NordVPN Review

How Much Does NordVPN Cost?

To do a cost-balance analysis, we have to know the cost first – the cost of a NordVPN subscription, that is. There are four paid subscription packages that provide different levels of protection for your online privacy and safety.

NordVPN Subscription Packages

Those four packages are “Basic,” “Plus,” “Complete,” and “Prime,” but no matter which you go with, the VPN service stays the same. You can connect to any of the servers, enjoy unlimited speed and data, use all available encryption and VPN protocols, and get ads and malicious domains blocked. You also get a 10-device limit on simultaneous connections with any package.

The “Basic” plan includes just the VPN. The rest offer additional tools and services, from a password manager to a bare-bones identity theft protection service with coverage up to $1 million (similar to the best identity protection services). We made a table to make it easier for you to decide:

NordVPN Subscription Pricing

As for the price, NordVPN subscriptions range from $3.39 to $17.99 per month, depending on the package and how long the subscription will last. As is the norm in the VPN industry, the longer the subscription, the better the rate. That $3.39 per month rate is for the two-year NordVPN Basic plan.

We recommend signing up for a two-year subscription to enjoy the reduced rate, especially since NordVPN has a 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s risk-free to try; it’s one of the best VPN free trials. You’ll pay the full subscription price up front, and if you decide you don’t want it, you have the first 30 days to cancel and get your money back. If you do decide to keep it, keep in mind NordVPN is also one of our favorite long-term VPNs.

Having signed up and tested dozens of VPNs though, we know NordVPN isn’t the cheapest option. Surfshark’s subscriptions start at $2.19 per month and Private Internet Access plans go for as low as $2.03. All things considered, we still believe NordVPN is one of the most affordable VPNs. That assessment of ours has a lot to do with NordVPN’s feature set, which is what we’ll discuss next.

>> Compare: Surfshark vs. NordVPN

NordVPN’s Features

VPNs are now more than just VPNs. They offer additional features to widen the scope of their digital protections – NordVPN, most of all. We welcome the change, but we understand it can be overwhelming to nonexperts. So when we tested NordVPN, we categorized its features into privacy, security, and server network features.

• Privacy features: These are features that relate to your online privacy, from how NordVPN changes your IP address – or more accurately, hides it – to the company’s privacy policy and data collection.
• Security features: These are features that protect you from various online threats, including malware and malicious domains. We also cover encryption and other features that protect your online traffic as it traverses the web.
• Server network features: These are features and capabilities related to NordVPN’s servers, particularly how well they can access streaming sites and provide users a safe torrenting experience.

If you’re looking to buy a VPN for a specific reason or functionality, feel free to skip ahead to the features category most relevant to it. But of course, we recommend going through every feature and our experiences with them to really get to know NordVPN.

NordVPN Privacy Features

Highlights:

• Independently audited privacy policy
• Panama location outside of Five Eyes surveillance
• Kill switch
• Double VPN
• Onion Over VPN

Privacy is the primary reason most people use VPNs, and for that, you should first look for a “no-logs” VPN. That’s nonnegotiable. A “no-logs” VPN, such as NordVPN, promises through its privacy policy never to record any sensitive information related to your VPN usage that can compromise your online anonymity. This includes your web activity and your real IP address.

NordVPN even went a step further by submitting its privacy policy to independent audits. Even as experts, we can’t confirm through our tests that NordVPN follows its privacy policy. Those audits can, and they did.1 That’s why NordVPN is in our best “no-logs” VPNs list.

Those facts about NordVPN’s privacy policy aren’t exactly features, but they are worth mentioning because they help keep NordVPN privacy-focused. Another important fact is that NordVPN is headquartered in Panama, which is a haven for privacy. It’s not part of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes surveillance alliances that are infamous among privacy-focused circles.2 Plus, Panama has really strong data protection laws.3

That’s just the start. Now let’s discuss NordVPN’s privacy features we actually tested.

Kill Switch

A VPN hides your real IP address essentially like a cloak. But what happens when that cloak fails? That does happen – it happened twice while we were testing NordVPN. That’s where the VPN kill switch comes in.

While using the VPN to change our Netflix region, the video unexpectedly buffered and stopped. Our internet was working fine, but Netflix said there was a network error. It turned out our NordVPN connection dropped. However, instead of switching us to our regular internet connection, NordVPN activated the kill switch to stop all traffic and prevent our real IP address from leaking out.

Now, imagine if something like that happened while you’re torrenting or doing something that requires anonymity, and your VPN doesn’t have a kill switch. The website you’re on will see your real IP address, and you can kiss your online privacy goodbye. That’s why we believe that a VPN kill switch is a nonnegotiable feature every VPN should have.

You can choose how and when NordVPN’s kill switch activates. We chose the default option – by blocking all traffic only when the VPN connection drops unexpectedly. But you can also set the kill switch to activate when you disconnect the VPN manually, or even set select apps to shutdown when the kill switch activates. We think those options are overkill for regular internet users, but if you want absolute privacy, you can tweak those settings to tailor the experience.

Double VPN

Double VPN is another feature we find can come in handy to those seeking complete privacy. It’s exactly as it sounds – it connects you to the VPN twice, hiding your IP address behind two VPN servers. It’s also a security feature because it doubles the encryption. However, all those extra steps make double VPN connections much slower than a normal VPN – by as much as 80 percent in our experience. That’s why we don’t use it that much; we only do it when we want to be sure about our anonymity.

NordVPN’s double VPN feature is also not our favorite because it limits users to only 10 server locations. That’s fine if you only need to be as private as possible. But if you also need to connect to a specific location and it’s not on the list, it won’t work out for you. We found Surfshark’s “Dynamic MultiHop” a much better way to deliver a double VPN. It let us select the location of the first and second servers from its entire pool of 100 countries, which allowed for full customizability.

>> Learn More: Our Hands-On Review of the Surfshark VPN

Onion Over VPN

We also tested how well NordVPN works with other privacy networks, particularly the Onion network or Tor. It did amazingly well thanks to its specialized “Onion Over VPN” servers. Now, you might not need to know about all this. If you don’t use Tor, feel free to skip ahead. But if using the Onion network is part of your privacy strategy, NordVPN will fit right in.

Onion network relays are operated by volunteers, so it’s possible for malicious actors to set up nodes that can monitor the traffic and IP addresses passing through it. Using a VPN along with Tor adds an extra layer of privacy and encryption to protect you from snoopers.

Not all VPNs work well with the Onion network, so we tested NordVPN’s “Onion Over VPN” servers. We connected to one of the specialty servers and started up Tor. It connected to the Onion network like normal, albeit slower by around 30 seconds, and we didn’t notice any significant slowdowns while browsing the dark web. At least, not any more than we experience when using Tor, anyway. We’d even say that NordVPN worked better and faster than when we tested IPVanish’s Tor over VPN.

>> Read our Review: IPVanish Hands-On Expert Review in 2025

Security Features

Highlights:

• VPN and encryption protocols
• “Threat Protection Pro”
• Obfuscation
• Post-quantum encryption
• Identity protection

NordVPN can keep you private and anonymous online really well – we’ve seen as much – but it can also keep you safe from online threats. The main thing here is encryption. All VPNs encrypt traffic that they route through their servers, so even if it’s intercepted, your online activity and data is safe. But that’s just the bare minimum. Let’s take a closer look at how NordVPN’s features offer online security.

VPN and Encryption Protocols

If you’ve ever wondered how a VPN works, the VPN protocol is the answer. It’s a set of detailed instructions that tells the VPN software how to route traffic from your device to the server. This includes how to encrypt data, which network ports to use, and how to chop up blocks of data into data packets. We won’t get into the specifics, but we made a VPN protocol guide that explains everything you need to know.

NordVPN lets you choose which protocol to use, as VPNs normally do. The options we saw were OpenVPN, NordLynx (based on WireGuard), and the new NordWhisper protocol.

• OpenVPN: We found this to be the most robust in terms of encryption, as it uses the gold standard 256-bit AES. However, it’s not the fastest (5 to 10 percent slower than NordLynx in our tests) and it appears to use more resources than NordLynx. The iPhone we use for testing tends to heat up faster when using OpenVPN, so we recommend using it on desktops and laptops.
• NordLynx: NordVPN created this protocol based on WireGuard, which has emerged as a great and faster alternative to OpenVPN. While it’s incapable of using 256-bit AES, it uses the similarly secure ChaCha20 encryption. Plus, it’s the only protocol offered by NordVPN that supports post-quantum encryption (more on this later).
• NordWhisper: NordVPN also built this protocol with the primary purpose of securing data in restrictive local network environments, such as office and school networks. We are yet to test it extensively because it’s new, but we asked our IT team to monitor and block VPNs on our office network. NordWhisper was able to get through.

Keep in mind, NordVPN’s app can choose the best VPN protocol for your connection automatically. That’s the default setting when we installed the app. We recommend keeping it at that unless there’s something specific you want to achieve (such as bypassing VPN blocks on your local network using NordWhisper).

Threat Protection Pro

We’d consider any VPN good as long as it has strong encryption and trustworthy VPN protocols, but NordVPN didn’t stop there. It offers “Threat Protection” with any subscription, and “Threat Protection Pro” for “Plus,” “Complete,” and “Prime” users.

• Threat Protection: This feature filters ads and third-party trackers as you browse websites. It doesn’t get rid of all ad banners – there are better ad-blockers out there. But it was able to hide about 80 percent of ads on ads-heavy websites we visited.
• Threat Protection Pro: In addition to blocking ads and trackers, this feature also blocks you from accessing fraudulent websites (such as phishing sites) and from downloading files that contain malware. We tested this by downloading the EICAR malware test file,5 and sure enough, “Threat Protection Pro” denied it.

The best part isn’t even that NordVPN offers those features, but that they run even if you’re not connected to the VPN. It’s not quite as robust as antivirus software, but “Threat Protection Pro” is the reason we have NordVPN in our list of the best antivirus/VPN bundles.

“Threat Protection Pro” has another nifty feature exclusively for Windows computers – vulnerability scanner. Essentially, it scans the computer for risky and outdated apps so you can remove or update them. We’re pretty good at staying on top of these types of stuff, but we’re sure there are busy folks who will find good use for the vulnerability scanner.

Obfuscation

We mentioned earlier how NordWhisper can bypass local network restrictions on VPNs, but some VPN blocks go beyond local networks. For example, there are countries with strong internet censorship that don’t allow the use of VPNs, or allow it but under strict monitoring. Obfuscation is the answer. It camouflages VPN traffic so it looks like normal traffic and to evade surveillance.

However, unlike Surfshark that can obfuscate pretty much all of its servers, we noticed NordVPN offers obfuscated servers as specialty servers. Only 16 locations (countries) have obfuscated servers, including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Japan, Poland, and Spain. Just like with double VPN, the locations you can access with obfuscation are limited. Nonetheless, obfuscation is a great feature to have if you’re living in or traveling to a restrictive country. It’s why we recommend NordVPN as a great VPN for traveling.

>> Learn More: The 3 Best VPNs to Use in China

Post-Quantum Cryptography

Those were NordVPN’s primary security features, but there are a couple of others we’d like to mention. First is post-quantum cryptography (PQC), available optionally through NordLynx connections.

The current encryption standards (256-bit AES and ChaCha20) are practically unbreakable even with today’s supercomputers but could be threatened once quantum computers are developed. NordVPN developed a type of PQC that could protect users – especially businesses – if or when that happens. We don’t think it’s necessary to use the feature now, but it shows NordVPN is looking ahead and future-proofing its products.

Identity Protection

The other feature is identity protection, which can protect you from identity theft – a more immediate threat. The reason we don’t consider it a main feature is that it requires the NordVPN “Prime” plan. It covers dark web monitoring and credit monitoring.

The highlight of NordVPN’s identity protection is insurance and restoration. If you fall victim to identity theft, your losses are covered for up to $1 million. The same is true if you fall victim to cyber extortion (e.g., ransomware), but the coverage for that is only up to $100,000. We don’t absolutely recommend you upgrade to the “Prime” plan, but those are nice protections to consider.

Server Features

Highlights: 

• 7,200 servers in 118 countries and counting
• RAM-based servers
• Streaming
• Torrenting and P2P support
• Meshnet
• Dedicated IPs

We can talk about NordVPN’s exciting security and privacy features all we want, but the truth is without servers or with only a few of them, it just won’t work.

NordVPN has a large network of over 7,200 servers and an impressive global reach – 118 countries. It’s not resting on its laurels either because we still see those numbers rising. At the start of 2024, NordVPN only had around 6,000 servers in about 60 countries.

NordVPN’s current server network is one of the biggest among the VPNs we’ve tested. Here’s a quick comparison between our top five VPNs.

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Having a presence as wide reaching as NordVPN is good for you. It means that wherever in the world you might find yourself, there’s a good chance you’ll find a server nearby. And in our experience, the closer you are to a server, the faster the speed is.

There are some exemptions to that. NordVPN’s network consists of both physically located and virtually located servers. A physical server is literally where it says it is – a server that gives you a U.S. IP address is really in the U.S. Virtual servers, on the other hand, are located somewhere else. NordVPN’s Indian servers are actually in Singapore because of India’s controversial CERT-In law. You’ll still get an India IP address, but because they’re in Singapore, you’ll see better speeds by connecting to a neighboring country (Pakistan, Nepal, etc.) than if you’re in India.

The More You Know: India’s CERT-In law aims to protect the Indian government and citizens from cybercrime, but it has a provision that requires VPN servers set up in the country to keep users’ logs, violating the “no-logs” policies of VPNs. That’s why most VPNs have now removed their servers in India.

RAM-Based Servers

NordVPN’s servers also run on random access memory (RAM). We noticed a lot of the top VPNs have switched to RAM-based servers from servers that use hard disk drives (HDD) to store data. Take a look at our ExpressVPN review. It’s another VPN that uses RAM-based servers, which it calls “TrustedServer.”

There’s a good reason for that switch. RAM is ideal for server data storage because it uses volatile memory – in simple terms, once the server is shut off or cycled, it loses all stored data. In contrast, HDD has data remanence, where residual data can remain even after you delete a file. That means with the right recovery software, you can recover deleted files from a hard disk. That’s a security and privacy risk, especially for VPN servers that potentially contain sensitive data (e.g., encryption keys). In short, VPNs that use RAM-based servers are slightly more secure.

Streaming

Let’s move on to the more fun stuff – streaming. We’ll tell you outright that NordVPN is one of our favorite streaming VPNs. For one, it’s fast. We’ll show you our speed tests in a minute. The other reason is that it can access streaming services with excellent reliability. We’ve used the VPN to watch Netflix, Disney+, Max, ESPN+, and even YouTube TV. In fact, we were able to access YouTube TV on a trip abroad by connecting our laptop to NordVPN. In case you didn’t know, YouTube TV is available only in the U.S.

Of course, streaming platforms are working hard to fend off VPNs that can bypass their content restrictions. They are successful at times. While testing for the top VPNs for Disney+, the streaming platform noticed and blocked NordVPN 3 in 10 of our tries. Still, a 70 percent success rate on a platform known as one of the best VPN blockers is a passing grade to us.

We should also note that unlike VPNs like Private Internet Access, which only have select streaming-optimized servers, all NordVPN servers (the ones we connected to anyway) can access streaming sites. That means you get more options, as you can connect to any of NordVPN’s 118 server locations and (most likely) access content available to that region.

>> Compare: Private Internet Access vs. NordVPN

Torrenting and P2P

Besides streaming, people use VPNs to download torrent. Torrenting is technically legal in the U.S., but it’s in a gray area because some use it to download pirated media, which is illegal. Internet providers also frown upon customers who download or seed torrent files because of how much bandwidth they consume. So even if we only download noncopyrighted media via torrent, we still use VPNs so our internet provider doesn’t see what we’re doing and throttle our speeds.

We’ve confirmed through testing that the best VPNs to use for torrenting are those that have servers that support P2P connections. P2P servers allow faster downloads and are more likely to work with torrent clients. NordVPN has P2P servers in almost all its 118 locations; we counted only four countries that don’t. That’s pretty good, although keep in mind we have tested some VPNs that allow P2P traffic on all their servers. Surfshark, Private Internet Access, and IPVanish are good examples.

>> Compare: IPVanish vs. NordVPN

Extra Features

There are a couple of other server features we want to mention, namely “Meshnet” and dedicated IPs.

“Meshnet” is a free feature you can use without signing up for a subscription. It creates a virtual local area network for your devices, but they don’t need to be connected to the same router to join the network. That means you can securely share files (we use “Meshnet” for this in the office), share screens, or even play LAN games (remember those?) from anywhere. It is part of why NordVPN made our list of the best gaming VPNs, especially for those who prefer old-school LAN gaming.

The other feature, dedicated IPs, is the opposite of free. It’s an add-on you can buy to get a VPN IP address only you can use, as opposed to normal VPN IPs that are shared among users. It costs an additional $4.19 per month (charged up front equal to the length of your NordVPN plan). We didn’t get this add-on, but it could be worth it if you require a VPN with a static IP address, such as logging into a remote workspace.

Other Options: Lots of other VPNs offer dedicated IPs, but one of the most affordable is Private Internet Access (PIA VPN). Each IP address can cost as little as $2.50 per month. However, PIA’s dedicated IPs are from only 10 countries, whereas NordVPN has servers that have dedicated IP addresses in 24 countries.

Speed Tests

In addition to testing NordVPN’s many features, we also ran some tests to measure the quality of its connections. The first we tested was the speed.

Of course, almost all VPNs will cause your internet to slow down. Encrypting your traffic and running it past a VPN server will result in slightly slower site load times, downloads, and even streaming. The question is, “By how much?”

Before we discuss the results of our tests, just know that there are lots of factors that can affect your VPN speed. Some of the variables include your distance to the server, your device’s operating system, and the version of the VPN app you’re running.

Even if our VPN speed tests show that NordVPN is one of the fastest VPNs around, we can’t guarantee that the results will always be the same for you. It certainly wasn’t for us; NordVPN performed well in our speed tests, but while using the VPN, we noticed that some server locations are slower, resulting in longer buffering times when streaming.

In any case, we were satisfied with the speeds NordVPN gave us. We tested it several times by running speed tests with and without the VPN side by side, and these were the results.

In those tests, we always connected to a server in Australia (~10,000 miles from where we ran the tests). We used a Windows 11 laptop connected to a 100 Mbps wired, fiber-optic network. Also note that we used OpenVPN, and as mentioned earlier, WireGuard (NordLynx) has the potential to be faster. We opted to use OpenVPN to level the playing field, because it’s the only protocol that all the other VPNs we tested offer. Of those 12 VPNs, NordVPN ranked third overall.

IP Leak Tests

After testing NordVPN’s speed, we proceeded to test it for IP address leakage. There are two types of leaks we particularly test for: DNS leaks and WebRTC leaks.

DNS leaks can result from the VPN not having its own Domain Name System (DNS) server. In that case, you’ll use a public DNS server (likely from your internet provider), which can result in the owner of the server seeing your IP address. On the other hand, VPNs with their own private DNS servers very rarely experience leaks. The good news is that NordVPN has private DNS servers – that’s necessary for its “Threat Protection” ad-blocking feature. We tested it anyway, and found that our IP address is safe with NordVPN.

The other type of leak, called WebRTC leak, results from the WebRTC feature that almost all browsers have. Malicious actors can exploit the feature to find out the real IP address of someone connected to a VPN. It requires a targeted attack, but still, you can never be too careful. So, we ran our tests and found that NordVPN connections aren’t vulnerable to WebRTC leaks either.

NordVPN Apps – Our User Experience

By now, you should have a pretty good idea on whether or not NordVPN is the right VPN for you. Does it have the features you need? Does it perform as well as it needs to for how you plan to use your VPN? Do you think it gives you good value for your money?

If your answer to those questions is “yes,” then let’s talk about using NordVPN’s app next. We found the VPN app beginner-friendly but with plenty of customizations for those who want to dial in their VPN experience. Setting up the VPN app took less than five minutes, and fresh off installation, it connected us to the fastest nearby server. We noticed that it also auto-connects every time you launch the app, which is great if you want to fully integrate using a VPN into your day-to-day life. It can’t get much simpler than that.

We also like how the app has separate tabs for main features, such as “Threat Protection Pro,” “Meshnet,” and “Dark Web Monitor.” We didn’t need to dig deep into the settings to customize how we like those features to run. That’s what we mean when we say it’s beginner-friendly but customizable. When we tested Private Internet Access, we certainly found it customizable, but the settings for some features can be hard to locate.

Of course, there are a couple of things to keep in mind about NordVPN. First is the device limit. NordVPN lets you install its app on as many devices as you want, but there’s a limit to the number of devices you can connect at the same time. In comparison, our Private Internet Access subscription gave us unlimited simultaneous connections.

On the bright side, NordVPN has apps for pretty much any operating system that natively supports VPN apps. It has an app for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and on mobile devices, the NordVPN app is available for Android and iOS. There’s an app for smart TVs too, whether yours is a Fire TV, Google TV, or Apple TV.

Alternatively, you can set up NordVPN on a router so you can connect devices that don’t support VPN apps. We gave this a go when we tried to set up a VPN for our PlayStation.

>> Related: The Best VPNs for Apple TV

Our Experience with NordVPN Customer Support

Is NordVPN good? Yes. Is it reliable? Yes. But is it perfect? No. One day, we woke up and no matter what we did, our iPhone just wouldn’t connect to NordVPN. We tried the usual troubleshooting techniques, from restarting the app to restarting the entire phone. When we still couldn’t get it to work, we decided to look to NordVPN for answers.

We found the support page really helpful, as it contains answers to common questions, fixes to common issues, and step-by-step instructions on how to use the features. It’s also easily accessible.

Unfortunately, all the articles we found related to our problem didn’t provide a fix to our issue, so we ended up reaching out. Now, you can opt to send NordVPN an email, but it might take them a couple of days to respond. We used live chat instead. It connected us to an agent who then asked us to provide details about the issue. We went back and forth for a couple of minutes, and tried several possible solutions. It took about 10 minutes of chatting with the agent, but we eventually found the issue. It required us to reinstall the VPN app, but bottom line, we found NordVPN’s customer support very helpful.

Video Review

In our video review, we take you through what it’s really like using NordVPN. You’ll get a better sense of exactly how this service works to help choose a VPN for you. And we’ll take you along on our process of testing NordVPN for speed and leaks.

In Summary

Overall, we give NordVPN a 9.7 out of 10 rating based on the numerous factors we measured like features, reliability, performance, and cost-value correlation. It’s currently our highest-rated VPN.

Is NordVPN the only good option? No. Some other VPNs come close to NordVPN. For example, here’s our ranked listing of NordVPN competitors:

• Surfshark: 9.5/10 (2nd place)
• Private Internet Access: 9.4/10 (3rd place)
• Hotspot Shield: 8.9/10 (fourth place)

However, if what you’re looking for is a versatile option with a global reach and first-class software, NordVPN definitely deserves to be one of your top considerations.

We love that NordVPN’s headquarters is in Panama because that means we don’t have to stress about the possibility of the government seeing our data. (Not that that’s a potential issue because NordVPN has an independently audited “no-logs” policy.) We’re also happy to see that it offers lots of security and privacy features, including “Threat Protection Pro,” double VPN, dedicated IP, and proprietary VPN protocols in NordLynx and NordWhisper. Lastly, NordVPN passed all of our speed and security tests with top marks, making us confident that it can protect our privacy while we use the internet however we please.