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Best VPN in Australia
If you want extra security, a quick way to jump geoblocked content walls or faster speeds, we’ve got you covered with the best VPN services in Australia in 2023.
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Our editorial team selected the products on this list based on expert and customer reviews. For each category, we selected key parameters based on our research and then identified the VPN services with the highest review score within those parameters.
In the VPN space, it pretty much comes down to a 2-horse race when choosing the "best" VPN for most needs, with most reviewers and consumers picking between NordVPN and ExpressVPN. We'll give the plaudit to NordVPN because it's got a slightly stronger story to tell around security and privacy – and for many VPN users, that's precisely why you would want to pay for a VPN in the first place.
NordVPN also scored well with reviewers for the overall speed of its connection as well as the wealth of servers available worldwide, with most (but not all) destinations nicely covered. Nord also covers a range of additional privacy features including DoubleVPN connections – pretty much exactly what it sounds like, adding a second VPN layer to your connections for added security at the cost of a little speed – and Tor access.
Where many other VPN providers do VPN and that's all, Nord also goes a little further with optional modules for features such as password management and encrypted file storage if that's of value to you.
So what's not to like? Some reviewers noted slightly uneven performance on mobile platforms, with Nord's map-based approach being a little trickier to manage on smaller screens as well as some issues maintaining a reliable connection on iOS devices in some instances. Nord is also a premium VPN, and while that might make it the best, it charges accordingly at full whack. Like many VPN services, deals are available a lot of the time, so picking your moment to grab a great deal is the smart play here.
How do Australians rate NordVPN's vpn?
91% of surveyed Australians recommend NordVPN
4.2
Value for money
4.2
Overall
4.2
Performance
4
Customer service
4.2
Ease of use
4.2
Features and design
How NordVPN compares
In the 2023 Finder Retail Awards, we surveyed over 34,000 Australians about their retail purchases to discover which were their favourite brands across 170 product categories and over 1,200 total brands.
For vpn, NordVPN was ranked 2nd for value for money, 4th for performance, 3rd for customer service, 4th for ease of use and 1st for features and design.
10 brands were rated across these decision criteria.
Do any kind of search for "free VPN" and you'll find countless contenders, all claiming to be the very best free VPN option that no money can buy.
Be careful. Be very careful because there's a huge market in scam VPN apps that will either compromise your privacy, security or, in some cases, act as malware, infecting your devices and leaving you in a world of expensive hurt.
TunnelBear isn't one of those apps, and it's long had a free tier that lets you sample its fully paid VPN service. It's generally noted as one of the very easiest VPN services to set up as well, with a simple client app that makes it quite effortless to get your connection secured with minimal fuss. The service itself – and the free VPN tier is just a subset of the fully paid version – is also independently audited to ensure that it actually does care about user privacy, which is a vital consideration for any VPN service.
So what's not to like? The big drawback here is data, with a scant 500MB of "free" data per month on the free tier plan. That might work for simple secure sending of data, but won't satisfy, for example, anyone wanting a VPN for a bit of cheeky geoblock dodging work. If you do need more data than that, also consider ProtonVPN, which lost out to TunnelBear largely because its free tier only applies to a scant 3 countries worldwide.
TunnelBear was also noted by several reviewers as being limited when it comes to configuring additional devices, especially if you want to run it at a router level. The reliance on its own client app means that this isn't something you can do, so if your needs are more technically complex, it won't be the right choice for you.
Surfshark's big selling proposition for many years now has been around its highly competitive pricing. That's not on your typical "VPN discount" level, but instead as a regular feature of its plan pricing, which sits among the very best in pure dollar terms across the entire VPN market.
It's not just a story of looking at the price, however. Surfshark offers a wide array of security tools for very precise secure online work with everything from multi-hop VPN to split tunnelling, camouflage mode to ad blocking and more.
However, the best value for Surfshark does involve some commitment, with its cheapest plans being available if you sign up for a 2-year plan – with less commitment, you'll see less of a discount.
While reviewers generally praised Surfshark VPN's ability to handle everything from encryption to access to geoblocked streaming services, they did note that it didn't manage quite as well in terms of overall speeds. They're not bad – but they're not the best in the industry either, and like any VPN, you will see a drop in speeds in use due to the need for additional server routing as part of the VPN package. The wide array of tools that Surfshark provides was also noted by some reviewers as being potentially problematic for less technically inclined users, with a busy and sometimes confusing app interface in play.
How do Australians rate Surfshark's vpn?
79% of surveyed Australians recommend Surfshark
4.1
Value for money
4.2
Overall
4.4
Performance
4.1
Customer service
4.1
Ease of use
4.1
Features and design
How Surfshark compares
In the 2023 Finder Retail Awards, we surveyed over 34,000 Australians about their retail purchases to discover which were their favourite brands across 170 product categories and over 1,200 total brands.
For vpn, Surfshark was ranked 4th for value for money, 1st for performance, 1st for customer service, 5th for ease of use and 3rd for features and design.
10 brands were rated across these decision criteria.
It really is a split choice from professional reviewers between ExpressVPN and NordVPN, but there's one area where ExpressVPN clearly pulls ahead. That's on the desktop, whether you're a Windows PC or macOS user.
If your VPN needs are based around the 2 most common desktop operating environments, then ExpressVPN is an easy recommendation, with reviewers lavishing praise on both ExpressVPN's easy-to-use client app and the speed of its connection to many servers located in just slightly more places than competitor NordVPN can manage.
It's a rather specific product; however, so while competitors are branching out into bundling other services such as password managers and the like, ExpressVPN is all about that VPN action. It's not the lowest cost service out there, even if you do opt for a longer term plan, and that should measure into your choice as to whether it's the right VPN for you.
How do Australians rate ExpressVPN's vpn?
85% of surveyed Australians recommend ExpressVPN
4
Value for money
4.3
Overall
4.4
Performance
4.1
Customer service
4.3
Ease of use
4.1
Features and design
How ExpressVPN compares
In the 2023 Finder Retail Awards, we surveyed over 34,000 Australians about their retail purchases to discover which were their favourite brands across 170 product categories and over 1,200 total brands.
For vpn, ExpressVPN was ranked 6th for value for money, 1st for performance, 1st for customer service, 3rd for ease of use and 3rd for features and design.
10 brands were rated across these decision criteria.
If your interest in VPNs relies on accessing streaming service libraries from overseas, you're far from alone. Plenty of everyday users want to do this, even though it's (strictly speaking, we won't narc on you) breaking Netflix's (or other streaming providers') terms and conditions to do so.
This sets up a virtual cat and mouse game within the VPN world. Where at one time many of them very openly advertised specific geoblock dodging features built around Netflix, most now admit they'll do it without making it a headline feature because they have to keep one step ahead of Netflix's more advanced efforts to lock down VPN geoblock dodgers.
Here, NordVPN does a better job than most, very proactively switching up servers to make it feasible to access Netflix from other jurisdictions when needed. Combine that with NordVPN's generally good speeds and you're more likely to be not just able to access those additional TV shows and movies, but potentially do so in Full HD or 4K quality depending on your own connection.
However, NordVPN is premium, and you do pay a premium price for its services as a result of that. It's far from a guaranteed matter that they'll be able to block Netflix in every country in every way just when you need it either. That's true for any VPN provider, but it's worth keeping in mind if you're prepaying for a longer contract term because its value could tumble if you find it suddenly impossible to access overseas streaming services this way.
How do Australians rate NordVPN's vpn?
91% of surveyed Australians recommend NordVPN
4.2
Value for money
4.2
Overall
4.2
Performance
4
Customer service
4.2
Ease of use
4.2
Features and design
How NordVPN compares
In the 2023 Finder Retail Awards, we surveyed over 34,000 Australians about their retail purchases to discover which were their favourite brands across 170 product categories and over 1,200 total brands.
For vpn, NordVPN was ranked 2nd for value for money, 4th for performance, 3rd for customer service, 4th for ease of use and 1st for features and design.
10 brands were rated across these decision criteria.
You could always search the Google Play store for Android VPNs and see what you find, but we'll save you the time. You'll find hundreds of cheap (or even "free") VPNs, all of whom you've never heard of. That's because the Play Store is absolutely rife with shady VPNs that spend more time tracking your activity than providing you privacy – which is exactly what you want a VPN for in the first place!
As such, it's important to get a VPN from a trusted authority in the VPN space. The usual big brands all have Android clients of course, but most reviewers settled on ExpressVPN as being the best of breed for Google-based phone enthusiasts.
Why? Because its Android app is well designed, both in terms of security features and ease of use, whereas many competitors try to present their desktop user interfaces in a small-screen way instead. ExpressVPN offers more than 3,000 servers to pick from across 94 countries, so there's more than likely going to be coverage for wherever your connection "needs" to be. If your needs revolve around media streaming to your Android device, it scored well with reviewers for the easy unblocking of services including Netflix, BBC iPlayer and Amazon Prime Video.
On the downside, it's a more expensive option than some other VPNs – though still way better value than those sketchy "free" Android apps – and it only provides support for up to 5 simultaneous connections. If your Android phone or tablet is one among many, you could hit that limit quickly.
How do Australians rate ExpressVPN's vpn?
85% of surveyed Australians recommend ExpressVPN
4
Value for money
4.3
Overall
4.4
Performance
4.1
Customer service
4.3
Ease of use
4.1
Features and design
How ExpressVPN compares
In the 2023 Finder Retail Awards, we surveyed over 34,000 Australians about their retail purchases to discover which were their favourite brands across 170 product categories and over 1,200 total brands.
For vpn, ExpressVPN was ranked 6th for value for money, 1st for performance, 1st for customer service, 3rd for ease of use and 3rd for features and design.
10 brands were rated across these decision criteria.
Apple has a strong security track record for its smartphones, thanks no doubt to the very strong hand it hovers over everything you can possibly do on a non-jailbroken iPhone – and who really bothers jailbreaking iPhones any more these days?
Still, a VPN has its uses when bolstering that already impressive security, and there are plenty of choices from the big brands out there. If you're opting for a VPN for your desktop already, you may actually qualify for iPhone coverage as well. Like the rest, IPVanish doesn't really sell a "separate" iPhone client service, instead bundling it in with its regular VPN service for Windows, Mac and Android devices as well.
So why pick IPVanish? It's largely due to the fact that reviewers called it out for going that extra mile with its iOS client app. Many VPN services treat mobile clients as tertiary concerns, delivering little more than web interfaces that don't always play nicely on smaller screens or with touch interfaces. IPVanish does better than that, with a custom interface that lets you very finely tweak how you want its VPN services to work – or even how you want to see your network traffic as a result.
On the downside, some reviewers did score IPVanish a little lower due to slower resultant speeds when using some of its servers. That may be down to its automatic server selection not always choosing the most optimal server, so this may be a better bet for those who don't mind getting into the nuts and bolts of VPN configuration to get the very best results.
Chrome extensions – a bit like mobile phone or tablet apps – are just part and parcel of the VPN experience, but picking between them is a tricky business. Most reviewers really rather liked ExpressVPN's Chrome extension, which basically provides you with the desktop interface without the need for a desktop client app to speak of.
That provides you with a range of encryption technologies right from your browser without having to launch any additional software at all. As an added bonus here, HTML5 geolocation is natively blocked while the extension is in play – keeping you hidden from browser-based detection along the way.
Connection speeds while using the ExpressVPN Chrome Extension were noted as being good. As part of the ExpressVPN service suite, you get a huge range of country coverage for just about any encryption need, too.
The drawbacks here are more to do with ExpressVPN than Chrome. ExpressVPN is a comparatively expensive option in the VPN space, and that's no different if you just want a browser-based VPN play. It still counts as one of your only 5 VPN connections as well, which is lower than many competitors – especially those who offer unlimited connections at any one time.
How do Australians rate ExpressVPN's vpn?
85% of surveyed Australians recommend ExpressVPN
4
Value for money
4.3
Overall
4.4
Performance
4.1
Customer service
4.3
Ease of use
4.1
Features and design
How ExpressVPN compares
In the 2023 Finder Retail Awards, we surveyed over 34,000 Australians about their retail purchases to discover which were their favourite brands across 170 product categories and over 1,200 total brands.
For vpn, ExpressVPN was ranked 6th for value for money, 1st for performance, 1st for customer service, 3rd for ease of use and 3rd for features and design.
10 brands were rated across these decision criteria.
Picking the best VPN for gaming comes down to a question of speed, but it's not just straight line speed you should consider. It's also latency because the overhead of using a VPN can seriously affect your gaming responsiveness depending on server proximity and lead to a less-than-stellar result.
This is where NordVPN's huge server count came into play, with many reviewers noting how easy it was to locate a nearby server with minimal latency and good overall speeds, giving it the ideal double punch needed to make for a great gaming VPN service. Considering its status as a general all-round good performer, this shouldn't really be a surprise.
However, if you want to use a VPN across a range of gaming devices, it's worth keeping NordVPN's device limits in mind. Equally, as a premium option, it's not the cheapest VPN you could buy – and many reviewers also rated cheaper Surfshark as nearly equivalent to NordVPN.
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We chose our top picks based on expert and customer reviews.
The products on this list are chosen by our editorial team and are not selected based on commercial relationships.
Why you can trust our picks
To find the best VPNs in Australia, we considered a wide array of VPN services available for Aussies to spend their money on as well as the varied use cases you can use encryption internet services for.
We considered and compared expert reviews for all of these services as well as feedback from consumer reviews and ratings when making our final decisions in each category.
Our list of considered products included the following:
Atlas VPN
BitDefender VPN
Cyberghost
Express VPN
Hide My Ass
Hide.Me
Hotspot Shield
IPVanish
Ivacy
IVPN
Mullvad
NordVPN
Private Internet Access
Proton VPN
Pure VPN
Strong VPN
Surfshark
Torguard VPN
Trust.Zone
TunnelBear
VPN Unlimited
VyprVPN
Windscribe
We value our editorial independence, basing our comparison results, content and reviews on objective analysis without bias. However, Finder may receive compensation when you click some links on our site. Learn more about how we make money from our partners and why you can trust our guides.
Frequently asked questions
VPN services cost anywhere between $3 to $10 per month on average.
A firewall watches your web traffic and blocks attacks. A VPN covers your web traffic by routing your traffic to a different server.
Apart from costing you money, using a VPN is illegal in some countries, such as Iraq, North Korea and Belarus. This service will also not protect you from malware or phishing attacks.
Customer satisfaction rating breakdown
The Finder Customer Satisfaction Awards is an annual national survey conducted in partnership with research firm Dynata. With over 30,000 real shoppers participating, the awards serve as a reliable reflection of Australian consumers' preferences and opinions.
Here are the scores for VPN brands from 2023.
Brand
Customer service
Ease of use
Features and design
Overall
Performance
Value for money
Recommended
Total Score
Hotspot Shield
3.9
4.4
4.2
4.4
4.3
4.3
90%
4.29
NordVPN
4
4.2
4.2
4.2
4.2
4.2
91%
4.22
ExpressVPN
4.1
4.3
4.1
4.3
4.4
4
85%
4.21
Surfshark
4.1
4.1
4.1
4.2
4.4
4.1
79%
4.14
Cyberghost
3.8
4.4
4.1
4.1
4.1
4.2
83%
4.12
Proton VPN
3.8
4
4
4
4.2
4.1
84%
4.04
Private Internet Access VPN
3.8
4
3.8
4
4
3.9
84%
3.96
Norton Secure VPN
3.8
4.1
4
3.9
4
3.8
79%
3.94
PrivateVPN
3.8
4
3.9
3.8
4
4
82%
3.94
VPN Unlimited
3.8
3.9
3.9
3.9
4
3.8
73%
3.85
Data: Finder Retail Brand Survey, 2023, Kantar. Metric out of 5 stars unless indicated. Methodology and more info.
A multi-award winning journalist, Alex has written about consumer technology for over 20 years. He has written and edited for virtually every Australian tech publication including Gizmodo, CNET, PC Magazine, Kotaku and more. He has also been the Editor of Gizmodo Australia, PC Mag Australia, CNET.com.au and the Tech and Telco section at Finder. Alex has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New England and a serious passion for retro gaming.
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Planet VPN
PrivadoVPN
NordVPN
PureVPN
TunnelBear
AtlasVPN
SurfsharkVPN
Avast Software
AVG
NetProtect - IPVanish
PandaPow
IvacyVPN
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