Best VPN for Privacy (2026): Audits, Jurisdiction, Cash

The most private VPN is the one that holds the least about you. That means:

• no email on the account
• payment in cash or Monero
• nothing on disk when the police arrive
• source code you can read
• an auditor’s or a court’s word that the no-logs policy is real

On 31 October 2026, six providers fit that description best on verified data: Proton VPN, NordVPN, Private Internet Access, Surfshark, IVPN and Mullvad.

Two of them, Mullvad and IVPN, pay us nothing and never will, because neither runs an affiliate program. Both are on this page because their records put them here. Both also sit lower in our overall ranking than their privacy record suggests, for reasons we explain below. Nothing here is our own test result. We have not audited anyone’s servers, so every claim is a dated fact from an official page, an audit report or a court record.

What matters for privacy, and why

Jurisdiction. The company that runs the VPN answers to the courts where it is incorporated. The Five Eyes is the signals-intelligence partnership formed by the UKUSA Agreement, according to GCHQ’s own history. The United Kingdom and the United States signed that agreement on 5 March 1946. It was extended to Canada in 1949 and to Australia and New Zealand in 1956.

Our methodology also records the wider Nine and Fourteen Eyes groupings. That is why we flag Sweden, home to Mullvad, as Fourteen Eyes and the Netherlands, home to Surfshark, as Nine Eyes.

Jurisdiction is a starting point, not a verdict. PIA, a US company, has produced nothing in two court cases because it had nothing. Proton, a Swiss company, has produced data from its mail service under binding Swiss orders.

Audits, and their age. A no-logs audit is a snapshot of how a service was set up and run on the days the auditor looked. Our data records the newest audit for each provider and how old it is:

• Proton: Securitum, June 2026
• NordVPN: Deloitte, December 2025
• PIA: Deloitte, December 2025
• Surfshark: Deloitte, June 2025
• Mullvad: Assured, June 2022, a server audit that found no logging
• IVPN: Cure53, March 2019, and IVPN says it will not commission another

It also matters whether the report is public. NordVPN’s, PIA’s and Surfshark’s reports are available to customers or on request. Mullvad’s and IVPN’s are linked from their blogs.

RAM-only servers or an equivalent. A RAM-only server keeps everything in working memory, which is wiped when the power goes off. NordVPN, PIA, Surfshark and Mullvad state that their servers run from RAM with no persistent storage. Proton’s servers do not, and Proton says why: they all use full-disk encryption instead. IVPN runs a small number of diskless pilot gateways and calls the network-wide rollout an ongoing project. A seized machine that holds nothing is the test, and Mullvad passed it in April 2023.

Open-source apps. Open source means the app’s code is public. With a closed app you have to trust the provider, but anyone can check an open one. Proton, PIA, IVPN and Mullvad publish the source of every app. Mullvad’s Android app also has reproducible builds, which let anyone confirm that the app matches the published code. NordVPN publishes only its Linux client, and Surfshark publishes none.

Payment and identity. Mullvad and IVPN issue accounts without an email address and accept cash by post and Monero. Proton sells credits that can be bought with cash or Bitcoin, but it requires an email to open the account. NordVPN accepts cryptocurrency and, in some stores, a prepaid card paid in cash. Surfshark accepts cryptocurrency on desktop. PIA accepts gift and prepaid cards for one-off purchases, but no cryptocurrency. Since 4 November 2026, Windscribe also sells WireGuard access with no account at all, paid in USDC. Our report on Windscribe’s VPN API explains what it keeps and what it does not.

ExpressVPN leads our overall table, but it stopped accepting cryptocurrency in August 2026. That single change keeps it off this list.

Incidents. What happened when someone came asking for data is better evidence than any policy. The full records are in the pick-by-pick section below. In brief, every pick has faced a legal demand, a seizure or a search, and none has produced VPN activity logs. The caveats concern Proton’s mail service and NordVPN’s 2024 Panamanian warrant.

Pick by pick: what the verified data says

Proton VPN comes first on score and on breadth. It runs under Swiss jurisdiction through Proton AG, which is mainly owned by the non-profit Proton Foundation. Its apps are open source on every platform, and Securitum has audited its no-logs policy every year since 2022.

Secure Core is Proton’s multi-hop feature, which sends your traffic through more than one server. It uses servers Proton owns in Switzerland, Iceland and Sweden. Proton’s transparency report records a January 2019 Swiss court request that it could not meet, because it holds no customer IP data.

You can pay anonymously with Proton credits. The 2-year Plus plan costs $83.76, or $3.49 a month, and renews at $83.88 a year. The monthly plan is $9.99. The 30-day refund excludes cash and bank-transfer payments.

On the downside, servers are not RAM-only, and an email address is required. In September 2021, binding Swiss orders compelled Proton’s mail product to log an activist’s IP address. In a Spanish case reported in May 2024, another binding Swiss order compelled it to disclose a recovery email address. Proton says Swiss law cannot compel its VPN to keep logs, unlike its email. We record both incidents rather than argue the point. See the Proton VPN review and our Mullvad vs Proton VPN comparison.

NordVPN has had its no-logs claim examined more often than any provider we track. PwC examined it in 2018 and 2020, and Deloitte in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The sixth engagement’s report is dated 12 December 2025. Like the 2024 one, it covered the obfuscated, Double VPN, Onion Over VPN and P2P servers.

NordVPN operates under Panamanian jurisdiction, and Panama has no data-retention law. It runs RAM-only servers and its own DNS resolvers, which turn website names into addresses. It offers Double VPN and Onion Over VPN. It publishes quarterly transparency reports in place of the warrant canary it began retiring in October 2024. A warrant canary is a regularly updated statement that a company has received no secret legal orders. You can pay anonymously with cryptocurrency or a prepaid card bought with cash.

Its record has two entries. In March 2018, someone accessed a rented server in a Finnish datacenter through a remote-management account the datacenter provider had added. NordVPN disclosed this in October 2019. An expired TLS key was taken, and there were no activity logs on the machine. In October 2024, a binding warrant from the Panamanian prosecutor obliged NordVPN to provide the user data it held in one criminal case. That is the only disclosure in its transparency reports.

Only the Linux app is open source, and only logged-in users can read the audit reports. The 27-month Basic plan costs $94.23, or $3.49 a month, and renews at $139.08 a year. See the NordVPN review and Mullvad vs NordVPN.

Private Internet Access is on this list despite its jurisdiction, because its claim has been tested in court. In March 2016, an FBI subpoena in a Florida bomb-threat case produced only a statement from PIA that the addresses belonged to its US East Coast cluster. In June 2018, PIA’s general counsel testified in a San Jose federal trial that the company keeps no activity logs. The testimony also said PIA could not link the defendant to its addresses. When Russian authorities seized PIA servers in July 2016, PIA pulled out of Russia.

Deloitte has reviewed its server setup against the no-logs policy three times: in June 2022, April 2024 and December 2025. All apps are open source and servers are RAM-only. IPv6, the newer type of internet address, is blocked while you are connected. Gift or prepaid cards let you buy with no linked account.

It is still a Denver company owned by Kape Technologies, inside the Five Eyes. It no longer accepts cryptocurrency, and an email is required. The headline price of $2.03 a month needs a 39-month commitment. That plan costs $79 and renews at $79 every three years. The 1-year plan is $47.88. See the PIA review.

Surfshark meets the tests, with some clear limits. Deloitte issued no-logs assurance reports in January 2023 and June 2025, and servers are RAM-only. The privacy policy says connection details held on a server are deleted within 15 minutes of a session ending. Cryptocurrency is accepted on desktop, and no incident is recorded.

Surfshark publishes a quarterly transparency report. For July to September 2026, it lists 23 government inquiries and no warrants, national security letters or gag orders.

The Starter plan costs $67.23 for 27 months, or $2.49 a month, and the renewal price is not stated. The monthly plan is $16.45. Against that, Surfshark B.V. is in Amsterdam, inside the Nine Eyes. No app is open source, an email is required, and cryptocurrency payment is not offered on phones or tablets. See the Surfshark review.

IVPN is the most anonymous service to sign up for. IVPN Limited is registered in Gibraltar, which belongs to none of the Eyes groupings. Accounts are random IDs with no email or name. You can pay with cash, a voucher, Monero through a self-hosted node, or Bitcoin through IVPN’s own BTCPay server.

Every app is open source. IVPN signs a warrant canary every month, the latest on 6 October 2026, and publishes a transparency report. Cure53 has carried out an audit for IVPN every year since 2019, most recently of the Mailx and modDNS services in 2025.

IVPN closed its affiliate program in 2016 in protest at paid reviews. As a result, no site is paid to recommend it, including this one.

The weaknesses are specific:

• The only audit scoped to logging is from March 2019, and IVPN says it will not commission more.
• Gateways are rented bare-metal servers, and RAM-only operation is still a pilot.
• There is no kill switch on current iOS or Android.
• Support is by email only.
• In August 2026, an attacker used a BTCPay Server vulnerability to steal 0.6168 BTC of IVPN’s own funds. IVPN reports that no customer data or funds were touched.

Standard costs $6 a month or $60 a year for 5 devices, and Pro Suite allows 10. The 30-day refund excludes cash and vouchers. See the IVPN review.

Mullvad remains the benchmark everyone else is measured against, and the data shows why:

• Accounts are numbered, with no email.
• Cash arrives by post, and Monero and Bitcoin payments get a 10 percent discount.
• The price is a flat 5 euros a month, about $5.60, for every term, with no sales ever.
• Every server is owned or dedicated, runs from RAM and sits where Mullvad says it does. There are no virtual locations.
• Every app is open source, with reproducible Android builds.
• DAITA defends against traffic analysis, which tries to identify you from patterns in your traffic.
• You can turn on quantum-resistant tunnels with a toggle.

On 18 April 2023, Swedish police searched Mullvad’s Gothenburg office under a warrant to seize customer data. They left with nothing, because none existed.

Sweden is a Fourteen Eyes member. The newest audit scoped to logging is Assured’s June 2022 server audit, though fifteen audits since 2018 cover apps and infrastructure. There is no transparency report or warrant canary. The refund lasts 14 days and excludes cash and cryptocurrency, and accounts cover 5 devices.

Since 15 January 2026, WireGuard has been the only protocol. Mullvad runs no affiliate program. See the Mullvad review.

Why Mullvad and IVPN score lower than their privacy record

Our overall score is a weighted average across privacy, security, streaming, apps, price, support and transparency. Speed is left out until our lab runs. The weights are published on the methodology page.

Mullvad and IVPN make no streaming claims at all and offer no live chat. So they sit at the bottom on streaming and support, which together carry 15 of the 100 weight points. Their privacy scores also lose points for facts a privacy purist might weigh differently. Their newest no-logs audits date from 2022 for Mullvad and 2019 for IVPN, and Mullvad is in Sweden, a Fourteen Eyes country.

The result is a lower total than NordVPN or Proton VPN, despite a record of no-email accounts and cash payment. For Mullvad, a police search also proved the point. We publish the inputs so you can weigh them yourself. The Mullvad vs Proton VPN and Mullvad vs NordVPN pages set the records side by side.

What to avoid

A no-logs claim with nothing behind it. PrivadoVPN has published no audit and no transparency report. Windscribe’s audits cover its apps and server stack, but not logging. IPVanish’s 2016 case is the cautionary tale. Its previous owner handed a subscriber’s details and connection timestamps to US authorities while claiming to keep no logs.

Paying by card and calling it anonymous. A card ties the account to you, whatever the logging policy. Mullvad, IVPN, Proton credits, NordVPN’s prepaid card and PIA’s gift cards exist for this reason.

Jurisdiction as the only test. CyberGhost is Romanian and audited by Deloitte. But it accepts no anonymous payment and publishes no source code, which is why it is not here.

Lifetime deals and free no-logs apps. A VPN that cannot bill you has to pay for servers somehow.

Expecting a VPN to make you anonymous. It changes your visible address and hides your traffic from the network. It does not change your browser’s fingerprint, your logins or what you post. Mullvad’s DAITA feature exists because traffic patterns can identify you even inside a tunnel.

Setup notes

• Create the account the private way: a numbered account at Mullvad or IVPN, or a fresh email elsewhere.
• Pay in cash, Monero, or a prepaid or gift card where accepted. Mullvad and IVPN accept cash by post. Cash payments are not refundable at Mullvad, IVPN or Proton.
• Turn on the kill switch, which blocks your internet if the VPN connection drops. Mullvad’s cannot be turned off.
• Consider multi-hop. It is called Secure Core on Proton, Double VPN on NordVPN, Multi-Hop on PIA, Dynamic MultiHop on Surfshark, and multihop on Mullvad and IVPN.
• Use the provider’s DNS. All six run their own resolvers with leak protection. Then check with our WebRTC leak test and IPv6 leak test.
• Keep the app updated, because each audit covers specific versions.
• Decide what the VPN is for. Our age verification and torrenting guides cover two uses with different trade-offs.

How we chose

The picks are ordered by our score, shown above. We first filtered for providers whose records show all of these:

• an anonymous payment option
• an independent no-logs audit, or a no-logs record tested by a court or the police
• RAM-only servers or a documented alternative

Scores come from the published methodology. We excluded these providers:

• ExpressVPN, because it no longer accepts cryptocurrency, its only anonymous option. Its KPMG audits are strong, and so is the 2017 Turkish server seizure that turned up nothing.
• CyberGhost, because it accepts no anonymous payment.
• hide.me, because its official pages do not state whether servers run from RAM or describe an alternative.
• Windscribe and PrivadoVPN, because neither has a no-logs audit.
• IPVanish, because it accepts no anonymous payment and its previous owner disclosed connection data in 2016.

Mullvad and IVPN meet every criterion and are the two providers on this site that pay us nothing. Proton VPN, NordVPN and Surfshark pay us a commission on some purchases, and Private Internet Access currently does not. The order is computed, not chosen. See how we make money and the best-of hub.