VyprVPN Review

VyprVPN, like other reputable VPN services, constantly drops fresh updates to improve upon its strengths and smooth the rough edges. Our previous VyprVPN review praised the provider for bringing a user-friendly interface and even better security. However, minor flaws like slow speeds prevented it from reaching the top spot on our best VPN list. 

In this review, we’re going to put VyprVPN through its paces again. We’ll examine its features, security, speed, streaming performance, price and more, to lay bare its strengths and weaknesses. 

Key Takeaways:

• VyprVPN’s real strength is excellent security, thanks to features like the Chameleon protocol, NAT firewall and VyprDNS. 
• VyprVPN unblocks Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and BBC iPlayer on the first attempt, but takes too long to load videos. 
• VyprVPN increased its pricing significantly in late 2021, making it one of the most expensive VPN options out there. 

If you’re looking for a business VPN or a service that can help you stay secure online, even in oppressive regimes, and you don’t mind slower speeds and expensive price, then VyprVPN could be the VPN for you. Keep reading to learn how VyprVPN and its proprietary Chameleon protocol can help protect you online. 

VyprVPN Video Review

VyprVPN Review 2019: Security and Netflix, But What’s the Catch?

• Which Is Better: NordVPN or VyprVPN?

  NordVPN is much better than VyprVPN, thanks to its more extensive server network, faster speed, and excellent overall performance and reliability. Read our VyprVPN vs NordVPN comparison for more details.

• Is VyprVPN Better Than ExpressVPN?

  ExpressVPN is miles ahead of VyprVPN, due to its blazing-fast and consistent speeds, 3,000 servers in 160 locations and unparalleled streaming performance. Learn more about the two services in our ExpressVPN vs VyprVPN comparison.

• Why Is VyprVPN so Slow?

  It’s difficult to pinpoint what causes VyprVPN’s slow speeds. Perhaps the lack of OpenVPN TCP tunneling or limited server network are some of the reasons it’s slow.

• Is VyprVPN Good for Streaming?

  Yes, VyprVPN is suitable for streaming — it gets you into all streaming platforms. However, because of its slow speeds, it takes too long to load videos.

VyprVPN Review: Alternatives

Strengths & Weaknesses

Features

Before you even evaluate the pricing or user-friendliness of a VPN, you have to confirm that it offers the features you need. VyprVPN isn’t the biggest name in the VPN industry, but its suite of VPN features could rival those of heavy-hitters like ExpressVPN and NordVPN. 

VyprVPN Essential Features: Kill Switch and Split Tunneling

The commonplace features are all there. There’s a configurable kill switch that blocks your network and internet traffic when the VPN disconnects or is not enabled. You have three configuration options: the app-level, system-level and the stop LAN traffic options. 

In addition, VyprVPN has a split-tunneling tool that enables you to designate certain apps to use the VPN while letting others use the internet directly. One quibble, though: the split tunneling feature is only available on Mac and Android apps. 

VyprVPN Automation and Advanced Options

VyprVPN is set up for always-on protection, thanks to the public WiFi protection and automatic reconnect options. It allows you to create a list of trusted WiFi networks; when you connect to a network outside the “allowlist,” the VPN connects automatically to keep you secure. 

The auto-reconnect option does as the name suggests. Should the VPN connection drop, it immediately attempts to re-establish the connection to keep your internet traffic encrypted. 

In addition, there’s VyprDNS, a zero-knowledge DNS server owned entirely by Golden Frog, VyprVPN’s parent company. The service routes your DNS requests through a double-secure tunnel to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks and DNS filtering.  

VyprVPN Device Compatibility

VyprVPN offers native VPN apps for Windows, macOS, Chrome, Android and iOS operating systems. There’s one big problem with its platform support, though: VyprVPN doesn’t have a native app for Linux, which is absurd. 

That aside, VyprVPN offers native apps for smart TVs, which is huge. Thanks to its specially designed Android TV app, it’s one of our best VPNs for Android TV Box. Beyond that, you get apps for Amazon Fire TV and an option to manually set up VyprVPN on Kodi. 

Even better, it’s easy to install the VyprVPN router app to extend protection to devices without native apps such as your Apple TV and gaming consoles. It has a dedicated app available for MIPS- and ARM-based routers, allowing you to configure your connection settings and choose which devices use the VPN tunnel.

VyprVPN Features Overview

	Visit VyprVPN
General
Payment methods	PayPal, Credit card
Accepts cryptocurrency
Simultaneous connections	30
Supports split tunneling	on mobile devices
Unlimited bandwidth
Free trial available
Refund period
Worldwide server amount	700+ in 60 countries
Desktop OSes	Windows, MacOS
Mobile OSes	Android, iOS
Browser extensions	Chrome
Can be installed on routers
Streaming
Can access Netflix US
Can access BBC iPlayer
Can access Hulu
Can access Amazon Prime Video
Security
Encryption types	256-AES
VPN protocols available	OpenVPN, Chameleon, IKEv2, WireGuard
Enabled at device startup
Allows torrenting
No-logging policy
Passed DNS leak test
Killswitch available
Malware/ad blocker included	on mobile devices
Support
Live Chat	24/7
Email support	24/7
Phone support
User forum
Knowledgebase

Pricing

For a while, we have considered VyprVPN to be one of the best budget VPNs out there. However, that changed when the VPN company increased its pricing in late 2021.

Its monthly plan costs $10 per month, which is a fair price compared to most premium VPNs. This makes it slightly cheaper than ExpressVPN — as you can see in our ExpressVPN vs VyrpVPN comparison.

30-days money-back guarantee

Monthly

• Unlimited GB
• 30

1-month plan

$10/month

One year

• Unlimited GB
• 30

1-year plan

$5/month

$60 billed every year

Business

• Includes 3 Users, $99 per year per additional user, Multiple User Management. Global Business Servers, Dedicated Account Manager
• Unlimited GB
• 3

1-year plan

$24.92/month

$299 billed every year

Business Cloud

• Includes 3 Users $99 per year per additional user, Multiple User Management, Your own dedicated server, Fast and easy deployment
• Unlimited GB
• 3

1-year plan

$29.08/month

$349 billed every year

If you want to save a few dollars, you can subscribe for a year, which will cost you $5 per month. That’s certainly better than the monthly plan, but it’s still more expensive than NordVPN — the fastest VPN on the market — and it’s around twice as expensive than budget options like Surfshark and CyberGhost.

Is there any silver lining to this price increase? The only thing we can say is that you get 30 simultaneous connections. Nevertheless, if you’re willing to spend this kind of money on a VPN, we’d recommend you check out ExpressVPN instead (read our ExpressVPN review for more information).

When it comes time to pay, VyprVPN accepts PayPal and credit cards. There’s no way to buy the VPN anonymously (such as with Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies), which is disappointing. Crypto is the standard for anonymous payment, with some services, such as Mullvad, going as far as to accept cash (read our Mullvad review).

VyprVPN Free Trial & 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee

VyprVPN doesn’t offer a free trial — at least not on desktop — but you can try out the service on mobile for three days for free.

Luckily there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you have some way to try the service risk-free before committing. You’ll have to spend some money up front, but it’s better than a three-day trial because you can use it on all devices.

User Friendliness

We evaluate two essential elements to gauge VyprVPN’s user-friendliness: user experience and user interfaces. 

In our previous VyprVPN review, we noted that the provider redesigned the website and simplified the sign-up process. Nothing much has changed. Getting started is a cinch: you only have to click the “buy now” or “get VyprVPN” buttons plastered across various VyprVPN website pages. 

VyprVPN Windows App

The desktop app setup is straightforward. Just double-click the installation file and follow along with the installation wizard. 

The VyprVPN Windows app has a familiar form factor to other popular VPN providers, with a well-organized user interface (UI) similar to ExpressVPN’s local application (read our full ExpressVPN review). The main window displays your location, connection time and connection status. 

Outside the main screen, there are two tabs: “customize” and “servers.” Out of the box, VyprVPN selects the fastest server based on your location.

Picking a specific server is easy. You can sort the server list by region, country or speed, which makes finding an optimal server a tad faster. Alternatively, you can use the search bar at the top to find server locations by name. You can also create a list of favorite servers, so you don’t have to start the search from scratch every time you use the service. 

The “customize” tab is where you’ll find your VPN settings. Here, you find all the options to tweak the app’s settings to suit your preferences. You can turn on the kill switch, enable public WiFi protection mode, set up automatic reconnect and tinker with various startup options with the touch of a button. 

Furthermore, you can select your ideal protocol depending on what you want to achieve online. There are four protocol options to choose from, namely WireGuard, Chameleon, IKEv2 and OpenVPN. Sadly, VyprVPN doesn’t give you an option to change your encryption, and OpenVPN doesn’t come with the TCP tunneling option. 

VyprVPN Android and iOS App

In most cases, the mobile apps are trimmed-down versions of desktop apps. VyprVPN’s Android app is different. It packs a punch equal to that of the Windows client in terms of intuitive UI and ease of use, so it’s no surprise it made it onto our best VPN for mobile list. 

The Android app comes packed with all the features of the Windows app. More than that, it has a split tunneling tool that lets you choose which apps are routed through the VPN connection. Not to mention, it offers a malware blocker that weeds out malicious websites to thwart malware infection. The VyprVPN iOS app is equally easy to use and comes with the same features as its Android counterpart, except the malware blocker.

VyprVPN’s Chrome VPN proxy is still in beta, so it’s lean on features. Even so, it’s effective if you want a browser extension to encrypt your Chrome traffic.  

Speed

VyprVPN isn’t one of the fastest VPN services, and that’s because of its inconsistency and overall sluggish performance. The provider recently launched the WireGuard protocol, and we expected that to improve its connection speeds significantly. 

We did a batch of tests on a 3 Mbps internet connection to determine whether WireGuard has improved VyprVPN speed. We tested it using the OpenVPN, WireGuard and Chameleon protocols. As for the server locations, we picked six countries from different continents, and kept that list consistent across tests to set up a fair comparison.  

VPN Connection Speed Test Results

VyprVPN Speed Test Results with OpenVPN

Our speed tests using OpenVPN prove that VyprVPN hasn’t solved the same old issues, and the inconsistencies are even more prevalent across locations. For example, the Chicago server returned 2.34 Mbps download speed on the first test, only to record 1.33 Mbps on the second and 2.03 Mbps on the final attempt. 

The protocol increased latency by 27 times and caused a 20.9 percent download speed loss, which is the worst among the three protocols. On the bright side, OpenVPN has the best upload speeds. It also establishes connections pretty fast and has a swift server switching speed. 

VyprVPN Speed Test Using WireGuard

The introduction of WireGuard is great for VyprVPN users. The protocol improved OpenVPN download speed by over 8 percent and has significantly mitigated VyprVPN inconsistency. However, it’s yet to topple OpenVPN on the upload speed front. 

VyprVPN Speed Test Results Using Chameleon Protocol

VyprVPN recommends the Chameleon VPN protocol for its stellar security. Though it caused a 43 percent decrease in upload speed, it delivered a slightly better download speed than the WireGuard protocol.  

All in all, VyprVPN isn’t fast, with mediocre OpenVPN performance and inconsistency between locations. WireGuard has improved the download speed and solved the inconsistency that drags VyprVPN down on this front (though not entirely). 

Streaming Performance

The best VPNs for streaming are adept at unblocking streaming sites. They come with servers in popular streaming destinations and offer solid security to get into favorite platforms undetected. Most importantly, they offer excellent speeds, unlimited bandwidth and uncapped data so you can binge-watch movies without interruptions. 

VyprVPN ticks off most of these boxes but stumbles where it matters most: speed. The VPN service got us into BBC iPlayer on the first attempt, which is why it made it on our best BBC iPlayer VPNs list. However, the movies took too long to load, and when they did, we couldn’t escape pesky buffering. The picture quality was poor too. 

The case was slightly different for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. VyprVPN got us into the two streaming services on the first attempt. As expected, the videos took a while to load, and the picture quality wasn’t good. 

However, we didn’t experience video lag and buffering when using the streaming sites, which justifies VyprVPN’s position on our lists of best VPN for Netflix and best VPN for Amazon Prime Video. 

Server Locations

VyprVPN maintains more than 700 VPN servers in different regions in the world. The server count isn’t the best, especially compared to services like CyberGhost, which has 6,000 servers in 88 countries.

VyprVPN has over 70 VPN server locations spread across over 60 countries. Europe has VPN servers in 30 countries, whereas Asia has servers in 14 countries. There are servers in five Middle East countries, four South American, three North American, three in Central America, three in Oceania and two in Africa.

Each country has one VPN server location, except the U.S. and Australia, which get eight and three server locations, respectively. In total, VyprVPN server locations offer about 300,000 IP addresses. VyprVPN claims its server network is made up of virtual and physical servers. 

Security

Security is VyprVPN’s real forte. It has the security features you expect from a secure VPN, including a kill switch and DNS leak protection. 

Out of the box, VyprVPN uses the combination of the WireGuard protocol and ChaCha20 cipher. WireGuard is the new kid on the block in the VPN sphere, and has been labeled “the future of all protocols.” It’s lightweight and slightly faster than other VPN protocols, but it’s largely untested. 

VyprVPN allows you to configure your protocol option manually. You can use OpenVPN, IKEv2 or the proprietary Chameleon protocol. VyprVPN pairs the three with AES 256-CBC encryption to squeeze the best security performance out of them. 

OpenVPN is the tried-and-tested old guard, fast and secure. IKEv2 is also fast but works best on mobile devices, so it’s surprising that it’s not available on the Android app. Thankfully, it’s available on iOS devices. We ran DNS leak tests for WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2, and there were no redirects to our ISP.

VyprVPN Chameleon Protocol vs WireGuard vs OpenVPN

Lastly, there’s Chameleon, VyprVPN’s recommended protocol. It’s built to bypass geoblocking and seems a natural fit for use in countries with strict internet censorship. 

This proprietary protocol uses the guts of OpenVPN for negotiating the connection and handling encryption. However, each packet passes through an obfuscation layer too, which scrambles the metadata inside. 

Doing so offers the VPN security benefits of OpenVPN without the risks of being caught by a censor inspecting packets. Its ability to thwart techniques such as deep packet inspection (DPI) is one of the reasons VyprVPN earns an honorable mention in our best VPN for China.

NAT Firewall

Network address translation (NAT) firewall is one of VyprVPN’s advanced security features, built to prevent malicious and unrequested inbound traffic from reaching your device. It stops bots and hackers from penetrating your system, thus foiling identity theft and spamming. The NAT firewall runs on all VyprVPN servers, so it doesn’t require additional configuration. 

Privacy

VyprVPN falls under the umbrella of Golden Frog, GmbH — a Swiss-based company. Switzerland is outside the Five, Nine and 14 Eyes surveillance alliances, which is great from a privacy standpoint. It’s also one of the most privacy-friendly countries in the world, with strict laws protecting user data. 

Your connection is private, but VyprVPN still has some information about you on record. Namely, the company collects personal data associated with your account, including name, contact information, payment details and/or physical address. As per the Golden Frog policy, VyprVPN uses the data to improve service delivery and customer support. 

The policy goes on to state that Golden Frog doesn’t sell your data and never will. It further states that it cannot share personal data unless subpoenaed by a court of competent jurisdiction. 

Does VyprVPN Keep Logs?

There have been cases of VPN companies that boldly claim to adhere to a no-logs policy, only to be caught doing the exact opposite. IPVanish is a good example, as you can read in our IPVanish review. Thankfully, VyprVPN is different. 

The privacy policy clearly states that VyprVPN doesn’t log source IP addresses, connection timestamps, the IP address assigned to you by its system or user data.

That’s not an unsupported claim, either. Leviathan — an independent security firm — audited the VPN’s logging policies and pinpointed some not-so-severe logging issues. VyprVPN promptly fixed the issues highlighted in the report by adding another level of privacy assurance. As it stands, you shouldn’t worry about VyprVPN logging data.

Customer Support

VyprVPN offers various customer support options such as a knowledgebase, live chat, email and user forum. Sadly, there’s no phone support option. If you run into problems, you can access help from the website or within the VyprVPN app. 

If you have a complex issue that requires a human agent touch, you can open the live chat. Throughout this VyprVPN review, we sought clarification on various topics from VyprVPN agents via live chat support. The support agents seemed well-versed on all issues and responded to every query in under five seconds, which is impressive. 

You can also submit a ticket and get a response via email. Unlike other VPN providers we’ve used, VyprVPN doesn’t send an automated email to confirm your ticket submission. 

The Verdict

VyprVPN has improved considerably over time — the app looks much nicer, the website is way easier to use — but unfortunately there are still aspects of the VPN that keeps it out of the same category as ExpressVPN or NordVPN. 

Slow speeds still put a huge damper on what is otherwise one of the better VPN providers around. Inconsistency is still an issue, and the WireGuard protocol hasn’t improved the speed as much as we hoped it would. It’s also now quite expensive. Overall, VyprVPN isn’t quite there yet, but it’s a service to keep an eye on in the future. 

Have you used VyprVPN before? What do you like most about the VPN service? Is there an area where you think VyprVPN deserved more credit or critique? Let us know in the comment section below. As always, thanks for reading.