Best VPN for the job you actually have
Nobody needs the best VPN in the abstract. They need the best VPN for one job, and the job changes the answer: the weights move, the scores do not.
Each guide re-weights the same five components we always use — privacy, speed, value, streaming and ease of use. A streaming guide leans on streaming and speed, a privacy guide leans on privacy. The component scores themselves never move to suit a page.
The top three on each guide are editorial picks chosen for that task, and they are not always the top three of our overall ranking. Where a pick looks surprising the reason is written under the card, so you can disagree with it on the evidence.
All best-VPN guides
Twelve guides, one per task. Pick the job you actually have.
How these guides work
Are these guides paid for?
The links are affiliate links, so we earn a commission if you subscribe through one. Commission does not change a score, a pick or a weight — the tables and the method run the same whether you click or not, and provider data is verified on a fixed cycle.
Why twelve guides instead of one list?
Because one list has to average over tasks that pull in opposite directions. Torrenting cares about privacy and device limits, a television guide cares about consistency and speed. Separate weights produce more useful answers than a single ranking can.
Do you benchmark speed yourselves?
No, and we publish no ping or throughput figures we cannot reproduce. Every speed number on this site is a component of a published scoring model, not a measurement from our own connection — which is why the method page matters more than any headline.
See all eleven providers side by side
Filter by what you need, compare every figure we publish, and open any row to read why a provider scored the way it did.