IPVanish VPN: The Underrated Speed Powerhouse Redefining Top-Tier Privacy and Streaming

Here’s the key point: IPVanish doesn’t log any information related to your online activity.

It does collect your email address and payment information, which is standard practice, but IPVanish automatically deletes both 45 days after you close your account.

Although these claims are supported by an independent audit of its logging policy and regular transparency reports, this is still not as definitive as proof from a court case.

The only known instance of legal scrutiny dates back almost a decade, when IPVanish—under very different ownership—handed over user logs to the FBI to assist in a criminal investigation. Because this was so long ago and involved a previous owner, it does not significantly impact our trust in the current service.

More recently, IPVanish has begun rolling out RAM-only servers. These servers periodically wipe all data, making it impossible to store activity logs long term. This setup is currently available in 18 locations, and IPVanish has pledged to run a fully RAM-only network by 2027.

We would also like IPVanish to support anonymous payment options (such as cryptocurrency). This would be good privacy practice and would remove any remaining risk from collecting payment information. Even without this, however, the VPN’s recent record gives us no reason to doubt its current privacy policy.

You can use IPVanish to stream a wide range of geo-restricted content. In our tests, it successfully unblocked 16 different Netflix libraries, including the US, UK, and Japan.

Its consistency really stood out in the UK, where it unblocked BBC iPlayer, ITVX, and All 4 with a 100% success rate.

We had similar success in the US. All 22 US server locations worked with every streaming service we tested, including stricter platforms like Hulu and Peacock.

The VPN also remains our top choice for streaming on Kodi and IPTV, largely due to its excellent Fire TV app.

There were some drawbacks, though. IPVanish struggled with a few foreign-language platforms, such as Movistar+, Wawwe, Videoland, and TV4.

Our overall user experience was also a bit inconsistent. At times, we were blocked from accessing streaming services because the VPN defaulted to OpenVPN. To resolve this, you need to change the protocol in the settings from “Automatic” to “WireGuard.”

Depending on your chosen protocol, you can use either AES-256 or ChaCha20 encryption. We tested both using Wireshark, a packet inspection tool, and confirmed that IPVanish successfully encrypted all of our network traffic.

We also tested IPVanish’s apps for IP and DNS leaks using our in-house tool. In most cases, everything worked as expected. However, on macOS, the kill switch failed to prevent our real IP address from leaking while changing VPN servers.

We first reported this issue over a year ago, so we’re disappointed that it still affects IPVanish’s Mac apps. While it’s still safe to use on macOS, we recommend pausing your online activity entirely before switching servers.

Beyond the apps themselves, IPVanish’s security infrastructure is excellent. The company owns and operates its entire server network, including its DNS servers, which greatly reduces the risk of third-party interference or data exposure.

Very few VPNs match this setup, and it reassures us that our personal data is handled securely.

Compared to its 53 server locations in 2023, IPVanish has nearly doubled its network in just two years. This means you can now get an IP address from almost anywhere in the world.

To put this into perspective, IPVanish has servers in 43 more countries than Windscribe and 68 more than Mullvad.

The service offers city-level servers in eight countries, including the US and the UK. This is useful for accessing region-specific content, such as local sports blackouts, or for connecting to servers closer to your actual location for higher speeds.

In the US, IPVanish provides servers in 17 states. This is good, but still far behind services like ExpressVPN or Private Internet Access, which cover all 50 states.

IPVanish is the joint second-fastest VPN for torrenting we’ve tested, with a slowdown of less than 1%. In practice, there was virtually no difference between downloading with and without the VPN.

In addition to its speed, IPVanish allows P2P traffic on all of its servers, which makes setup very simple. Just connect to any location and you’re ready to start torrenting.

You can also route your torrent traffic through IPVanish’s SOCKS5 proxy. A proxy can offer faster speeds but does not encrypt your traffic. Given how fast IPVanish already is, we don’t recommend sacrificing encryption for this small potential gain.

The main P2P feature missing from IPVanish is port forwarding. It’s not essential, but adding it would help close the gap with the very best torrenting VPNs.

From an anonymity standpoint, we have no complaints. According to its transparency reports, IPVanish has never passed a DMCA notice on to a user.

Without a router app or Smart DNS proxy, though, it’s very difficult to use IPVanish on devices that don’t support VPN software, such as many Smart TVs and game consoles.

You are left with two options: manually install the VPN on your router, or purchase a router that comes pre-flashed with an IPVanish configuration. The first option is unnecessarily complicated for most users, while the second can be quite expensive.

IPVanish’s Secure Browser feature provides an unusual alternative to standard browser extensions: a sandboxed virtual browser streamed via a live video feed. While this design is very private, it lacks the speed and lightness you typically expect from a VPN browser add-on.

It’s also limited to the higher-priced subscription plan and capped at 30 hours of use per month. During testing, we noticed lag and occasional graininess in the video stream. Having to activate it every time you open a new tab also becomes tiring quickly, especially compared to a normal VPN extension that runs continuously once enabled.

Highly-Customizable Multi-Hop Feature

Multi-hop routes your connection through two VPN servers instead of one, making your activity harder to trace.

We particularly liked that IPVanish lets you choose both the entry and exit locations for your multi-hop connection. This is different from Surfshark or NordVPN, which only offer pre-configured server pairs that are often geographically close to each other.

For instance, we were able to route our connection from Andorra to India. This level of flexibility is rare and helps IPVanish stand out.

Threat Protection Works on All Apps

Threat Protection blocks ads, trackers, and malicious websites while you’re connected to IPVanish. In our tests, it removed most banner and video ads across a range of sites.

Its best quality is its broad compatibility: Threat Protection is available on every IPVanish app. Many rival VPNs only provide ad blocking on Windows and Mac.

Scramble Protocol Performs Adequately

IPVanish offers a special protocol called Scramble to bypass internet censorship. It disguises your VPN traffic as normal web traffic to get around firewalls and deep packet inspection.

Scramble works in several countries where internet access is restricted, but in our experience, it did not function reliably in heavily censored regions like China.

Unlike many VPN providers, IPVanish makes this anti-censorship tool available on most of its apps, including platforms that are often neglected such as Fire TV, iOS, and Android.

24/7 Customer Support

IPVanish provides customer support via live chat seven days a week. Uniquely, it also offers phone support from Monday to Friday (9am–5pm CT).

Overall, we found the support agents helpful and responsive. They answered our questions clearly and resolved any issues we had with the service.