VyprVPN Review 2024: Features, Pricing & More (2024)

Owned by Golden Frog, VyprVPN entered the VPN space in 2009. Its namesake product boasts 10 simultaneous connections per subscription and a number of security features that can help users better secure their internet traffic from ISPs and other organizations looking to monetize their data.

VPNs effectively function like a mask you can wear while browsing the Internet. In basic terms, the way your device connects to the Internet is by constantly communicating with other computers, both sending out data and receiving new data in return. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can see this data that’s coming and going through your device, as can some third parties such as ad networks that track you from website to website to collect information and send you targeted ads.

This is not a great situation to be in if you’re someone who cares about privacy. There are a number of ways to protect your online privacy, including ad-blocker plugins like uBlock Origin, privacy-centered browsers like Tor browser, and, of course, VPNs. Instead of sending and receiving data directly on your device, VPNs let you route that data traffic to another server, usually owned or rented out by the VPN provider, which helps to conceal your IP Address. This lets you appear in other parts of the world while also making it more difficult to tie your user traffic directly to you.

Read our guide to the 10 best VPN services for more information about how VPNs work and different options.

VyprVPN provides users with a number of solid features and options including:

• VyprDNS: Vypr’s proprietary DNS solution, which guides user traffic through an encrypted tunnel to circumvent DNS censorship, which can block user access to certain websites and domains, as well as “man-in-the-middle” DNS attacks designed to route user traffic to malicious websites.
• Chameleon: Vypr’s custom VPN protocol can help users in countries with heavy internet censorship such as India, Russia or China bypass these restrictions to access more websites and content.
• Split Tunneling: This function lets users select which apps get routed through a VPN and which apps get routed through your base Internet connection. This can work for web browser like Chrome or Firefox but also on apps like your command prompt, which is one of the ways we check for DNS Leaks during testing.
• Kill Switch: Also known as an Internet kill switch, this feature can shut off your computer’s Internet connection if your VPN is not currently connected or turned on. This can help prevent your Internet traffic from ever being seen on your normal Internet connection.

VyprVPN offers two pricing plans: a yearly option billed at $5 per month ($60 per year) and a monthly option billed at $10 per month ($120 per year). This is a clear, simple way to handle pricing and features, and we wish more VPN providers did the same instead of asking users to parse through multiple options all with different features. VyprVPN does not currently offer a free trial or free version of its product, but it does boast a 30-day money-back guarantee.

For business users, VyprVPN offers two business-focused plans: VyprVPN for Business and VyprVPN for Business Cloud. Unlike its base VPN offering, these two do have some differences in features, namely the Business Cloud plan offers its own dedicated server. The base plans start at $299 per year for Business and $349 for Business Cloud. Each plan initially supports three users, but additional users can be added for $99 per year.

VyprVPN boasts over 700 servers. These servers can be found in over 70 different locations, including Dubai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Buenos Aires, London, Paris, Dublin and San Francisco. This is an unimpressive server count when compared to contemporaries such as Proton VPN or ExpressVPN, and in locations with a high usage rate, these low numbers can lead to a significant slowdown in internet speeds. Unlike other providers, VyprVPN does not currently offer different types of servers such as P2P or dedicated servers for streaming or gaming.

VyprVPN’s security features, beyond its Chameleon protocol, are fairly standard for the space. Split tunneling and the kill switch work as intended, shutting off or redirecting internet traffic as needed. The company, like many others, also has a no-logs policy, and it was one of the first VPN companies whose no-logs policy underwent an independent audit.

That said, we could not find any indication that VyprVPN has undergone any audits of its no-logs policy in the nearly five years since, nor could we find any other audits being performed on other parts of its security infrastructure, which we would prefer to see.

VyprVPN Protocols

VyprVPN currently supports the following protocols:

• WireGuard: The current standard-bearer of VPN protocols, WireGuard is a free and open-source security protocol known for its speeds and consistency. Many VPNs use WireGuard as their default protocol, even in cases where a proprietary protocol exists.
• IKEv2: IKEv2 is a protocol that encrypts communication between a VPN client and a VPN server and securely exchanges keys over the internet. It was the standard protocol used for years, but multiple vulnerabilities in its architecture have been found and exploited in the past, particularly when poorly or improperly implemented.
• OpenVPN: OpenVPN is a free and open-source security protocol commonly used by most VPN providers. It is one of the oldest security protocols in the VPN space, being initially released in 2001. It is a solid, if unremarkable protocol.
• Chameleon: VyprVPN’s proprietary protocol is designed to help users in countries such as Russia or India circumvent censorship and access content more freely. As the name might imply, it’s meant to function as a sort of “stealth mode.” It’s built off OpenVPN’s unmodified protocol.

In terms of speed and performance, WireGuard is the no-brainer pick for most use cases. The Chameleon protocol is unique, but we could not reliably test how effective it is at bypassing censorship restrictions. We were unable to get IKEv2 working at all during our test, but given the protocol’s age and waning prominence in the VPN space, we doubt it would have been a significant improvement over the other protocols.

Our Experience Testing VyprVPN’s Security

Overall, our experience testing VyprVPN’s security features went well. IKEv2 headaches aside, the VPN’s other features performed exactly how we would like them to with minimal fuss. It’s about as solid as we would want from a VPN, though we’d prefer some additional features be added later on, such as ad-blocking.

Should You Trust VyprVPN?

This is a complicated question to answer. VyprVPN’s privacy commitment is, to our eyes, fairly solid. On top of its no-logs policy, the company claims to not monitor any user traffic or web content, which you always want to hear. The company’s privacy policy also assures users that its custom DNS service does not log any user traffic. Its parent company, Golden Frog, is based out of Switzerland and has talked extensively about how this choice of location makes it not subject to any data retention laws the way other providers might be. Of course, while Golden Frog is based out of Switzerland, its parent company, Certida LLC, is based out of the U.S.

However, there is another issue with VyprVPN that concerns us.

In late March 2022, AppEsteem’s Deceptors program revealed that VyprVPN was one of six prominent VPN providers whose products would install a trusted root certificate authority (CA) certificate on user devices. Some of these providers were shown to be installing these CAs without user consent, but VyprVPN does not seem to be one of those. While CA files are necessary for denoting a VPN as trustworthy to your computer system, root-level CAs are not, and any root certificate installed by a third party can be incredibly dangerous.

Basically, digital certificates are what networks and devices use to know who is sending or receiving data. Digital certificates are how, when you click on a link to our website, your computer knows that it is going to the real Forbes Advisor website and not a fake website set up by a potential bad actor. It usually contains information such as a username, IP address and the user’s company or department.

Certificate authorities are how these digital certificates are verified by your computer or network, and they work in a hierarchy. Each level of the hierarchy has its own key that is used to sign off on a certificate, verifying that said certificate is trustworthy. The higher the level of the CA, the higher the level of trust, as lower-ranked CAs will automatically trust certificates signed off by their superiors.

Root certificate authorities are the highest level of CA you can find. This means that when a third-party provider, such as VyprVPN, installs a root CA, it opens up a potential hole in your security. If an attacker manages to procure the private key attached to the root CA, they can then create their own digital certificates and sign off on them, and your device or network will more than likely trust these certificates without question. This can allow hackers to do things such as install malware on your device.

As of this writing, we can verify that VyprVPN still installs root CAs to your device. This does not mean VyprVPN is doing anything malicious or illicit with this level of access, but the potential for damage that this CA represents is concerning when we consider how safe a cybersecurity product is.

Many users find that a VPN can slow down their internet speed. However, the actual speeds you experience when using a VPN will depend on a variety of factors including your location, internet service provider (ISP), where the servers are located and the distance between the server and your devices and the specific device and VPN protocol you are using.

Methodology: Our VPN speed comparison is tested on a Windows 11 machine using Cloudflare’s public speed test. Each protocol was connected to the nearest possible server and tested multiple times before we came up with these averages.

As you can see, VyprVPN had a massive impact on device performance and speeds. These are some of the largest drops in performance we’ve measured during VPN testing. WireGuard was, as expected, the best protocol of the ones measured, but it still resulted in decreases of 73.7% in download speed and 85.69% in upload speed. This is a staggering amount of slowdown, even for a VPN, and while we were not able to get the IKEv2 protocol working during our VyprVPN review, the protocol’s age and general slowness when used with other VPNs leads us to believe it would not be an improvement over WireGuard, OpenVPN or Chameleon. With all this in mind, we would not recommend VyprVPN for users looking for a speedy VPN experience.

With VyprVPN, you can connect up to 10 devices on one subscription, which is on the high end for a VPN and can make it an appealing option for interested business users. It currently supports Windows, MacOS, AndroidOS, iOS, Fire OS (used for Amazon Fire Sticks and Fire TVs), ChromeOS and Linux (Mint and Ubuntu distributions). A browser extension for Chrome is also available. Linux users should note that VyprVPN’s Linux app currently only supports OpenVPN, though the company has been promising forthcoming WireGuard support for the past three years or so. For this review, we will be taking a look at how VyprVPN works on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS.

Our Experience: VyprVPN on Windows

On Windows, VyprVPN performed poorly. While easy to set up and use, the VPN’s impact on device performance, and our headaches getting any protocol besides WireGuard to work, really brought the whole experience down for us. It was also a bit thin on features, with only the Chameleon really catching our attention. It’s not a bad VPN by any stretch of the imagination, but we were disappointed by the results.

Our Experience: VyprVPN on Mac

Setting up and using VyprVPN on a Mac works almost identically to using the service on a Windows machine. Users are able to download the Mac client directly from the company’s website. Once you’ve logged in with your account credentials, you’re able to use all of the platform’s features just like you can on any other platform. We found the MacOS app to be easy to use and were able to connect to international servers easily.

Our Experience: VyprVPN on Android

VyprVPN’s Android app looks and functions identically to the Windows version, right down to the UI, which appears to be sized for mobile devices on Windows. It worked about the same as on Windows as well, including the sizable impact on device performance. During testing, our Android device clocked in at 294 Mbps download and 152 Mbps upload without a VPN, compared to 74.2 Mbps download and 52.6 Mbps upload with VyprVPN turned on. However, if this speed change affected our ability to stream and watch content on the device, we could not notice it.

Our Experience: VyprVPN on iOS

With iOS, VyprVPN decided to shake things up a bit by providing the exact same experience as on other devices. It has the same UI, the same features and the same precipitous drop in device speeds while in use, going from 354 Mbps download and 342 Mbps upload without a VPN to 91.9 Mbps download and 17.9 Mbps upload with VyprVPN enabled. This drop in speed did not have a noticeable effect on our ability to stream and view content.

While we were able to get Hulu working with VyprVPN, we were less successful in our efforts to get Netflix or Disney+ working. When using a protocol besides WireGuard, the Netflix website simply wouldn’t load. Using WireGuard let the website load, but we were clearly still accessing U.S.-only content, not content in countries such as the U.K. or Japan. The Disney+ website wouldn’t load at all, regardless of what we tried. We would not recommend VyprVPN for those trying to stream with a VPN.

VyprVPN boasts 24/7 customer support through its live chat and email functions, as well as a knowledge base. There is also a user forum where you can get help from other VyprVPN customers, though we did not look too closely into it.

Live chat, as with many online services these days, puts you with a bot. We attempted to contact VyprVPN support regarding our issues getting the service’s Chameleon, OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols to work. Live chat was not able to help resolve the issue, but email support was able to eventually help us fix the problems with Chameleon and OpenVPN.

IKEv2, however, proved more difficult, and we eventually hit a point where customer support linked us to the same Knowledge Base article three times in a row before asking us to just use a different protocol. It was at this point that we decided to give VyprVPN customer support a break and just leave the IKEv2 protocol alone.

Beyond whether or not they could help us resolve our issues, the overall experience with Vypr’s customer support was poor. While the option to open a support ticket through the VyprVPN app exists, it did not seem to actually work, as all messages we sent through that app were not received by the support team. Submitting a ticket through the website worked, but it was still frustrating. As part of opening the ticket, we were asked to answer a list of questions about our problem to help support figure out what the issue was. This is pretty standard practice for customer support, and we had no problems doing this.

Unfortunately, the customer support agent we were set up with did not seem to have read the questions we filled out, multiple times asking for information that we had readily provided to them and was visible in our email chain. After this, we were bounced between a few different support agents, all of whom mostly just linked us to the same one or two Knowledge Base articles. One of the links was even blocked by our web browser as being potentially dangerous. Overall, VyprVPN provided some of the worst customer support experiences we’ve dealt with from a VPN provider, and we would be happy to never need their help again.

VyprVPN vs. Mullvad VPN

These two have equivalent or similar star ratings, pricing, features, server count and simultaneous connections, but for our money, Mullvad VPN is the better option here thanks to its strong privacy and security pedigree. While VyprVPN has historically had a pretty solid reputation for transparency and privacy itself, the fact that the VPN installs a root-level CA on user devices is a major concern of ours. Its business-focused plans are great, but we would not recommend either VPN for serious business use.

VyprVPN vs. NordVPN

NordVPN bests VyprVPN in nearly every category for both business and individual users. Equivalent pricing and number of simultaneous connections coupled with a more affordable Dedicated IP and better speeds make this a no-brainer for us.

VyprVPN vs. IVPN

While VyprVPN has a higher number of servers and simultaneous connections when compared to IVPN’s Standard plan, the root CA installation really does make it difficult for us to recommend VyprVPN over almost any other VPN on the market right now, discounting the VPNs that also install a root CA where Vypr might have a more level playing field.

VyprVPN is popular and has some solid points in its favor, namely an independently audited no-logs policy and interesting features such as its Chameleon protocol.

VyprVPN for Personal Use

VyprVPN is overall fine for individual use, if a bit pricey. We struggle to recommend it over other VPNs, thanks in part to its installing a root CA as part of device setup, but aside from that, it’s not a bad product. Its features function about as well as we’d want, and while customer support gave us a frustrating experience, we’ve certainly had worse. To us, VyprVPN’s star rating perfectly reflects its position in the overall VPN market: the middle of the pack.

VyprVPN for Business Use

Unfortunately, we can’t really recommend VyprVPN for business use. While we’ll always give points to any provider that offers business-specific plans and features, purchasing one of those plans would be, in our opinion, an overpay, and if you’re going to be spending that kind of money on a business-level cybersecurity solution, we would recommend looking at network access management and other, more fleshed-out enterprise solutions. Small businesses can do just fine with another VPN.