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I was on PIA for a few years before it was bought out by Kape.
Kape has a poor track record with keeping user data safe, and has reported shady business practises.
I switched to Mullvad and have been happy, excluding the limited devices which I bump into pretty frequently.
Basically 3 good choices
ProtonVPN AirVPN IVPN
Proton has a 50% off student discount bringing the price down to $5 a month for all proton services.
IVPN is probably the best but most expensive.
IVPN, no contest.
ivpn looks nice, it looks like they are taking a similar approach/structure to account creation like mullvad does. I don't like the 7 device limit though, but it is still 2 more than mullvad.
+1 for GUI on linux.
Airvpn is my go-to. Tho I also have an account with pia. Airvpn for PTP is pretty simple to set up, has great support for Linux, and you can choose from multiple protocols and ports pretty easy. Their port forwarding is way simpler to setup on a server then pia.
Pia is great for me to use on my phone/laptop tho. Their client is much more ment to be interactive as opposed to set and forget.
Airvpn certainly isn't the fastest but the community is awesome and support is amazing.
Another vote here for ProtonVPN, though it doesn’t support port forwarding via a GUI on Linux, only OpenSSL and Wireguard configs. I set it up with gluetun, qBittorrent, and qBittorrent-natmap and and it just works.
I use Windscribe with a lifetime plan and I've been more than happy with it.
Seconding Windscribe. Using them since the Mullvad port forward death.
ProtonVPN has been solid for me. Switched to wireguard recently and have been able to completely saturate my 1gbps fiber link
I've heard that AirVPN and IVPN are good for port forwarding.
I moved off PIA after they were bought by a former ad-ware distributor, and I've been on Proton VPN since.
They do currently have a Linux GUI, though it's extensively lacking compared to the Windows client, and the CLI / DIY methods for using their service is much more flushed out.
That's not to say it's a bad client, it's just very much not what they advertise feature-wise. The speeds and server-availability are all great, and these days it's all bundled into a "Proton Account" that gives you VPN, Email, and Cloud Storage based on your tier.
I switched to AirVPN after finding out that Mullvad disabled port forwarding. I have heard rumors that the did that because of people hosting cheese pizza via their VPN accounts.
The performance of AirVPN does vary, I had to try a couple of countries before I found a server that didn't throttle me (and I only have a 50MBit connection).
Maybe I will try Proton in the future, but then I would have to commit to a 2year subscription or pay a lot more.
Moved from PIA to Mullvad when it was sold to a new owner with bad reputation
Loving ProtonVPN, but note that if you also use ProtonMail, the account is shared, meaning no one else can use your VPN if you don't want people to have access to your email. I've tried to use vopono, and vopono needs access to your account to automatically configure VPN connections which, again, is not great because access to my VPN = access to my email 😐
Protonvpn Unlimited subscriber here. Pretty amazing ngl. I get 10 vpn connections, 500GB E2EE cloud storage, simplelogin premium, calendar, and whatever else they have that I haven't used yet or still in development.
Edit: and ofc, I use their e2ee mail serveice
I've used PIA for probably close to 10 years now. They removed the 10-device limit recently and just give you unlimited devices now. I've found the connection to be very stable. If there's ever a problem, it's usually due to a specific server getting overloaded, so I switch to a different one. Lots of countries and port forwarding options to choose from. The promotion they have going right now is the best I've seen ($79 for 39 months).
I've used PIA for five years now. Never had an issue. It's plenty fast for my needs; I've seen sustained ~450 Mbps downloads from a transatlantic endpoint. (I honestly don't know what is typical with other VPN services but I'm not feeling choked out so I've never investigated.)
They run frequent deals and you can stack a promo code, check slickdeals and/or set an alert if there is not a current promotion. I believe my current three year sub worked out to ~$1.80/month. It is suspiciously cheap.
I'm sure others are "better" and "you get what you pay for" but PIA is good enough for the price for me.
"Better" or "you get what you pay for" aside, the owner of PIA is patently sketchy.
I've been using PIA for a long time.
PIA only offers port forwarding with servers in certain regions. For example I'm in the USA and I have to connect to a server in Canada for port forwarding. Works fine though.
I don't use PIA on multiple devices so I'm not sure if there are device limitations, but I don't think there are (don't quote me on that).
PIA has a no-logs privacy guarantee by external audit which is the best you can ask for.
In general I'm pretty happy with the software and service. It's the cheapest game in town if you go with the the three year sub, last time I renewed it worked out to $2.33 a month.
The one negative is a change in ownership a few years ago. It was bought by a company with a less than stellar reputation (Kape Technologies). Though honestly I've not seen any negatives come of it myself. For some people it's a deal breaker. I was going to find a new provider when my sub ran out last, but I took the easy route and renewed.
Just looked it up and found this post (link here) by PIA from a few months ago, looks like unlimited devices is a recent addition to their service.
I use PIA currently because it was cheap and I wanted something easy to use mostly for streaming reasons. It's fine, not great, not awful. Connection drops more than I would like. I attribute that to Comcast knowing their IP addresses and dropping traffic in an attempt to catch any leaks. They got bought out by an iffy company not too long ago, and I plan to move to mullvad once this sub runs out
Mullvad is getting rid of port forwarding on July 1st so if you torrent you may want to look elsewhere.
I started with PIA and dropped them when the new owners took over. Moved to Mullvad which I've been happy with but now had to cancel due to port forwarding. I'm on AirVPN now and it's been working fine so far and has port forwarding, but it's only been a week or so of usage.
I've been using Windscribe for a couple years and really enjoyed it. I started on the dirt cheap $1 or $2 plan and then bought a static IP for port forwarding. You can get ephemeral port forwarding with pro I think, but that's more expensive. Can't speak for the linux GUI as I use CLI, but I've been satisfied.
My vote goes to ivpn and Proton (in that order).
Torguard. Sticky IPs with port forwarding. Wireguard support for fast speeds. Lots of coupons around the 'net to purchase for $30/year.
Probably overkill, but AstrillVPN is the one I have been using for the past several years and it never failed me.
I use Windscribe with a lifetime plan and I've been more than happy with it.
I've enjoyed MozillaVPN because it's made by Mozilla.
And, honestly, not really any other reason, i just trust the company that makes it over the others. In fact, it has a significant downside in that it doesn't have an app kill switch like NordVPN, so your torrent app can keep running unprotected.
Note that Mozilla VPN uses Mullvad's network under the hood. Also, depending on your device you should be able to block connections that don't use the VPN. On Android, the "kill switch" can be found in the settings as described here: https://mullvad.net/en/help/using-mullvad-vpn-on-android/#block-without-vpn
Bind your torrent client to the VPN so that doesn't happen. Qbit has an easy enough interface to figure out how to do it pretty easy. Plenty of guides a quick Google should return
I'm using Astrill. Flawless router integration if you have a supported model (i.e. most somewhat modern ASUS and a bunch of others), works with Android, iOS, Linux (tested on Xubuntu, clean and functional GUI, identical to Win) and Windows.
Huge list of servers, generally high speeds, works well with Netflix and Disney+ (don't use any other streaming services), has a DNS Leak block and a killswitch (disconnect internet if VPN fails). Feeling pretty good about it, been using it for well over 5 years now.
Sure is a bit on the pricey side, but you get 1 router + 5 client installations as per the terms & conditions, and they don't begin kicking out devices if there's fewer than 7 connected simultaneously. So if you share it among 2-3 people, it's already a bargain.
And if you happen to live in China, it's kinda without alternatives to begin with (which is my main use case).
Proton’s good but they seem to neglect Linux a lot. Command line version is okay but missing split tunneling so I’m seriously thinking about flicking it for something else.
Been using PIA for years. Never had any issues. As others have said I've bought bulk subscriptions and you can get insanely low prices for it. I have it set up on multiple devices. Mobile app also works good as it has a built in DNS level as blocker.
Port forwarding works super well. They have clients for a ton of Linux flavors but you can always just use the ovpn files.
All in all, despise getting bought out by a pretty shady company I haven't found enough of a reason to switch off.
If you are willing to pay a bit more, I highly recommend IVPN. Stay away from PIA, they are no longer trustworthy. AirVPN is also good, and Proton is good now as well.