NordVPN Review: An Excellent VPN for Almost Anyone

NordVPN is a virtual private networking service that routes all your internet traffic through a secure pipeline ensuring that nobody can spy on your internet usage, not even your service provider. It can also allow you to access content that would normally be blocked on your network, or from your geographical location.

So how does NordVPN compare to its competitors, and will it make it onto our Best VPN list?

NordVPN review: How much does it cost?

You can subscribe to NordVPN on a month-by-month basis, but doing so doesn’t deliver great value. A monthly subscription to the Basic plan costs $13 – more once you factor in sales tax. As usual, the price goes down if you sign up for a longer term: a year-long subscription for the Basic plan costs $60 (plus sales tax), equivalent to $4.99/mth before tax, while a two-year commitment to the same Basic plan comes to $83 (plus tax), which works out to $3.09/mth before tax.

Before you pick a plan, though, there are some other factors to be aware of. Like many VPNs, NordVPN only offers its best rates to new subscribers: after your initial one-year subscription runs out, it will automatically renew at a much steeper $139 and the two-year deal leaps up in price to $313.

There are additional pricing tiers, too. The prices we quoted above are for Nord’s “Basic” tier – which includes unlimited VPN use on up to 10 devices at once, plus the blocking of malicious domains and intrusive ads. For a little extra though, you can move up to the “Plus” tier, which adds anti-malware protection, blocks ad and web trackers, and offers advanced browsing protection to warn you away from fraudulent websites that may host malware or other scams. On the Plus tier, you also get the NordPass password manager and a data breach scanner that will alert you if your sensitive information leaks online. All that will cost you $14 (plus tax) on a monthly basis, $72 (plus tax) for the first year of an annual subscription, or $108 (plus tax) for 24 months.

At the top end, the NordVPN “Ultimate” package adds a total of 1TB of secure cloud storage shared across your devices, with end-to-end encryption to protect your data from unauthorized access. It also adds ID theft recovery insurance to a total of $1 million and $100,000 of coverage from cyber extortion, though you should check the fine print for details and exclusions. Still, that’s pretty good value if you were already interested in signing up for NordVPN: the Ultimate package costs $16 monthly, $96 for a year, or $162 for two years, before tax.

NordVPN review: What’s it like to use?

Once you’ve picked your plan, you can install the NordVPN client on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, or Linux. NordVPN also has apps for Amazon Fire TV Sticks, Chromebooks, and NAS appliances, and can provide instructions to set up the service on a games console or router. Choosing the router option allows you to protect every device on your home network with just one connection, but note that NordVPN doesn’t support the L2TP or PPTP protocols.

Once the VPN is connected, you’re free to do what you want. NordVPN offers numerous servers specifically dedicated to BitTorrent (although violating copyright is strictly against its terms of service), and you can stream video from services all around the world. The company operates more than 6,000 servers in 111 countries and there’s 24/7 customer support via live chat and email, in case you need a hand with installation or connecting to a specific server.

We tested the NordVPN software on both Windows and Android. In both cases, the app opens with a stylized map of the world, allowing you to pick a server by clicking and dragging around.

While this offers a nice visual sense of where your traffic is going, it’s generally quicker to type a location into the search box, or to scroll down and browse the alphabetical list. On Windows, you can set the app to launch in windowless mode and use the system tray icon to open quick connections or bring up the full interface as needed.

Aside from finding and connecting to servers, all the client’s controls are found in the Settings view. Nice clear switches let you enable or disable auto-connect, and configure features like the kill switch and split tunneling. There’s also an option to block ads and malicious websites, to speed up and streamline your browsing experience. The recently added Meshnet feature lets you easily share files and play games over the internet with other computers running the software.

The one thing that’s notably missing is any kind of built-in performance or testing tools but, overall, it’s a clean interface that presents a good spread of features in a way that’s logical and largely consistent across platforms.

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NordVPN review: How fast is it?

We tried out NordVPN on a Windows 11 laptop connected to fiber and we were impressed with its speed. Without the VPN enabled, the Google Speed Test tool reported a download rate of 376Mbits/sec. We then connected to a nearby server in London (we ran these tests from the UK), which dropped the speed to 309Mbits/sec. That’s a hell of a lot of bandwidth – in our recent tests, we’ve only seen HMA and IPVanish having less of an impact on network speed.

Even when we switched to a more remote virtual location, NordVPN kept up the pace. The New York server gave us a magnificent 313Mbits/sec – the fastest download speed we’ve seen for a transatlantic VPN connection.

Curiously, mobile performance wasn’t quite as strong. Our Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 registered a download speed of 304Mbits/sec when connected to the London server – still fast, but distinctly slower than the desktop client. And when we switched to a New York server, performance plummeted to just 82Mbits/sec. We tried mashing NordVPN’s Refresh button to cycle through different servers in the same location, but couldn’t find a faster connection. Still, there’s more than enough bandwidth here for anything you’re likely to be doing on a tablet.

It’s also worth noting that the NordVPN software supports split tunneling on both Windows and Android (although it isn’t currently available on Apple platforms), so you can set specific apps to run over the VPN, while the rest go at full speed through your local ISP.

NordVPN review: Is it good for video streaming?

For smooth streaming of 4K and HDR content, most providers recommend a connection speed of at least 25Mbits/sec. NordVPN can easily deliver that, so there’s no reason why you can’t use it for video streaming.

It’s effective at location spoofing, too. NordVPN doesn’t offer streaming-specific servers, but with our laptop connected to the regular New York server, we were happily able to watch US-only content from Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu in a web browser. We were also able to access a wide range of British content by connecting to a UK server. There was just one catch: while ITVX, Channel 4, and Now TV all streamed without a hitch, no matter how much we switched between servers, we couldn’t get BBC iPlayer to work.

Happily, we were able to view all UK content, including iPlayer, using the various services’ native Android apps on our tablet. US services mostly worked well, too, with the Netflix and Hulu apps working without a hitch. The one exception here was Disney+, which gave us enough trouble that we gave up.

As usual, NordVPN can’t unlock Amazon Prime content from any region other than your own, but that isn’t the fault of the VPN – the service uses your registered Amazon address to determine what content to offer.

NordVPN review: Is it secure?

If you want your private activities to stay private, NordVPN has you covered. Its corporate HQ is located in Panama, which means it isn’t subject to the usual data-retention rules, and the company proudly affirms that it doesn’t keep any records whatsoever of your activity. In the past few years, it’s put itself through two extensive investigations at the hands of independent auditor PwC, which confirm that its privacy claims are as good as they sound.

To further protect your privacy, NordVPN uses its own VPN protocol, called NordLynx. This is based on WireGuard, but adds IP address obfuscation so that your details aren’t stored on the VPN server. Double VPN options make you even more difficult to trace by forwarding your traffic through two servers in different locations, and you can set the software client to automatically activate the VPN whenever you connect to a network – excluding those you’ve explicitly marked as trusted. The built-in malware blocking feature also helps protect your privacy by shutting out data-stealing exploits.

Another point in NordVPN’s favor is its unusually clever kill switch, which not only shuts off internet access if you get accidentally disconnected from the VPN, but also automatically closes nominated apps, to make absolutely certain that no ongoing activity is inadvertently exposed to your ISP.

Unusually, the software shows you the default security settings at the point of installation, and invites you to customize them if desired as part of the setup process – a great, thoughtful touch. And to help you ensure your ongoing security is tickety-boo, the Nord VPN client gives your configuration a “Security score”, and suggests options that can be tweaked to improve it.

NordVPN review: Should you buy it?

NordVPN won’t break the bank, but it’s not a budget VPN either. Competitors like CyberGhost and Surfshark offer comparable plans for roughly half of NordVPN’s prices.

Even so, NordVPN has plenty going for it. With its neutral location and independently audited privacy policy, it’s as secure as you could possibly ask for. It also has all the features you’re likely to want, including a few decent security add-ons, and optional password and file-management extras for a modest surcharge. It will unblock most streaming services, and we’ve no complaints about speed – on the desktop, in particular, NordVPN’s performance is hard to beat.

NordVPN review: Quick facts