NordVPN vs. VyprVPN

When you’re looking at VPNs and comparing companies, it can feel impossible to tell what the actual differences are between providers. It seems like every company has the “most private” or “most secure” VPN on the market. But, they can’t all be the best. We try to break through the marketing lingo by personally testing VPNs and comparing them head-to-head. Today, we’re sharing what we found when we tested NordVPN, and then tested VyprVPN.

While NordVPN is one of the most recognizable VPNs in the industry, VyprVPN flies a bit beneath the radar. However, it’s owned by Golden Frog, meaning it’s one of the major players driving the VPN industry. Will NordVPN retain its status as the best VPN, or will VyprVPN surpass it? Keep reading to find out.

Key Similarities

Most high-quality VPNs meet what we consider requirements for private internet connections. This includes the country the company is based out of, how much data it keeps on its customers, and kill switches. But, NordVPN and VyprVPN both go beyond these basics and have a lot in common, such as:

• Based in non-member countries: While NordVPN is based in Panama and VyprVPN is based in Switzerland, both of these countries aren’t members of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes alliances. That means that they can never be forced, legally, to hand governments customers’ data. For a VPN, that’s huge.
• Logging policies: Both VPNs also have strict logging policies as well, not logging anything about our online activity such as the websites we visited or our IP addresses. While NordVPN kept a bit more information than VyprVPN, both VPNs are extremely solid in terms of their privacy policies.

• Kill switches: As we’ve come to expect from the best VPNs, both NordVPN and VyprVPN had kill switches that shut down all of our web activity if they got disconnected.

• Torrenting access: Both VPNs allowed for torrenting, so we could enjoy all that non-copyrighted material that’s not on one of our many streaming subscriptions.
• No DNS or WebRTC leaks: Neither VPN leaked our DNS (domain name servers, or the names of the websites we’ve visited) or our WebRTC (our devices’ private IP addresses), so we could trust both of them with our web data.
• Works with Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and routers: Aside from working with the most commonly used operating systems, both VPNs also worked with our routers. That allowed us to get around each VPN’s device limitations, which was a maximum of six devices with NordVPN and a maximum of five with VyprVPN. Rather, when we connected these VPNs to our routers, they covered all of the devices on the router’s network. Booya!
• 30-day money-back guarantee: While neither NordVPN nor VyprVPN had a free VPN subscription available, both gave us 30 days to return our subscriptions for a full refund. We didn’t end up cashing in on this offer, but it’s a nice safety net for the rest of you all.
• iOS app ratings: Both VPNs had iOS apps with 4.6 overall ratings on the Apple App store, and we didn’t have an issue connecting to nearby servers on our iPhones.
• Customer support: In terms of customer support, NordVPN and VyprVPN are similarly lacking (hey, we never said these were all positives!). Neither had a phone line, which is unfortunately pretty common with VPNs. Instead, we had an online help center, online forms, and live chats.

Key Differences

Once you dig a bit deeper beyond the basics of NordVPN and VyprVPN, you start to find some pretty significant differences. But, these companies having differences is a good thing. It means you can pick a provider based on your unique needs. Before we get into which provider you should choose for which use cases, here are the key differences that separate NordVPN and VyprVPN:

• The number of servers: NordVPN has 5,246 servers, while VyprVPN has a little over 700. Clearly, NordVPN is the more established VPN worldwide (and it’s also one of the best VPNs for Germany with over 240 servers in Berlin and Frankfurt alone).1

• Server locations: Surprisingly, while VyprVPN has a fraction of the servers that NordVPN has, they’re actually spread out across more than 70 countries, while Nord’s servers are in 62 countries. Of course, we recommend checking out each VPN’s list of locations to see which one is better for you, depending on where you live and where you plan on going.
• Split tunneling: Split tunneling means getting to route some of our traffic to the VPN and some directly to the public Wi-Fi network to save on bandwidth. While VyprVPN has split tunneling on their Mac and Android apps, NordVPN lacks it completely, which was pretty surprising to us as it’s such an established VPN.
• Netflix: On the other hand, while all of NordVPNs over 5,000 servers support Netflix, only VyprVPN’s servers in Canada, the U.K, the U.S and Germany support Netflix. If you want to connect to another country’s server, you’ll be blocked from Netflix with your VyprVPN IP address.

• Encryption methods: If VPNs were a sandwich, then encryption methods would be the meat. Encryption means turning our website data and IP addresses into inscrutable code by routing them through a tunnel. While NordVPN uses AES-256, the current industry standard, VyprVPN uses OpenVPN,2 another secure method. We’re fine with either, and both got the job done in terms of encryption, but some people may prefer one method over the other.
• Multi-hop: Speaking of encryption, while NordVPN encrypted our data multiple times through a few different servers, a process called multi-hop, VyprVPN only encrypted our data once. So overall, NordVPN is more secure than VyprVPN, although they did log a bit more data.
• IP addresses: By default, we got the same IP address everytime we connected to NordVPN, while VyprVPN switched it up with every connection. However, both VPNs offer dedicated IP addresses as well; with NordVPN, that costs an extra $70 a year, while VyprVPN includes it with their business plans, which start at $299 a year total. Learn more in our NordVPN pricing and VyprVPN pricing pages.

• Speeds: We test out all of our VPNs on our Macbook Pro and our Windows Acer Aspire 5 to see how it works for Mac and Windows-users. On our Mac, NordVPN caused less lag and less of a decrease in our download speeds, although Vypr took the edge when it came to upload speeds. But VyprVPN won by a hair on our Windows 10, as NordVPN had a ton of latency on Windows. Overall, we’re confident in saying that NordVPN is a better VPN for macOS while VyprVPN is a better VPN for Windows.

• Number of devices per subscription: There wasn’t a huge difference here, but VyprVPN allowed for five devices connected total, while NordVPN allowed for six.
• Number of simultaneous connections: The same was true of the number of devices we could connect to the VPNs simultaneously; six for Nord and five for Vypr.

• Compatibility with Linux, proxy, NAS, smart TVs, Anonabox, Blackphone, and QNAP: Although there was some overlap between NordVPN and VyprVPN in terms of device compatibility, there were also some differences when it came to smart TVs, Linux and other device types.

• Browser extensions: In the same vein, NordVPN had browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox while VyprVPN had apps only. If you’re using the web via a browser only, you might prefer using an extension rather than an app to save on bandwidth.
• Android app ratings: Another surprise was that the VyprVPN Android app was higher-rated than the NordVPN Android app, 4.7 compared to 4.2. However, with software updates, these ratings are bound to change, so be sure to check out the most recent reviews for the most up-to-date information. Personally, we found both apps to be perfectly functional on Android, but VyprVPN wins by a hair.

• Pricing: Finally, there’s the bottom line, which we’ve conveniently placed at the bottom. This is where things get a bit confusing. While NordVPN is cheaper if you sign up on a month-to-month basis by a dollar, VyprVPN is cheaper if you sign up for one or two years.

Conclusion

So, which VPN do we recommend overall? NordVPN certainly had more features when it came to streaming access, and their gigantic network of servers pushed them over the edge. However, depending on what you’re looking for, VyprVPN could be better for your needs.

To learn more about either VPN, read our NordVPN review or our VyprVPN review, or compare NordVPN to another top choice in NordVPN vs. ExpressVPN. We tested out each VPN for over six months each, so you should be able to find all of the detailed information that you’re looking for.