PIA isnt independent, its by a Israeli spyware company, that owns multiple VPN Review sites and VPN services . Remove it from the list.

Why isn't F-Droid included in the Availability section?

I've been using one of these since forever and it just works. Should I look at the others?

I don't want this to be a "I use x and its the best" type comment so I won't say which one.

I only use wireguard and wouldn't touch openvpn just because it seems so complex in comparisson.

The price is fine, the speed is fine, wireguard makes it ubiquitous, never had a problem with reliability.

PIA does not have WireGuard configs available. To get those, you have to use third-party tools to capture and generate the necessary info. Otherwise, you have to use their client, or else no WireGuard.

Users have been asking for years (since 2018, I think), and they've never provided them.

OP this is a big improvement from your previous post. It's an excellent starting point for folks who are looking to start using a VPN. There's a lot of constructive criticism in here, which is good, but might be discouraging. Just know that this is already very useful for many people.

I just checked how much I was paying for my Nord subscription and now I’m convinced that Proton Unlimited (discounted) is a great value. Gonna switch next year when my subscription ends. Thanks for putting this together!

Is it worth stating which companies own which vpns? I saw a TIL that mentions a select few companies own most VPNs

All VPNs are blocked on my university's network

I live off campus, thankfully, but it sucks that I can't have any privacy on my laptop while on campus.

One thing you may want to update - listing Tor's logging policy as "No Logs" is a bit misleading, that's really more of a voluntary recommendation for individual Tor exit relay operators.

Tor exit relay operators absolutely can store logs of outgoing connections if they choose to. And technically they could even snoop on non-secure traffic if they choose, there's a reason you should be using HTTPS if you're going to use Tor for clearnet browsing.

Of course most Tor exit relay operators aren't going to do these things but it's all voluntary, seems incorrect to claim all exit relay operators follow no log principles.

EDIT: Also AFAIK you can't forward a port from the clearnet through a Tor exit relay's public IP address back to your own Tor client, Tor doesn't do port forwarding like that. It's definitely not needed to run Tor Browser (and Tor VPN I think) but that isn't needed for any of the other VPNs either, a bit confusing how you listed that one.

Also of note, some providers have data caps. I haven't looked at all providers, merely Nymvpn as I was interested. Turns out they have a 2TB/month cap. Might not be an issue for some, but might be for others.

I appreciate the attempt to quantify availability, but don't most of these providers allow you to generate OpenVPN and Wireguard configs, which can be used practically anywhere?

Nevertheless, your work is appreciated.

ProtonVPN: only 8 years old: RED FLAG!

Well reddish flag at least, is there a rationale behind this? I mean 8 years is quite a long time.

Tor isn't a VPN. It's a proxy.

Availability: Direct download via Repo or developer web page is missing. Google shouldn't be a plus. The provided explanation in the last thread was invalid

Upload to https://catbox.moe/

The 'availability' is misleading. If they offer OpenVPN or Wireguard then they are available pretty much anywhere.

Using just plain Wireguard or OpenVPN configs would also be much better than installing random VPN provider apps.

I see that Windscribe was included. Their price tier is always in promotion so I'd take that in consideration.

Also, they have app for Linux: https://windscribe.com/features/linux/

It is not in Electron like many others. It is native Linux.

Mullvad also ran some pretty quirky ads on our public transit. I hadn't been that familiar with them, but it did heighten my awareness, and they seem pretty fine.

Airvpn doesn't require any personal information. I mean... I guess it asked for a name or whatever, but it doesn't verify any of it. I certainly didn't give it anything legitimate, and I paid with mixed crypto so it certainly has as little personal information on me as would be possible with a vpn.

What gives ivpn, mullvad and nym the advantage for the personal info section?

If you make 2.1 you could add some info on the port forwarding because there are massive differences on it between providers. Like PIA gives you a single random port that changes each time you reconnect, while AirVPN gives you 5 static ports you can configure yourself.

I can vouch for cryptostorm. Offers port forwarding and good speed. Haven't been with them long but they seem legit.

C tor/little-t-tor/etc. is licensed under the "3-clause BSD" license

Tor technically doesn’t have a WireGuard profile, but you could (probably?) create one

I dont know a lot about wireguard, but of the cuff answer would be no.

I think it's worth noting NYMVpn uses a quite advanced mixnet for security which is different from other VPNs and theoretically more secure than even TOR. I say theoretically because it hasn't yet been proven with large scale use.

https://nym.com/blog/what-is-a-mixnet

Very much appreciate this work, but I am again gonna ask if there is some way to include I2P, perhaps in its own thing, perhaps segregated by outproxies.

Yep, its super slow compared to basically all VPNs, and is a bit of struggle to set up compared to most VPNs.

But, it is also entirely free, and you can use I2P with outproxies to access the wider internet outside of I2P's... I2P-net... allows port forwarding, works very well for a slow but steady churn of uh, filesharing, etc.

I would also argue I2P is a better way that TOR to protect your IP and your actual net traffic, due to TOR nodes being known to be run as honeypots ...

Its possible an I2P outproxy could also be operated as a honeypot, but as I understand it, ... so long as you are not unlucky enough to just directly route through an outproxy without first bouncing through other I2P users/hosts... you're basically good.

And even in that scenario, its would be very difficult to reverse engineer all the packets and figure out which parts were going to who, as well as the actual contents of those packets.

Proton is essentially the best free VPN huh.

I'm using one of these for a long time and since I need port-forwarding there seem to be only 3 options and thanks to your data I realized I still made the right choice and gonna keep using this one for forseeable future