30
votes
European VPN recommendations
As a Brit who's now effected by the Great British Firewall I'd like recommendations for VPNs that meet the following criteria either directly or via additional software/Firefox extensions:
- Use VPN only for specific apps on iOS (apply to Reddit, Discord, BlueSky and Twitter/X, Wikipedia (if it ends up banned) but not others)
- Use VPN for specific websites on Windows/macOS (apply to Reddit, Discord, BlueSky, Twitter/X, Wikipedia (if it ends up banned) websites)
- VPN considered generally trustworthy and not an American firm
Personal recommendations that you have experience with only please.
I’ve used mullvad and proton. I wouldn’t use proton again and I definitely do recommend mullvad. They seem to really be privacy focused and they don’t use a subscription that quietly renews. You pay, you use, balance empty, no use. Additionally, I belief you can use anonymous payment methods.
Could you elaborate on the issues you experienced with Proton VPN that lead you to that decision?
I'm not the original commenter, but in my experience they are much more aggressive with sales tactics and feel a bit bloated with all of their other service offerings they want to tie you into. The CEO is also openly supportive of the US Republican party. As far as the actual service: no complaints for the brief time I used it, and they will honor their 30-day money-back guarantee, if a bit begrudgingly. One of the main pros is that they still offer port forwarding, which Mullvad and IVPN, some of the most security-conscious VPN services, stopped offering due to abuse[1][2].
That being said, I've also had no issues with AirVPN, which still offers port forwarding, and, AFAIK, doesn't have the same potential political hangups as Proton. It is banned in Italy, however.
Proton statement about "support of republican party": https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i2nz9v/on_politics_and_proton_a_message_from_andy/
Reading through this has done little to change my opinion. He uses disingenuous language (like referring to a post from a month earlier as "last year") and does not address how his initial problematic post is clearly sucking up, and creates all kinds of false "both sides" arguments by cherry picking.
His initial post is clearly political when he claims it "not intended to be a political statement", also. So disingenuous from the very start. "Republicans stand up for the little guys" is a hell of a political claim, it's not some simple neutral stance.
I only maintain my free account there for mail for minimal and specific use cases, and only because it's a pain to move that anywhere else, and I feel like I'm actively costing them money by using the free tier and never anything more, so I've decided I'm okay with staying. That said, I refuse to use any paid services including VPN, and I recommend Mullvad as many others have as well. Haven't used AirVPN or seen any thorough audits/reviews, but it seems like a viable "port-forwarding-available" option if needed
So, main criticizm of the post is that he prise some actions of republicans party? And any acknowledge of any goods that republicans party did is bad. Understand.
That's an uncharitable interpretation and summation of the statements made.
This is a bad faith argument.
@caliper’s suggestions mirror mine 1:1, and @3WolfMoon’s reasoning is pretty much the reason why I’ve moved away from Proton.
I’m
periodicallyless bothered by the aggressive sales tactics, but much more concerned about sucking up to Donald Trump.Edit: not sure how periodically got in there. I blame autocorrect on mobile.
@3WolfMoon almost exactly touched all the things I didn’t like about Proton, and worded it much better than I could’ve. The bloat and their sales is what turned me off most. I want a vpn that just works, without too many bells and whistles. And even though there have been a lot of attempts to save the situation with the CEO, I don’t believe the company aligns with my values either.
Another vote for mullvad, which I've loved for years. Couple caveats though.
iOS can't do app specific VPN tunneling, OS limitation.
Firefox with containers can do specific website tunnelling, but you'll probably find it easier to either use the mullvad browser itself or just flip it on as needed. At least on Android I can just pull down my notification bar, hit "toggle VPN" and a couple seconds later, I'm in or off it. Works well for me, and basically not setup.
Using mullvad on iOS mostly to get YouTube packets though Albania to avoid ads. You can definitely do hat with WireGuard and
AllowedIPswhere you can only route specific IPs or subnets through the WireGuard connection. But it does require editing the config file before you import it.Alternatively if your router is competent enough to support it you can have it handle all the mullvad stuff and then have a single WireGuard connection from your devices to it. The router then sends packets directly through your home connection or through the VPN depending on destination. But that also requires manual configuration.
Does Albanian YouTube not have ads?
Changing your location would be too simple and doesn’t work. None of the demonetized countries are in the YT location list that you can select in the app. The only one présent was Russia. I tried and got ads in the language of the country I’m in. The only way is a VPN or WireGuard and sending YouTube packets over that VPN so that you appear as in one of the demonetized countries.
It does not. It’s glorious.
I can confirm that with Mullvad Albania I have no adverts on YouTube nor do I have any on Reddit.
Do you do split tunneling? If so, could you share your YouTube subnets? I always catch some GCP in mine so some services block me and google shopping also thinks I’m in Albania.
I've not looked into split tunneling on iOS yet. Although it's annoying I'm turning on the VPN to use Reddit or YouTube and then turning it off again afterwards.
On Windows I tried out the Mullvad app but there's no way to access the socks proxy without turning on the Mullvad VPN app for everything. I can turn off apps one-by-one but that doesn't seem like the right approach.
So (on Windows) I'm going to try Wireguard with AllowedIps set up for VPN use only for the socks IPs. Then I can use Firefox's Containers extension and a proxy extension to force only a "Mullvad" container to use the socks proxy. Finally the Firefox Container extension will allow me to force Reddit and Youtube to always use the "Mullvad" container. Bear in mind that this is all theoretical at the moment: I have no experience with VPNs as, until now, the UK was a mostly free country.
I do recommend mullvad, but ... if you have a lot of devices, be prepared for lots of manually configuring openvpn or deleting random devices from your device list, as they only allow five. I have a Linux and Mac desktop, 2 phones, and a Linux and Mac laptop. You can't name your devices sensibly either, so instead of choosing to delete 'work iphone', I have to remember that is 'invidious panda' and then the next device has more random words for its device name.
It sounds trivial, but in practice, if you have more than 5 devices you need to use regularly, you'd need multiple accounts, or eventually this will wear you down.
If you're motived/technically inclined you can do this:
The idea is simple. The openwrt router counts as one device, and can be used to support any number of devices connected to it. This works great at home, but what about on the go? That's why you setup the wireguard server. Outside the house, it's devices <--- wireguard tunnel ---> openwrt router <--- mullvad ---> internet
So you can effectively run as many devices as you want.
Often, this kind of use is frowned upon (E.g. Mobile providers and USB tethering to routers). However, apparently mullvad is not only aware of, but actually endorse this kind of use: https://mullvad.net/en/help/openwrt-routers-and-mullvad-vpn
This only talks about setuping up the connection to mullvad, setting up your own openvpn/wireguard server + making to accessible via WAN takes some extra work (dealing with dynamic ip, cgnat, etc).
Edit:
setupingthis is supposed to say setting up, when I proofread it my brain read it as setting up, when I clicked send and read it again... At least you know it's not written by AI :/I might end up setting up WG in a vps somewhere and using that as my vpn. I don't want whole house VPN as the bandwidth and latency aren't good for cloud gaming usually (IME YMMV). I might even piggy back mullvad on top of my wiregard VPS so that I get their choice of exit countries.
You don't have to, you can set split tunneling based on ip ranges/ipsets. You can even go as far as setup dnsmasq (need dnsmasq-full package plus whatever is needed for ipsets/nftsets) to populate an ipset for certain domains.
I don't think that's entirely possible (not counting workarounds like another piece of VPN software on your home computer that inspects your traffic and selectively routes some traffic through the VPN.)
It's barely possible on computers where you have full access: https://superuser.com/a/983946
The browser containers workaround @okiyama mentioned is clever, but that's a proxy and not a VPN, but that's just being pedantic, it'll work fine for censored websites.
Just as an FYI, as far as (windows) computers go, that isn't true anymore. Split tunneling is fairly common with VPNs both for consumers and in corporate networks. A lot of VPN providers will then also provide this as an option where you can set all sorts of things like doing it on per application basis, specific IPSs, etc.
It also makes sense for it to be a thing since it is a feature a lot of corporations like. It allows them to route sensitive and internal traffic for remote workers over the VPN while the bulk of regular internet traffic is bypassed. This makes it a lot cheaper for companies to have a VPN connection and for the employees it also means they don't take a performance hit on regular internet traffic.
To be clear, it isn't a thing on iOS, I am just commenting on the regular computer bit.
Noted, thanks for the info.
I host my own VPN servers in a few different countries using Azure VPSs and PiVPN for setup. It’s definitely only a sensible option for someone comfortable with a Linux server and the basics of WireGuard, but can give the peace of mind that you have a lot more privacy. WireGuard clients are available for a lot of platforms/OSes.
If you want to avoid Big Tech infrastructure, you can get a cheap VPS located in Europe from many providers such as: https://www.hetzner.com/european-cloud
I don’t know how much commercial VPNs cost, but a ~€4 per month VPS is pretty cheap.
This is the approach I’ve been considering, except possibly with OpenVPN instead of WireGuard (I’m just more familiar with it). I prefer to be in control, plus it gives me another server to tinker with 😁
Mullvad is 5€ a month and has hundreds of exit servers in various locations. Then you don’t have to worry about maintaining a bunch of hosts because they do it for you.
I can't do a complete recommendation as I use PIA and that isn't Europe based. I am still commenting as it does offer a way to do per website filtering through the browser extension they offer. Which, as far as I can tell, is the only user friendly way to do this.
I know Mullad has a browser extension in development, I don't know how fully featured it is. Maybe someone else can comment on that.
My dad lives in Europe full time, I shared my PIA login with him some time ago (2+ years ago?) and it's been great for everything he uses it for. For whatever that's worth. He's on iOS, as well.
IVPN and Mullvad are both great and well trusted