Best VPN for iPhone 2025

With so many VPN apps available for iPhone, it can be difficult to choose the right solution. Based on our extensive research and hands-on VPN testing over the years, these are the factors to consider when choosing the best VPN for your iPhone:

Confidentiality

The main consideration for any VPN should be privacy. If your iPhone VPN cannot provide a sufficient level of privacy, then your VPN is practically useless. Your VPN should offer standard AES 256-bit encryption over OpenVPN and IKEv2 VPN protocols or ChaCha20 with WireGuard, along with basic privacy protections like a kill switch, DNS leak protection, and a no-logs policy. If your privacy needs are critical, you’ll need a VPN provider that’s based in a privacy-friendly jurisdiction, offers obfuscation, and has a RAM-only server architecture. Additional privacy features to look out for include Tor over VPN functionality, ad and tracker blockers, and multi-hop connections. It’s also important to choose a VPN that’s reliable, transparent, and undergoes regular third-party security audits, which can help build confidence in the VPN’s ability to protect your privacy.

Speed

The speeds of your VPN connection can have a big impact on the quality of your streaming, downloading, video conferencing, gaming, and general web browsing activities. All virtual private networks slow down your internet somewhat, simply due to the nature of encrypting your traffic and sending it through at least one server before going to its final destination. To keep things running as smoothly as possible, you’ll want a VPN that will have as little impact on your usual internet speeds as possible. In general, we recommend a VPN with an internet speed loss of 25% or less. In our testing, we only saw an average of 11% loss in internet download speed. For bandwidth-intensive applications like racing games or streaming 4K video, you’ll want a fast VPN.

Usability

A good iPhone VPN should work seamlessly and be easy to use, regardless of your technical experience. It should have all the features you need easily accessible at the touch of your finger. Many of the best VPN apps for iPhone also include an easy way to contact support directly from the device, which can be useful if you need help on the go. Basically, your iPhone VPN app should be as easy to use as your iPhone itself. It should have a large network of servers around the world so that you can connect easily and reliably from wherever you travel, and it should be able to help you access geo-restricted content from different regions.

price

Depending on your budget, you may want to consider the price and overall value of your iPhone VPN before making a purchase. VPN pricing can vary greatly from provider to provider, but you can typically expect to spend around $5 to $13 per month for a monthly VPN subscription plan. If you want to save some money, you can opt for an annual subscription, where prices can range from approximately $30 to $100 per year. You should be careful with free VPNs because you may end up risking your privacy instead of protecting it with a free VPN. Proton VPN is currently the only one free vpn which CNET recommends.

Most premium VPNs offer a one-week to 45-day money-back guarantee. You can also get a seven-day free trial with many VPNs when you sign up through Apple’s App Store, so you have options to try different iPhone VPNs risk-free before deciding whether to fully invest in one.

Device support

While you’ll want your iPhone VPN to work well on iOS and iPadOS, chances are you have a bunch of other devices you might want to run a VPN on. Most VPNs work on Windows, MacOS, and Linux computers. In addition to iPhone and iPad, most VPNs also offer Android apps. While Android TV and Fire TV apps are common for streaming devices, Apple TV apps are still on the rise. Providers like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Proton VPN, Surfshark, PIA and IPVanish have the feature Apple TV VPN applications. (Disclosure: IPVanish is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) Consider the devices you want to install a VPN app on, and make sure your preferred VPN company supports these gadgets.