The Best VPN for Travel in 2026 (And the One I Actually Use)

Before I started writing about travel for a living, I worked full time as a software developer. I’ve kept the interest, and I’ve paid for a lot of VPNs in the years since, mostly because I’ve spent a lot of nights on hotel wifi in places where I’d rather my banking app wasn’t going out over an open network.

These days I use ProtonVPN. I’ve run plenty of others over the years, including TunnelBear, whose browser extension I used for a long time whenever I wanted to quickly look at the US version of a website from the UK.

This guide is about picking one for a trip. What catches you out on the road is the hotel login page you can’t load, the bank that locks you out because you appeared in Amsterdam, and the free plan that runs dry on day four of a fortnight away. None of that shows up in a speed test.

So I’ve written this the way I’d explain it to a friend who leaves on Saturday.

 

Which VPN Should You Get?

If you want the answer without the reading, here it is.

For most travellers I’d get ProtonVPN. It’s the one I pay for, and it has the best evidence behind its no-logging claim of anything in this guide. I’ll come back to that, because it turns out to be the thing in this category almost nobody checks.

On a budget, Private Internet Access does the same job for under $40 in the first year, with unlimited devices and the strongest record in court of any provider here.

If you’re mainly buying a VPN so your home streaming follows you abroad, get NordVPN instead, which runs on more device types than the rest and is aimed at exactly that problem. Covering a family across a pile of devices, Surfshark has unlimited connections and the best tools for networks that try to block VPNs. And if you want one button and no decisions, TunnelBear is the friendliest app of the lot.

Only after something free? ProtonVPN’s free tier is the one I’d take on a trip, because it’s the only one with no data cap and no advertising.

One thing to know before you click anything. Nearly every price in this category is a first-term promotional rate that renews at two to three times what you paid. I’ve put both numbers in the table below, and it’s the most useful thing on this page.

 

VPN Comparison Table

Here’s how the seven providers compare. Every figure was checked against the provider’s own website in August 2026.

	Price (first term > renewal)	Countries	Devices	Kill switch?	P2P allowed?	Keeps logs?	Independently audited?	Free tier?	Best for
ProtonVPN	$83.76 first 24 months, then $83.88/yr	148	10	Yes, plus a permanent mode	Yes, marked servers, paid plans only	No	Yes. Securitum, Sept 2025, no-logs specific, published in full	Yes, unlimited data, 10 countries	Overall
Private Internet Access	$39.95 first year, then $49.99/yr	91	Unlimited	Yes	Yes, every server	No	Yes. Deloitte, 2022, 2024 and 2026, report public	No	Value
NordVPN	$65.88 first year, then $139.08/yr	149	10	Yes	Yes, designated servers	No	Yes. Deloitte, Dec 2025, report behind a login	No	Streaming
Surfshark	$67.23 first 27 months (2 year plan)	100	Unlimited	Yes, all five platforms	Yes, all locations	No	Yes. Deloitte, June 2025, report public	No	Families
ExpressVPN	$83.72 first 28 months, then $99.95/yr	113	10	Yes, called Internet Kill Switch	Yes, no designated servers	No	Yes. KPMG, Feb 2025, Type 1 (design only)	No	Routers
TunnelBear	$59.88/yr	47	Unlimited	Yes, called VigilantBear	Yes, designated servers	No activity logs, retains monthly usage	Security audits only. No no-logs audit	Yes, 2GB/mo, no country choice	Simplicity
Windscribe	$69/yr	69+	Unlimited	Yes, called Firewall, desktop apps	Yes, most locations, paid plans only	No activity logs, retains a last-activity timestamp	Security audits only. No no-logs audit	Yes, 10GB/mo	Free tier

Prices are in USD and were checked in August 2026. Where a provider doesn’t sell a plain twelve month plan, I’ve given the term it actually sells and the rate it renews at, because those are the two numbers you’ll be charged. ExpressVPN and Surfshark both default their checkout to a two year commitment, so the first figure covers a longer period than a year.

A note on two cells. ExpressVPN does allow P2P, and file sharing is one of the uses their own home page puts the service to. What they don’t do is name the servers it runs on. There’s no marked subset on their server list the way Proton and Nord flag theirs, and nothing on the site restricting it to part of the network, so I’ve read it as network wide. They never say so in those words, which is why that cell is phrased the way it is.

NordVPN’s own servers page, meanwhile, gives three different figures on one screen, quoting 224 locations, 8,727 servers and 149 countries. I’ve used their country number because it’s the one that matches the column, but I wouldn’t hang a decision on it.

 

What Actually Goes Wrong With a VPN on the Road

This is the reason people give up on VPNs three days into a trip.

 

The Hotel Login Page You Can’t Load

Nearly every hotel, airport and café network puts a login page in front of you before it lets you online. That page is called a captive portal, and the way it works is by intercepting your first web request and redirecting it to itself.

Now think about what a kill switch does. It blocks all traffic until the VPN has connected. And the VPN can’t connect, because you don’t have internet yet, because you haven’t clicked the button on a page your kill switch won’t let you load.

So you sit on the end of the bed watching a spinning icon and conclude the VPN is broken. It’s just doing exactly what you asked it to. Turn the kill switch off, connect to the wifi, click through the portal, then turn the VPN back on and the kill switch after it. Do it in that order and hotel wifi stops being a mystery.

I still run into this regularly, on all sorts of login portals. It’s the one piece of VPN advice I’d most want a first-timer to have, and I’ve never seen it mentioned on a VPN provider’s own website.

 

Your Bank Locking You Out

Banks pay a lot of attention to where you log in from. Appearing in a country you’ve never visited is exactly the pattern their fraud systems are built to catch, and a VPN server is a country you’ve never visited.

This one I’ve done to myself. I was in South America when my UK banking app locked me out, and the way back in was a phone call to the bank. That is not a quick thing to arrange from another continent on the wrong time zone.

The irony is that people often turn a VPN on specifically to look like they’re at home, then connect to whichever server the app suggests, which is usually the fastest one nearby. If you’re in Lisbon and the app picks Madrid, your bank now thinks you’re in Spain.

Pick a server in your home country before you open anything financial. If the bank has only got suspicious, switching to your phone’s mobile data is usually enough, because that puts you on a normal consumer connection in your real location. Once the app has locked, though, you’re calling them.

 

Booking Sites and Check-in

Airline and hotel sites are the other place a foreign IP address causes friction. Some will show you a different currency, some will show you a different set of fares, and some online check-in systems get unhappy when the booking was made in one country and the check-in comes from another.

This cuts both ways, and it’s not always bad news. We’ve found that comparing the same hotel or flight on the UK and US versions of a booking site can turn up a real difference in price, and a VPN is how you look at both. Just be aware that some sites will decline a card issued in a different country to the one you appear to be in, so it isn’t a guaranteed saving.

 

Networks That Block VPNs Outright

Plenty of networks don’t want you running a VPN at all. Conference wifi, some university networks, a lot of corporate guest networks, and a number of countries.

Providers vary quite a bit here. Surfshark has two features aimed at this problem, called Camouflage and NoBorders, which disguise VPN traffic as ordinary traffic. Most providers have something equivalent, though they don’t all advertise it.

If you’re travelling somewhere with serious internet restrictions, do your reading before you go, not once you’ve landed. Some countries regulate or restrict VPN use, and rules change. Wikipedia keeps a reasonable country by country list as a starting point, but check the current position for where you’re going, and use your judgement.

 

The Free Plan That Runs Dry on Day Four

A 2GB monthly allowance sounds generous when you’re sitting at home reading about VPNs. On a trip it goes on maps, messages, a couple of video calls home and one evening of catching up on something, and then it’s just gone, usually at the point where you most wanted it.

If you’re going away for more than a few days and you want the VPN on the whole time, the free tiers won’t stretch. ProtonVPN’s free plan is the exception, because it has no data cap at all, and it’s the only free VPN in this guide I’d take on a two week trip.

 

Do You Need a VPN for Your Trip?

Probably, but not for the reason most articles give.

The classic argument for a VPN is that someone on the café wifi can read your data. That was a strong argument in 2015. It’s a weaker one now, because almost every site you use is encrypted in transit anyway, and your bank details are not travelling across the coffee shop in plain text.

What’s left is still worth having. A VPN hides which sites you’re visiting from whoever runs the network, which on a hotel or airport connection is a company you know nothing about. It gets you your home region back, which matters if your streaming subscriptions, your bank or your work tools behave differently abroad. And it takes the guesswork out of connecting to a network you’d otherwise think twice about.

Here’s who I’d tell not to bother. If you’re going away for a long weekend, you’ll be on mobile data most of the time, and you don’t stream anything, a VPN is an expense and an extra step for very little return. Cellular data is already encrypted between your phone and the mast, and it’s a much harder target than open wifi. An eSIM with a decent data allowance would do more for that trip than a VPN subscription.

If you’re away for two weeks, working from hotels and cafés, or you want your home streaming to follow you, then yes, get one.

 

The Best VPNs for Travel

Eight providers, in the order I’d consider them.

 

ProtonVPN, Best Overall for Travel

Proton comes from the same Swiss team behind ProtonMail, founded by scientists who met at the CERN research facility just outside Geneva. Privacy has been the entire point of the company since day one, and it shows in the thing that made me switch.

Every VPN in this guide says it keeps no logs. Only some of them have let an outside auditor check.

Proton’s most recent no-logs audit was carried out by Securitum, on site in Zürich, between August and September 2025. The auditors picked production servers at random and went through their configurations, running processes and storage, looking for anything capable of retaining user data. The full report is published on the auditor’s own website, so you can read what they looked at instead of the provider’s summary of it. That was the fifth year running.

The practical side is good too. Servers in 148 countries, ten devices at once, and a kill switch that comes in two flavours, one you switch on when you need it and a permanent version that keeps the connection locked down all the time. The permanent one is what you want on the road.

Two things to know. P2P is limited to designated servers, marked with a little arrow icon in the app, and it’s paid plans only. And Proton’s pricing page opens on a two year plan by default, so check which term you’re buying before you hit the button. The two year rate works out at $83.76 for the first 24 months and renews at $83.88 a year after that, which is one of the gentler renewal jumps here.

Proton also has the only free tier I’d really recommend, which I’ll come to below.

 

Private Internet Access, Best Value

PIA has been the value pick here for years and it still is. Under $40 for the first year, renewing at $49.99, which is the smallest gap between joining price and staying price of anything in this guide.

It’s also the provider with the best record in an actual courtroom. In 2016 the FBI subpoenaed PIA for user data in a hoax bomb threat investigation and got nothing useful, and in 2018 the company’s general counsel testified in court that they couldn’t produce logs they don’t keep. That’s a different and stronger kind of evidence than an audit, because nobody scheduled it.

On top of that there are Deloitte audits in 2022, 2024 and again in 2026, and the report is a straight download, with no account needed to read it.

The feature that matters most for travel is unlimited simultaneous devices, which used to be capped at ten and isn’t any more. Two phones, two laptops, a tablet and a travel router is a normal amount of kit for two people on a trip, and PIA doesn’t ask you to choose.

PIA allows P2P on every server in its network. Their own wording is “every PIA VPN server”, with no designated subset and no plan restriction. Surfshark is just as open across all its locations, and most of the others limit file sharing to part of the network.

Servers are in 91 countries. Apps cover everything, there’s WireGuard support for speed, ad and malware blocking is built in, and there’s a 30 day money back guarantee. If you want to spend as little as possible without giving anything up, this is the one.

 

NordVPN, Best for Streaming

Nord is the name most people have heard of, and we’ve recommended it for years in our guide to getting online when travelling.

Its real strength for travel is breadth of devices. Alongside the usual phones and laptops there are apps for smart TVs, routers and even some network attached storage, which matters more than it sounds when you’re trying to get a hotel TV or a streaming stick to behave.

Their SmartPlay technology is aimed specifically at getting streaming services working, and Nord is the provider I’d reach for first if watching your home services abroad is really the main reason you’re buying one.

The no-logs position is backed by a Deloitte assurance engagement carried out in November and December 2025, their sixth. Nord doesn’t publish the report, though. You can read it, but you need to log in to an account to do so, which means the scope description you get is Nord’s, not the auditor’s.

Now the price, and this is where I’d want you paying attention. The one year Basic plan is $65.88 for the first twelve months and then renews at $139.08 a year. That’s not a typo. Renewal jumps are standard in this category and Nord’s is one of the larger ones.

If you’re happy to keep an eye on the renewal date and move on when it comes round, it’s a good deal. If you’re the sort of person who lets subscriptions roll, budget for the second number.

P2P works on servers Nord describes as optimised for it, not across the whole network. And a note for anyone who’s read an older version of this guide: we used to list a NordVPN discount code here. It no longer matches any plan Nord sells, so I’ve removed it rather than leave you typing something into a checkout that doesn’t work.

 

Surfshark, Best for Families and Awkward Networks

Surfshark gives you unlimited devices on one account, which makes it the obvious choice if you’re covering a family. Four phones, a couple of tablets, two laptops and the hotel TV all on one subscription, and nobody has to disconnect so somebody else can get online.

It’s also the one I’d pick for networks that don’t want you using a VPN. The Camouflage and NoBorders features are built for exactly that, and the kill switch is the best documented of the group. Surfshark names all five platforms it runs on, iOS, macOS, Android, Windows and Linux, with no carve outs, which is rather more than most providers will commit to in writing.

Servers are in 100 countries and P2P is available in all of them, tagged location by location on Surfshark’s own server list.

The no-logs claim is covered by a Deloitte assurance report from June 2025, and to Surfshark’s credit the whole report is downloadable, exclusions and all. It’s a point in time assessment and the report says so itself, which is more candour than you usually get.

The one thing that annoys me is the pricing page. It opens on the two year plan, and the twelve month figures only appear once you click the tab, so the number you see first covers a 27 month commitment at $67.23. Check the term carefully before you buy.

 

ExpressVPN, Best for Routers and Awkward Devices

ExpressVPN is the premium option, and the case for it is that it tends to just work, with the best documentation in the business for getting a VPN onto something unusual. Custom router firmware, Apple TV, Kindle tablets, games consoles, the lot. If your setup involves anything beyond a phone and a laptop, Express is the one with a guide for it.

Servers cover 113 countries, you get ten devices on the entry plan, and their kill switch is now called Internet Kill Switch on the site even though the URL and a lot of older articles still call it Network Lock. Handy to know if you’re hunting for it in the settings. It’s built in and switched on by default on Windows, macOS and Linux, and on iOS you have to go and find it in the Settings app yourself.

On no-logs, Express has the most interesting evidence of anyone here, and it isn’t an audit. In January 2017 Turkish investigators seized one of their servers during a criminal inquiry and recovered nothing from it. That’s nearly a decade old and says nothing about how the service is configured today, but it happened.

The current audit is a KPMG engagement dated February 2025, and it’s a Type 1. That means the auditors confirmed the controls were correctly designed at a single point in time, without testing that they worked over a period. It’s a real distinction, and “audited” on its own doesn’t tell you much.

Price wise, there’s no plain one year plan on sale. What’s on the checkout is two years and four months at $83.72, autorenewing at $99.95 a year. And as I said in the table, P2P is allowed. ExpressVPN doesn’t designate P2P servers or mark any exceptions on its server list, so I’d expect it to work wherever you connect, even if they never quite say that themselves.

 

TunnelBear, Easiest to Use

TunnelBear is the VPN I’d hand to someone who has never used one and doesn’t want to learn. The apps are lovely to use, everything is one tap, and the browser extension is excellent for the specific job of quickly appearing to be somewhere else. That’s what I used it for, for a long time, mostly to check what a website looked like from the other side of the Atlantic.

Worth understanding what a browser extension does, though. It only sends your browser traffic through the VPN. Your email client, your photo backup, anything else running on the machine, all of that carries on over the normal connection. For actual security on hotel wifi you want the full app, which is available on the free plan too.

The network is bigger than it used to be, at over 8,000 servers across 47 countries, and devices are now unlimited. The kill switch exists and is called VigilantBear, which is either delightful or infuriating depending on your tolerance for bear puns!

Two caveats, and they’re the reason it isn’t higher up. TunnelBear runs eight annual independent audits by Cure53 and publishes them, which is a good record by any standard, but they’re security audits. Their scope is applications, backends, APIs and encryption, and none of them tests the no-logging claim. It’s an audit of a different thing, and the two get treated as interchangeable far too often.

Their privacy policy also retains a monthly data total and city level location per account, which isn’t nothing, even though it’s a long way from browsing history. You can read the audit announcement and judge for yourself.

Second, the pricing page leads with “from $3.33/mo”, which is the three year plan at $120 up front. A single year is $59.88 and month to month is $9.99, so check which one the checkout has selected before you pay.

 

Windscribe, Best Free Tier

Windscribe’s free plan gives you 10GB a month if you confirm your email address, or 2GB if you’d rather not hand it over. On a short trip that’s enough to be useful, which puts it well ahead of most free offerings.

The paid plan is $69 a year, quoted plainly, with unlimited devices and servers in 69 or more countries. Windscribe’s own pages disagree with each other on that country figure, with a marketing page claiming over 85 while their more technical pages say 69, so I’ve gone with the lower one.

Their kill switch is called Firewall, and it’s an app setting on Windows, Mac and Linux only. On Android and iOS you use the operating system’s own Always On VPN, which does the same job but is somewhere else entirely. Fine once you know, confusing if you don’t.

P2P works on almost all locations, with the exceptions marked in the app with a crossed out icon. It’s a paid feature though: Windscribe disables P2P on its free servers, which is worth knowing given the free tier is what most people come to Windscribe for.

On logging, Windscribe is in much the same position as TunnelBear, and I’d apply the same caution. There’s a remarkable court record here: in April 2025 an Athens court dismissed criminal charges against the company’s founder, accepting that Windscribe had no user data to hand over. That’s about as real a test as this claim ever gets.

But there’s no independent no-logs audit, only security and code audits, and their privacy policy does keep a 30 day byte counter and a last activity timestamp against your account.

 

Mullvad, the One We Don’t Earn Anything From

Every VPN above pays us a commission if you sign up. That’s how this site works, and you should know that here rather than from a disclaimer at the bottom.

So it’s worth naming Mullvad. They have no affiliate programme at all, so nobody in this category has a financial reason to recommend them, and they get recommended anyway. I’ve left them out of the comparison table above because they aren’t competing on the same features as the other seven.

Their pricing is the reason I like them. It’s €5 a month, and that’s the price whether you pay for one month, one year or ten years. There’s no promotional first term, no renewal cliff, and no countdown timer on the checkout. Their own pricing page notes that the rate hasn’t changed since the company launched in 2009, which after the numbers in the table above is quite a thing to read!

The trade off is that Mullvad is a pretty spartan product. No streaming optimisation to speak of, fewer countries, and an account system built around a randomly generated number instead of an email address, which is excellent for privacy and mildly inconvenient if you lose it. If your priority is privacy and a price that doesn’t move, though, they deserve to be on your list.

 

Which VPN for Which Kind of Trip

The right answer changes quite a lot depending on what your trip looks like.

 

A Fortnight in a Hotel

Any of the paid options will do the job just fine, so pick on price and pick one with a good kill switch. ProtonVPN’s permanent kill switch is the best version of that feature here. Get it installed and tested at home before you fly, because the worst time to learn a new app is on arrival at 11pm.

 

Your First VPN, and You Don’t Want to Think About It

TunnelBear. One tap to connect, and the app explains what it’s doing in plain English. Install it at home, connect once to check it works, and that’s the whole learning curve.

 

A Long Stay, Working as You Go

You want reliability and a network big enough to always have a decent server nearby, so ProtonVPN or ExpressVPN. Also think about a travel router, because several of them let you put the VPN credentials on the router itself. Every device you connect then gets covered without you setting anything up on each one. If you’re building out a full kit, our digital nomad packing list covers the rest of it.

 

A Family Sharing One Subscription

Surfshark or Private Internet Access, both of which give you unlimited devices. Set up everyone’s phone before you leave, not in the departure lounge!

 

Somewhere With Heavy Internet Restrictions

Look at Surfshark’s Camouflage and NoBorders modes, and research the legal position for your destination before you go. Download and set up the app before you travel too, because app stores and provider websites are among the first things to get blocked.

 

You Mostly Want Your Home Streaming to Work

NordVPN, and check that your particular service works before you commit, ideally during the money back window.

 

A Short Trip, and You’d Like to Spend Nothing

Windscribe’s free plan, with your email address confirmed to unlock the full 10GB. That covers a few days of normal use, though it won’t stretch to a fortnight. If you’re away longer than that, ProtonVPN’s free tier has no data cap at all and is the one I’d take away instead.

 

How a VPN Works

Quickly, in case you want it.

A VPN is an app that encrypts everything leaving your device and sends it through a server somewhere else in the world. That server unwraps your request, fetches whatever you asked for, encrypts the reply and sends it back.

Two things follow. Whoever runs the network you’re sitting on, the hotel, the airport, the café, can see that you’re connected to a VPN and nothing else. And every website you visit sees the VPN server’s location instead of yours, which is why a VPN gets you your home region back when you’re abroad. You can see what your current location looks like to a website here.

The downsides are real but small. Your connection will be a bit slower, because encryption takes work and your data is taking a detour. And it’s one more thing to remember to switch on.

 

What to Look for in a VPN

If you’re comparing beyond the ones above, these are the things that actually matter.

 

A Kill Switch

The most important feature, and the one people skip. If your VPN connection drops, without a kill switch your device quietly goes back to sending everything over the open network, and you won’t notice.

A kill switch blocks all traffic until the VPN is back. Pick a provider that has one, turn it on, and remember that it only works if you’re using the provider’s own app, not the VPN settings built into your phone or laptop.

Note that everyone calls it something different. VigilantBear at TunnelBear, Firewall at Windscribe, Internet Kill Switch at ExpressVPN. Same feature, just renamed.

 

Whether Anyone Has Checked the No-Logs Claim

This is the column I added to the table this year, and it’s the one I’d look at hardest.

Every VPN says it keeps no logs. It’s the central promise of the entire product, and it’s also unfalsifiable from the outside, because you can’t inspect their servers. What you can do is check whether somebody independent has, and what exactly they looked at.

Three things separate a strong answer from a weak one. Is the audit specifically about logging, or is it a general security audit being presented as if it settles the question? Is the report published, or do you have to take the provider’s summary on trust? And how recent is it, given that most of these engagements explicitly cover a single point in time and say so in their own text?

Proton, PIA and Surfshark all publish theirs. That’s the standard to hold the category to.

 

Server Locations

Not the raw server count, which several providers have stopped publishing altogether and which never told you much anyway. What you want is locations in the places you care about, which means a server in your home country so you can get your own services back, and servers near wherever you’re going so the connection isn’t crawling around the planet.

 

Number of Devices

Count your devices, and your travel companions’ devices, and remember the tablet. Several providers here offer unlimited connections now, so there’s little reason to accept a cap of five.

 

Speed and Bandwidth

All the paid plans here are unlimited on data, which is why that column came out of the table this year. Speed varies a fair bit with distance to the server and how busy it is, and providers won’t guarantee it. Free tiers are noticeably slower, of course.

 

Apps for Your Devices

Windows, macOS, Android and iOS all support VPN connections natively, so in theory you don’t need the provider’s software. In practice, setting it up that way is fiddly, and kill switches and secure DNS need the app anyway. Use the app.

 

Streaming Access

Streaming services actively block VPN traffic, and how well a given provider gets through changes month to month. If this is your main reason for buying, test it during the money back period.

 

Travel Router Compatibility

If you travel with a travel router, check the two are compatible. Putting the VPN on the router covers everything connected to it in one go, which is a good trick for a family or a long stay. Some home wifi routers do the same thing.

 

Protocol Support

The protocol is how your device talks to the VPN server. OpenVPN, from 2001, is the widely supported standard. WireGuard is much newer, with its first stable release in 2020, and significantly faster. Get a provider that supports WireGuard.

 

Testing It Works

Once you’re set up, IPLeak and BrowserLeaks will tell you whether your real location or DNS requests are leaking out. Neither proves a VPN is secure, but both will catch the obvious problems. Run one before you travel, not after.

 

Free VPNs for Travel

Short version: mostly no, with one exception.

Free VPNs have to make money somehow, of course, and the ways they do it are advertising, data caps designed to convert you, or something worse. A free VPN that shows you ads needs to know things about you in order to choose them, which sits awkwardly with the reason you installed it.

The data caps are the practical problem though. TunnelBear’s free plan gives you 2GB a month and Windscribe’s gives you 10GB. Windscribe’s is usable for a few days. Neither will carry you through a fortnight with the VPN running all the time. Both carry a second catch beyond the cap: TunnelBear’s free app picks a country for you rather than letting you choose one, and Windscribe switches P2P off on its free servers.

The exception is ProtonVPN’s free tier, which has no data cap and no advertising. You’re limited to one device at a time and to servers in ten countries which the app picks for you instead of letting you choose, speeds are slower than the paid plans, and there’s no P2P or streaming.

For a traveller who wants encryption on hotel wifi and nothing more, that’s a free product you can rely on, and it’s the only one here I’d put on a family member’s phone.

If you’ve read an older version of this guide, you may remember that both TunnelBear and Windscribe used to let you top up your free allowance by tweeting about them. Neither promotion appears on their current pricing pages, so don’t count on it.

 

Travel VPN FAQ

 

Do I Really Need a VPN for Travel?

If you’re away for more than a few days and using hotel, café or airport wifi, yes. The strongest reasons are keeping your browsing private from whoever runs the network, and getting your home region back for banking, streaming and work tools that behave differently abroad.

If you’re on a short trip and mostly using mobile data, you can skip it. Cellular connections are already encrypted and are a much harder target than open wifi.

 

What’s the Best VPN for International Travel?

ProtonVPN, for most people. It has servers in 148 countries, a permanent kill switch mode that suits life on the road, and the best evidenced no-logging claim of any provider in this guide.

If budget is the deciding factor, Private Internet Access does the same job for under $40 in the first year and has the best courtroom record in the category.

 

Why Won’t My VPN Connect on Hotel Wifi?

Almost always because of the login page. Hotel networks make you click through a portal page before granting internet access, and if your VPN’s kill switch is on, it blocks the connection you need to load that page.

Turn the kill switch off, connect to the wifi, click through the login page, then turn the VPN and the kill switch back on. That order fixes it nearly every time.

 

Will a VPN Let Me Watch My Home Streaming Services Abroad?

Often, but not reliably, and it changes constantly. Streaming platforms actively detect and block VPN traffic, and a provider that worked last month may not this month.

NordVPN is the one I’d try first, because its SmartPlay feature is built for this. Whichever you pick, test your specific service inside the money back window before you rely on it.

 

Which VPN Is Best If You’re Not Very Tech-Savvy?

TunnelBear. The app is one tap, the interface is friendly, and there’s very little you can get wrong. It’s the one I’d set up for a relative.

ProtonVPN and Private Internet Access are also easy enough to live with once installed. The main thing for any of them is to install and test at home before you travel, so the first time you use it isn’t in a hotel room at midnight.

 

Is a Free VPN Good Enough for a Trip?

Only ProtonVPN’s, and only if your needs are simple. It’s the one free plan without a data cap or advertising, though you’re limited to one device and ten countries the app chooses for you.

The other free tiers give you 2GB to 10GB a month, which runs out fast when a VPN is on all day. Avoid free VPNs that show you ads, since selecting those ads requires knowing something about you.

 

Do VPNs Work in Countries That Block Them?

Sometimes, with the right features and preparation. Surfshark’s Camouflage and NoBorders modes are designed to make VPN traffic look ordinary, and most providers have an equivalent.

Install and configure the app before you travel, because provider websites and app stores are often blocked too. And check the legal position for your destination first, as several countries regulate VPN use and the rules change.

 

Will Using a VPN Stop My Bank Locking Me Out?

It can, if you use it correctly. Connecting through a server in your home country makes you look like you’re at home, which is exactly what your bank’s fraud system wants to see.

Used carelessly it causes the problem instead. If you’re in Portugal and your VPN app connects you to the nearest fast server in Spain, your bank sees a login from Spain. Choose your home country manually before opening anything financial.

 

How Much Should a Travel VPN Cost?

Between $40 and $85 for a first year, depending on the provider and the length of commitment.

The number that catches people out is the renewal. Most providers here charge a promotional rate for the first term and then two to three times that afterwards, with NordVPN going from $65.88 to $139.08. Check the renewal figure before you buy and put a note in your calendar a month before it lands.

 

Does a No-Logs VPN Really Keep No Logs?

Some do, and you can’t tell from the marketing which ones. Every provider claims it, and the claim can’t be verified from outside.

What you can check is whether an independent auditor has examined it and published what they found. ProtonVPN, Private Internet Access and Surfshark all publish full no-logs audit reports. Others have audits that cover general security, not logging specifically, which is a different question dressed up as the same one, and a couple of providers here retain small amounts of account data behind an otherwise absolute sounding “no”.

 

Further Reading

I hope that’s helped you pick one. We’ve got a few other guides you might find useful for getting connected on the road.

• Our guide to the best travel routers for improving your wifi signal, plus a guide to the best home wifi routers if you want to sort out your home network too.
• A full guide to how to get online when travelling away from home.
• Our guide to the best travel eSIMs, which is often the better answer for short trips, and the best mobile hotspots if you’d rather carry your own connection.
• You’ll need to power all this, so see our guide to the best travel adapters.
• Working as you travel? See our guide to the best laptops for photo editing and our digital nomad packing list.
• Thinking of buying a new camera? See our guide to the best cameras for travel.

And that’s it. As always, if you’ve got questions or feedback about the guide, pop them in the comments below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.