Mobile hotspots or limited mobile plans just aren’t always feasible options when you are traveling. Whether you are working online during the day in a conference room or you need to stay entertained for a few hours in a hotel lobby or coffee shop, sometimes, local Wi-Fi hotspots are your only real option. However, connecting to a local hotel, airport, school, or coffee shop Wi-Fi access point to your iPhone or iPad is a risk, especially when traveling in foreign countries. There’s no telling what or who is monitoring your traffic, and even if the hotel has encrypted Wi-Fi, you never know what’s running on that network. You should avoid connecting to public Wi-Fi whenever possible, but having a good VPN is essential if you have no other option. We at ZDNET recommend adopting a VPN service that works with your iPhone and iPad. In this article, we analyze and rank the top VPN services we’ve come to know over the years that offer solid iPhone and iPad clients and good performance. Let’s take a look at each below. However, if you’re looking for a quality option for all intents and purposes, check out our best VPNs overall page. Also: The best travel VPNs NordVPN is one of the more popular VPN offerings on the iPhone App Store. Installing NordVPN on the iPhone is simple, painless way to secure predictable performance across regions. It has many tools in addition to a standard VPN service. NordVPN’s Onion over VPN is a special category of NordVPN servers that enables Tor capabilities, supports peer-to-peer file sharing, and allows you to connect through a second server for an added layer of protection. You can also set up a dedicated IP address for an additional fee. In addition to iOS, NordVPN runs on all the most popular platforms. NordVPN performed sufficiently well during testing, with a reduction in speed that you’d expect to see with any VPN service. Prices start from $4.19 per month on a two-year standard plan to $14.49 per month on a full, one-month subscription. For a limited time, NordVPN is also running a birthday promotion. New users can subscribe to a two-year plan – standard, plus, or complete – and they will save up to 59% off. Users will also receive either three months or one year free. Read the review: NordVPN review The ExpressVPN app supports iOS back to iOS 12. So as long as your iPhone or iPad runs on iOS 12 or higher, you’ll be able to use ExpressVPN. In addition to iOS, it supports all of the major platforms. There are browser extensions for Edge, Chrome, and Firefox, and VPN for gaming is also available. If you want the most options for countries to connect to, ExpressVPN has 160 servers located in 94 countries. ExpressVPN ranks among the fastest VPNs, so it shouldn’t reduce your connection speeds as much as your average VPN. ExpressVPN doesn’t maintain browsing history logs, but it does keep track of some information, such as the dates you connect and the location of the VPN server you connect to. The details of what is and isn’t logged are stated in ExpressVPN’s privacy policy. Subscription costs begin at the equivalent of $9.99 monthly for six months or $12.95 for a month of access. Alternatively, signing up for a 12-month plan will give you a discount of 49% off at $6.67 monthly, alongside three months for free. Read the review: ExpressVPN review At first glance, IPVanish VPN may seem like a generic VPN service, but there’s more than meets the eye. IPVanish has depth and plenty of configuration settings for those who want to control almost every aspect of their VPN connection. IPVanish VPN has many protocols, so you’ll always know what to expect regardless of what you’re connecting to. The app has an abundance of configuration options, and there’s an extensive range of server selection options. IPVanish supports devices back to iOS 11. We found IPVanish to be exceptionally fast. However, it couldn’t hide that I was connecting through a VPN, which could be an issue in countries where internet connectivity and activities are monitored at the state or ISP level. That said, IPVanish’s data transfers were secure and provided a good user experience. As long as you’re not trying to obscure your VPN connection, IPVanish is an excellent option, and it’s currently on sale. You can sign up for a two-year plan for $3.33 per month or a yearly subscription for $4.50 per month. Alternatively, if you don’t want to sign up for the long haul, you can pay $11.99 for a month of access. Read the review: IPVanish VPN review Surfshark VPN is an affordable and reliable service. In our review of Surfshark, we found no information leaks and it had fast connection times. However, download speeds were average. Luckily, the company doesn’t skimp on security. It offers AES-256-GCM, RSA-2048, and Perfect Forward Secrecy encryption. Surfshark supports devices running iOS 10.3.3 or higher. Surfshark has a solid array of features, including ad and tracker blocking, a data breach scanner, and multihop connections (connecting through two servers). That said, certain tools aren’t available for iOS devices. If you want to use the Bypasser tool (Surfshark’s split tunneling feature) you’ll need to use the Windows or Android app. Surfshark often runs promotions to lure new consumers to its plans. Currently, you can pay $12.95 for a month of access, $3.99 per month on a one-year plan, or only $2.30 if you are happy to remain a subscriber for at least two years. The VPN provider has also thrown in two months of free access on 24-month plans. Read the review: Surfshark VPN review Proton VPN has an excellent paid service that ranks as one of the fastest VPNs and best VPNs overall. In general, we recommend you avoid free VPNs for several reasons. There are potentially serious security concerns with free VPN providers. How do these companies have the money to build and maintain a secure product? Likely, they don’t. A free VPN service could even make money selling your data, which defeats the purpose of using a VPN to protect your identity, activities, and other information. The only situation where using a free VPN wouldn’t necessarily come with security concerns is when it’s a free version of a reputable paid service, as is the case with Proton VPN’s free version. While limited to three countries and approximately 100 servers, some additional free features from Proton Mail, Calendar, and Drive exist. If, however, you are interested in adopting the paid version of Proton VPN, you can sign up for a 24-month VPN Plus plan at $5.30 per month, or Proton Unlimited for $8.50 per month. The nice thing about the selections for the best VPN for iPhone and iPad list is they all have a 30-day money-back guarantee. A month should give you enough time to test any of these VPNs, see which features you love, and make a decision based on your personal experience.
Simultaneous connections: Many VPNs limit how many devices you can connect to a service at the same time. If you have a phone, tablet, laptop, desktop, and possibly even a smart TV you want to connect to a VPN, you’d need a service that allows at least 5 simultaneous connections.Kill switch: A kill switch prevents you from having an unprotected connection and is an important feature for a VPN to have. Platforms: What systems and devices can you run the VPN on?Logging: What type of information (if any) does the VPN provider record?Countries: In how many different countries does the VPN have servers? This can include physical and virtual servers.Servers: How many servers does the VPN service operate?Trial length & price: How much does the VPN service cost? How long do you have to try the service out before you can’t get a refund anymore?
Many providers recommended in this list have been subject to in-depth testing and reviews by members of our ZDNET team. We’ve been talking about other VPNs for years, spoken with their management and their users, and have developed a generally favorable impression. ZDNET does test VPN services from multiple locations, but we can’t test from all locations. Every home, every community, every local ISP, and every nation has a different infrastructure. It’s essential that once you choose, you test for all your likely usage profiles and only then make the decision to keep the service or request a money-back guarantee refund. If you experience traffic slowdowns, check not only your VPN but your Wi-Fi connection between your device and your router or access point. Sometimes connectivity issues begin at the source, and in other cases, switching your selected VPN server may be enough to resolve speed problems or connectivity drops. It also shows up as a proxy server, so if you don’t want anyone to know you’re using a VPN, you’re out of luck. You also can’t change or hide your location, as you can with a full VPN. Private Relay is a feature of iCloud+. A VPN is a full security solution.
The 3 best free VPNs (and why you get what you pay for)
Atlas VPN is our top cheap VPN, which is even less expensive than Surfshark.
