Best VPN for iPhone 2025: Privacy protection on the go

With so many iPhone VPN apps available, it’s difficult to choose the right solution. Based on years of extensive research and practical testing of VPNs, these are factors to keep in mind when choosing the best iPhone VPN.

privacy

The most important factor to consider in a VPN is privacy. If you can’t trust that you take privacy seriously, don’t use a VPN provider. You also need to have technical controls in place to put money in the area where your mouth is. All VPNs worth salt must provide AES-256 encryption with minimal exertion of the openVPN or IKEV2 VPN protocol. Also, if you’re offering Chacha20 via WireGuard, you’ll get a better speed boost than most other protocols, along with all the protection you’d expect. Solid encryption is the absolute minimum. You should also be looking for basic privacy features such as kill switches. This provides a DNS leak protection to protect your connection when it goes down and stop your ISP from reading website requests, as well as a solid no-log policy that is regularly audited by external companies. We recommend checking your provider’s privacy policy and reading the audit reports in detail. This gives you a good understanding of whether your VPN provider can actually protect your privacy.

Users with basic privacy needs are probably fine as long as all these boxes are checked. However, you should look for a provider that goes beyond the usual privacy considerations, especially if you’re worried about spying. Initially, you should have strong privacy laws and be based on jurisdiction that specifically protects your VPN provider. You also need to choose a provider that provides obfuscation protocols if you are in a country or if you are using an internet network that doesn’t work well with a VPN. Otherwise, you won’t even be able to get online on a VPN. Finally, the provider must provide either a RAM-only or a fully encrypted server. Both ensure that your data remains secure or not recorded at all. There are also other privacy features that are less important but useful, such as ad blockers, Tor on a VPN, and Multi-Hop servers.

speed

VPN connection speed can have a major impact on the quality of streaming, downloading, video conferencing, gaming and general web browsing activities. All virtual private networks simply delay the internet somewhat due to the nature of encrypting traffic and moving to their final destination before sending it through at least one server. To keep things running as smoothly as possible, you need a VPN that has minimal impact on your normal internet speed. In general, we found that the best iPhone VPNs only remove internet download speeds at an average of less than 25%. Tests consider an average loss of 11% internet download speed. Bandwidth demand applications such as competitive gaming and 4K video streaming require a stern VPN.

Ease of use

A good iPhone VPN should work smoothly and be easy to use, regardless of your technical expertise. It should have all the features that you can easily access by tapping your finger. Many of the best Apple iPhone VPN apps also include an easy way to contact support directly from your device. This is useful if you need support on the go. Essentially, the iPhone VPN app should be as easy to use as the iPhone itself. With a large network of servers all over the world, you can easily and reliably connect to where you travel, allowing you to access geo-restricted content from various regions.

Fee

Depending on your budget, we recommend taking into account the cost and overall value of your iPhone VPN before purchasing. VPN prices vary widely from provider to provider, but you can usually expect to spend around $5-13 per month on your monthly VPN subscription plan. If you want to save money, you can opt for an annual subscription. Prices range from around $30 to $100 a year. You should be aware of free VPNs as they can put your privacy at risk instead of protecting them. Proton VPN is currently the only free VPN recommended by CNET.

Most premium VPNs offer a money back guarantee ranging from 1 week to 45 days. You can also use many VPNs to get a 7-day free trial when you sign up through Apple’s App Store. So, before deciding whether to invest fully, there is an option to try out different iPhone VPNs without risk.

Device Support

You need an iPhone VPN that works well on iOS and iPads, but there may be a lot of other devices you want to run on. Most VPNs work on Windows, MacOS, and Linux PCs. In addition to iPhones and iPads, the majority of virtual private networks also offer Android apps. While Android and Fire TV apps are commonly used on streaming devices, Apple TV apps are still on the rise. Providers like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Proton VPN, Surfshark, PIA, IPVanish feature the Apple TV VPN app. (Disclosure: IPVanish is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) Think about the devices on which you will install the VPN app and make sure the VPN company you are looking for supports those gadgets.