpenVPN because Apple required additional scrutiny for any app that included it. If OpenVPN is unavailable, IKEv2 is a solid, modern option. 

Finally, there’s the bang-for-your-buck factor. While it’s possible to get a VPN for free, even the best no-cost services have some limitations, such as a draconian bandwidth cap. The average price for a paid subscription among the evaluated services is about $10 per month. These usually offer five simultaneous connections, which would cover most individuals and some households. If the service you’re looking at costs significantly more or offers significantly less, it’s important to make sure that it’s justifying its value some other way.

What Are the Best iPhone VPNs?

Using a VPN isn’t about protecting your device; it’s about protecting your privacy and network connections. That means that any type of device can benefit from a VPN, making it an enormously versatile tool in your privacy toolkit. Read our reviews, check our ratings, and select the best VPN. Once you’ve chosen a service, read our guide on how to set up and use a VPN.

(Editors’ Note: While they may not all appear in this story, Encrypt.me, IPVanish, and StrongVPN are owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company.)