What do you all use vpn for? Just curious. I don't use a vpn in my personal life, just never could justify the cost. I've been torrenting for decades and haven't had any issues in a long time and that was really the only use case I saw for VPN myself.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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gasp you mean the VPNs that heavily advertise themselves with influencers, streamers, and youtubers are sketchy? ya don't say...
It's spam by the same person across multiple accounts from the same blog.
I've been using Mullvad for years now. I have not look back. Anyone have any better options or cheaper? Feel like I should re-evaluate my options once in a while
I like ProtonVPN. It seems to be the only reasonably trustworthy provider that also supports port forwarding, which is crucial (IMO) when torrenting.
My recommendations have been:
- Need port forwarding? ProtonVPN or AirVPN.
- Don't need it? Mullvad.
FYI, AirVPN is slow as hell. That being said, they don't require an email to sign up and allow you to pay in Monero, unlike Proton
Huh? I did a speed test with Air and it was relatively the same before and after connecting. Tbh it was just one test, I wasn't really checking super hard. But I had it running in gluetun for my Qbittorrent and it works like a dream. Way easier to port forward too, I fucking hated Proton for swapping it every docker reload.
Proton requiring you to doxx yourself via phone numbers and email addresses is such crap. Can't sign up via Tor either, they limit crypto they accept and when. They log your payment methods, and just suck so bad compared to Mullvad. I know expecting privacy for email is a non-starter, but they pretend like their email is private when there is so much logging they do there alone.
Thanks for the heads-up with AirVPN, I was told they had good customer support but ¯\(ツ)/¯ I would not know.
What's better about Mullvad?
Mullvad gives you a random number for your account and does not ask for anything else. You can pay via cash or other methods for better privacy. Mullvad has no logs to give and have been raided before proving this. Mullvad is based in Sweden with good vpn laws. I am very pro-Mullvad but when they removed port forwarding, I switched away (and they also gave partial refunds when they removed port forwarding).
I don't like the idea of being stuck in Proton's ecosystem since it has good deals on its suite but at least they have good vpn laws (Swiss). They also push credit instead of full refunds. The downside to AirVPN (who I have not fully tried yet) is they are based in Italy (but no longer serve Italian customers due to the increase of bs in Italy).
I see...
Thanks