As VPN use continues to grow, the number of features supported by VPN providers is growing at the same rate. There have never been more VPN providers or more features on offer.

This can make it difficult to assess a VPN provider’s actual value.

That’s why, in this post, we’re putting NordVPN and VyprVPN head to head to see which one we can recommend over the other and why.

Let’s begin.

NordVPN vs VyprVPN - Side By Side

Name	NordVPN	VyperVPN
Rating	8.5/10	8.0/10
User Friendliness Score	9	8
General features
Price per month (cheapest)	$3.71	$2.50
Simultaneous Connections	6	5
Servers	5460	700
Countries	59	40
Allows torrenting / P2P	Yes	Yes
Streaming
Netflix	Yes	Yes
Hulu	Yes	Yes
Amazon Prime	Yes	Yes
Disney+	Yes	Yes
Security
Supports TOR	Yes	No
Split Tunneling	Yes	Yes
Router Support	Yes	Yes
Unlimited bandwidth	Yes	Yes
Refund Period	30 Days	30 Days
Free trial	No	No
Desktop Operating Software	Windows, MacOS, Linux	Windows, MacOS, Linux
Mobile Apps	iOS, Android	iOS, Android
Browser Extensions	Yes	No
VPN Protocols	IKEv2, OpenVPN, WireGuard	IKEv2, OpenVPN, WireGuard, L2TP/IPSec, Chameleon
Encryption	AES-256	AES-256
DNS Leak Protection	Yes	Yes
VPN Kill-switch	Yes	Yes
Rent/Own Infrastructure	Both	Own
Hacked	Yes	No
Malware/Ad Blocker	Yes	Yes
Privacy
Logging Policy	No-logging Policy	No-logging Policy
Privacy Policy	Good	Good
Jurisdiction	Panama	Switzerland
Out of 14 eyes	Yes	Yes
Warrant Canary	Yes	No
Accepts Cryptocurrency	Yes	No
Sign-up Information Required	Only Valid Email	Email and full name
Speed (average)
Avg. Ping NY	142.5 ms	46.33 ms
Avg. Download NY	Over a 60 Mbps Network (Download): 65.77 Mbps	Over a 100 Mbps Network (Download): 98.29 Mbps
Avg. Upload NY	Over a 30 Mbps Network (Upload): 22.90 Mbps	Over a 30 Mbps Network (Upload): 23.70 Mbps

1. Speed

We’re going to begin our NordVPN vs VyprVPN head to head by looking at speed.

Of course, speed is always going to be important, regardless of whether or not you’re using a VPN. But VPNs do create some overhead which translates into slowdowns. But these should be as small as possible.

Let’s look at how each provider does on speed.

For added accuracy, the speed tests were run three times. And the average of the three tests was taken as the final value.

VyprVPN

Tested on a 100Mbps (Download) and 30Mbps (Upload) network

Server: U.S.A., New York

Average Download Speed: 98.29Mbps

Average Upload Speed: 23.70Mbps

NordVPN

Tested on a 60Mbps (Download) and 30Mbps (Upload) network

Server: U.S.A., New York

Average Download Speed: 65.77Mbps

Average Upload Speed: 22.89Mbps

As is the case each time, what interests us is the difference between my ISP-allocated bandwidth and the results of the speed tests.

And what we see here is that both providers have excellent speeds.

On download, VyprVPN has an ever so slight speed dip - which wouldn’t even be noticeable in a real-world scenario. 

As for NordVPN, their download speed goes beyond my ISP-allocated bandwidth. This is due to network volatility and had I continued running speed tests, the result would very likely be under that.

But the point is that the speed performance is excellent.

On upload, we’re getting a bigger dip from both providers, but nothing major. And upload speeds are typically lower than download speeds because ISPs outfit their networks with many more download channels than upload channels. 

Excellent performance on upload as well, for both providers.

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2. User-Friendliness

The growth in VPN use we mentioned above also means that VPN providers need to provide well-designed, easy-to-use native client apps.

This is the gateway to getting newer and less technical users and hence the gateway to growth for many VPN providers.

Both VyprVPN and NordVPN provide official client apps for all major operating systems, which both include a VPN kill switch.

And while NordVPN also supplies Chrome and Firefox browser plugins, VyprVPN, for its part, provides an official app for Tomato firmware-flashed routers. That is pretty amazing in my book. 

Setting up a VPN on a router can be technically challenging - especially for less experienced users. And that’s a shame because setting up your VPN connection on your router has many advantages. 

Not the least of which is the ability to connect as many devices as you want to the VPN server through your router’s connection. Providing an official client app for this greatly simplifies that setup.

As far as simultaneous connections go, NordVPN allows up to 6 simultaneous connections, while VyprVPN allows up to 5 simultaneous connections. This is pretty standard stuff.

As for customer support, I didn’t need to contact either provider’s customer support department, as everything just worked without issue.

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3. Streaming

Streaming services have pretty much replaced traditional cable boxes as the main way people consume video content.

As that was taking place, many VPN users realized that by spoofing their location (which a VPN does by default), they could bypass the geo-restrictions that such services are compelled to enforce. 

It took a few years, but Netflix ended up taking measures to close that loophole. And what they decided to do was to ban VPNs outright. As a result, unblocking Netflix has become a priority for many VPN providers.

As we’ve seen before, we have one provider explicitly stating they can unblock Netflix, and the other being relatively quiet about it. The providers are NordVPN and VyprVPN respectively. 

And NordVPN even provides a support document explaining how to bypass the Netflix VPN ban. The document even goes into several alternate methods of accessing Netflix is the primary ones fail. That’s support.

In my tests, however, both providers worked extremely well with Netflix. I was able to access the service and I was streaming in seconds.

And the performance was equally good over both networks. No lag, no buffering, just happy streaming.

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4. Security & Encryption

Both NordVPN and Windscribe support secure VPN protocols and ciphers.

NordVPN supports:

• IKEv2/IPSec
• OpenVPN
• WireGuard

VyprVPN supports:

• IKEv2/IPSec
• L2TP/IPSec
• OpenVPN
• WireGuard
• Chameleon

And they both use the AES-256 cipher, which is the industry-standard, for both IKEv2/IPSec and OpenVPN.

WireGuard uses more modern cryptography (which may even be more secure than AES…). These are:

• ChaCha20
• Curve25519
• BLAKE2s
• SipHash24
• HKDF

However, VyprVPN also supports a weak and obsolete protocol: L2TP/IPSec.

As I say each time: VPN providers should not support weak protocols. It puts their less experienced users at risk. These protocols should be phased out.

And VyprVPN also supports their own homegrown protocol: Chameleon. Chameleon is OpenVPN under the hood. But VyprVPN has added some extra programming to obfuscate packet metadata. 

We like the idea of more metadata obfuscation, but homegrown encryption is problematic because it doesn’t usually get peer-reviewed. You’re forced to trust the author.

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5. Logs & Privacy​

Both NordVPN and Windscribe commit to robust privacy and no-logging policies. Let’s look at how they communicate this.

Here’s an excerpt of NordVPN’s privacy policy:

"NordVPN guarantees a strict no-logs policy for NordVPN services, meaning that your activities using NordVPN Services are provided by automated technical process, are not monitored, recorded, logged, stored or passed to any third party. We do not store connection time stamps, session information, used bandwidth, traffic logs, IP addresses or other data. From the moment a NordVPN.com user turns on the NordVPN.com software, their Internet data becomes encrypted. Any online traffic coming from user’s device is no longer visible to ISP, third-party snoopers or cyber criminals. Further, NordVPN have a strict no logs policy when it comes to seeing user activity online: NordVPN is based in Panama, which does not require data storage.”

And here’s an excerpt from VyprVPN’s privacy policy:

“VyprVPN is a zero log VPN Service. We do not record or retain any data when you use the VyprVPN Service.

We engaged a respected security firm to audit our zero-log policy so users have third party validation of our logging policies. You can view the full report here: VyprVPN Letter of Attestation and No Log Assessment by Leviathan

This means:

• We do not log a user's source IP address (typically assigned to the user by their ISP).
• We do not log the IP address assigned to the user when using VyprVPN.
• We do not log connection start or stop time.
• We do not log a user's traffic or the content of any communications.
• We are network neutral. We do not discriminate against devices, protocols, or application.
• We do not throttle or rate limit your Internet connection.”

Both policies tick the right privacy boxes.

Both policies are clear, easy to read, and aren’t written in Legalese. 

Both policies are also precise and detail what they do not collect. That demonstrates an understanding of what they’re talking about. Good stuff.

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6. Pricing​

Below, I’ve listed the different packages, prices, and accepted payment methods for each provider:

NordVPN

Visit NordVPN

NordVPN offers four different subscriptions:

• 11.95 USD for one month of service
• 83.88 USD for one year of service (works out to 6.99 USD per month)
• 119.76 USD for two years of service (works out to 4.99 USD per month) ***This subscription is currently on sale at 83.76 USD for two years, making it the same price as the three-year plan, below.
• 125.64 USD for three years of service (works out to 3.49 USD per month)

Payment Methods:

• Credit Card
• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Amazon Pay
• Union Pay
• Cryptocurrencies

VyprVPN

Visit VyprVPN

VyprVPN offers three different subscriptions:

• 12.95 USD for one month of service
• 45.00 USD for one year of service (works out to 3.75 USD per month)
• 60 USD for two years of service (works out to 2.50 USD per month)

Payment Methods

• Credit Cards
• PayPal
• UnionPay

All subscriptions, for both providers, are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Now, two things pop out, as far as I’m concerned.

First, VyprVPN offers its service at prices that are cheaper than NordVPN across the board - except for the monthly plan.

The other thing that pops out is that only NordVPN enables anonymous payments.

And payment trails are often overlooked as a potential compromise to your online privacy. Accepting anonymous payments, via cash or cryptocurrency, removes that risk.

I think it speaks volumes about a VPN provider and its commitment to privacy when they enable anonymous payments.

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7. Torrenting​

Torrenting will likely be another tie, in my opinion. I mean, every VPN provider supports P2P. It’s just a matter of how they support it.

NordVPN provides a subset of dedicated P2P servers, marked inside the app.

VyprVPN allows torrenting on all of their servers.

It essentially comes down to personal preference. Some prefer having dedicated services. Others would just rather connect and not have to think about connecting to a specific server for torrenting.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages.

As far as testing goes, torrenting worked extremely well over both providers’ networks. No lag, no slowdowns.

Great performance over both networks.

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8. Other Features​

Let’s see if we can’t differentiate these two providers on other aspects of their service in our NordVPN vs. VyprVPN comparison post.

• NordVPN provides Tor over VPN servers.
• NordVPN supplies an ads and tracker blocker

• VyprVPN owns its entire infrastructure

Standout Features​

NordVPN

• Tor Over VPN: or Over VPN servers bounce your encrypted traffic over multiple locations on the Tor network. This provides you with an additional layer of security and anonymity over a single VPN connection. All you need to is connect to one of the dedicated Tor over VPN servers from the NordVPN app and you’ll be surfing over Tor. Easy - we like that.
• Ads & Tracker Blocker: NordVPN also puts an ads & tracker blocker at your disposal. This feature, which they call CyberSec, is activated from within the NordVPN’s app. Typically, when VPN providers include an ads & tracker blocker, the blocking is achieved through what is referred to as DNS blackholing. And CyberSec is no exception. DNS blackholing works by checking your DNS requests against a blacklist of ad and tracker networks. Whenever a match is found, the request is blocked or blackholed. This makes the Internet less obnoxious while giving you added security and privacy.

VyprVPN

• Owns its entire infrastructure: VPN providers typically rent their servers from large data centers in the countries in which they wish to be present. The reason why most providers go down this path is that it scales easily and quickly. However, this comes with a security risk: third-party access. Rented servers simply cannot be under the full control of the VPN provider. So it becomes more difficult for them to guarantee their security. Other providers, in the minority, choose to own their servers and exert full control over them. This is more expensive and time-consuming, but it’s much more secure. VyprVPN owns its entire infrastructure of over 700 servers. And that is very impressive and great for security.

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Conclusion: NordVPN vs VyperVPN

So who wins? 

We had eight categories in our NordVPN vs. VyprVPN comparison. We award one point to the winner in each category. And both providers get a  point in the event of a tie.

So the results are:

• Speed - (Tie)
• User-Friendliness - (VyprVPN)
• Streaming - (NordVPN)
• Security & Encryption - (NordVPN)
• Logs and Privacy -  (Tie)
• Pricing - (NordVPN)
• Torrenting - (Tie)
• Other Features - (VyprVPN)

So that’s 6 points for ExpressVPN and 5 points for VyprVPN. 

So it’s a little closer than I had thought. But the result remains the same: NordVPN is recommended over VyprVPN.

I’m also glad that it ended up being close because VyprVPN is a good provider and they deserve a chance. 

Nonetheless, NordVPN is a more established brand and they have a fantastic reputation. They’re not one of the biggest players in the commercial VPN space for nothing.

NordVPN

Go With NordVPN if:

• You want the possibility of making anonymous payments.
• You don’t mind paying a bit more.
• You want to use Tor over VPN and have a built-in adblocker.

Visit NordVPN

VyprVPN

Go With VyprVPN if:

• You want to use the best VPN client app I’ve seen.
• You want to use a VPN provider that owns its entire infrastructure.
• You don’t need anonymous payment methods.

Visit VyprVPN

For more information on these two VPN providers, check out our NordVPN review and our VyprVPN review.

Thanks for reading!