CyberGhost ticks quite a lot of boxes and has some seriously good developers behind it. It’s got pretty solid results in privacy tests and is perfect for unblocking most streaming services, though one area, which is a pet hate, that it does fail in is any real obfuscation. They sport a strong no-logs policy and are very adamant that they only look at connection attempts to see if they were successful or not.

Now for everything CyberGhost do correctly they have a very big storm cloud looming behind them that they can’t seem to shake off, their parent company Kape Technologies PLC, or formerly Crossrider. If you haven’t heard of them before they are notorious within the industry for their shady past in malicious adware combined with the fact they were cofounded by an Israeli who is an ex-member of unit 8200 and a billionaire who was found guilty of insider trading and later named in the Panama Papers.

All in all, you can’t blame someone for having awful parents it’s simply not their fault, but if they were still living with their parents would you want to go over and spend most of your time there?

Surfshark is potentially one of the best VPNs on the market at the moment as it covers almost all bases that anyone would really be looking to get VPN service for. They use discless servers or RAM only so that nothing is stored physically on them meaning there is no possible way they can log anything you are doing or any of your information. They are quite up to date in terms of the protocols they are using and features they offer, for instance, they have removed PPTP from their servers as they believe it’s outdated and have a multihop feature for free! They have a fairly good server spread with pretty reliable speeds and connections meaning they are good for torrenting and streaming and potentially the biggest plus of them all is they have unlimited simultaneous connections!

PrivateVPN is based in Sweden which can raise alarm bells but considering what other VPN services from Sweden have done in recent times and considering their flat out no logs policy it is of little concern. PrivateVPN confirms that they have a very good system of getting around streaming services, by setting you up with a dedicated IP for the duration of your connection, which comes as standard with their service so a big plus for all the streamers reading this.

An almost elusive company, haven’t managed to find out much about who owns it but to go purely off of what they say, they do have a zero log policy and claim that they do not store any information apart from you account name with a randomly generated key to say you are currently connected in order to limit the number of simultaneous accounts. I found some very mixed reviews across the board but nothing that couldn’t just be a smear campaign and any legitimate complaints either through Better Business Bureau (BBB) or other entities all seem to get resolved.

All that aside they have major drawbacks, a lack of transparency around what protocols are used, no P2P traffic allowed, being on the more expensive side of the market with one of the smallest server spreads, the smallest amount of simultaneous devices, and requires an add-on for unblocking streaming services. It certainly raises the question, what are you paying for?

FastestVPN, unfortunately, isn’t the fastest VPN we review nor is the most powerful but it doesn’t really put a foot wrong in terms of what it states in the privacy policy but without the third-party audit it really is just down to trusting what they say. Being based in the Cayman Islands they don’t fall under any jurisdiction which requires them to hold data and certainly isn’t within the 5/9/14 Eyes. They do however leave much to be desired when it comes to their applications and overall performance with some geo-restricted content still being blocked by the service.

HMA, formerly Hide My Ass, has got the greatest coverage in terms of countries out of all the VPNs we review here making it a great candidate for anyone looking to get around geo-restrictions. They are most certainly NOT renowned for their privacy, coming under fire after helping the authorities track and trace some of their customers but have since rebranded and now claim to be a zero-logging company. This does make the service hard to trust but if privacy is of no concern and you simply require to get around a lot of obscure geo-restrictions then look no further.

OVPN take the security and privacy of their customers very seriously and have proven themselves to their loyal customer in Swedish court recently. They were requested to hand over any information they had regarding one of their clients who was renting one of their IPv4 addresses and not only proved that it was completely impossible for them to store any past data as they do not run any hard drives, but won the battle that they should not have to store any data. So this paves the way for more VPN providers to set up shop in Sweden as it appears they understand the need for anonymity and privacy on the web.

TorGuard is located and based in the USA but based on their true no-logs policy and no metadata stored it shouldn’t have any impact as they are very security-focused. They offer a nifty built-in ad blocker which can save some hair pulling and come highly recommended for torrenting as they allow port forwarding. However as always, there are some drawbacks, you will need to purchase some extra dedicated IP addresses from them if you intend to watch Netflix. They do have an offer in place as well called their “Fresh Start” offer, if you have a current VPN and cancel it to move to them, they will give you a month for free.

IPVanish is based with a 5 Eyes country (USA) but based on their strict no logs policy and no metadata stored it should be of little importance, but there was an incident in 2016 when IPVanish’s data was used to track down a criminal and from the released court papers it appeared that the strict no logs policy was a complete fallacy and they actually stored almost everything about you, since then it was purchased by StackPath who worked hard to re-earn the trust of its users and then just last year purchased again by NetProtect which is under the giant J2 Global who have been buying up other VPN services of late. I find it hard to know what to trust with this company, but if we take it at face value they’re a strong contender on our list of reviews especially now that they support unlimited devices.

VPNCity does operate with a strict no-logs policy and is currently based out of Hong Kong. They offer 42 server locations in 33 different countries and seem to be trying to grow these numbers to start to compete with some of the bigger fish. They have recently upped the number of simultaneous devices to 12 making it a great choice for family or friends looking to share an account but before you get ahead of yourselves do be warned that their connection speeds are one of the lower tiers that we review here at 1VPN.