Mullvad vs NordVPN (2026): Flat Price vs 27-Month Deal

Mullvad and NordVPN sit at opposite ends of the VPN market. Mullvad sells one flat-price service to an account number and refuses to run sales. NordVPN sells three tiers on a 27-month promotion, and its renewal price is nearly four times higher.

NordVPN has the higher of our two scores, shown above. The reasons are specific:

• Mullvad documents no streaming support.
• It has no live chat.
• It publishes apps for five platforms, with five devices.
• It is based in a 14 Eyes country.

The table above is built from both providers’ data records. The sections below explain what each row means and when the cheaper service stops being cheaper.

Pricing today

Mullvad charges €5 a month, VAT included. The price is the same whether you buy one month, one year for €60 or a decade for €600. On 31 October 2026 its pricing page showed that €5 equals $5.60. So the table lists $5.60 a month and $67.20 a year. The dollar figure follows the exchange rate, while the euro price has not changed.

Mullvad offers no long-term discounts. Its pricing page states that it never holds sales or holiday discounts, so the renewal price is simply the same price. Cryptocurrency payments get 10 percent off. Mullvad also takes:

• cash by post
• bank wire
• cards and PayPal
• Swish and several European bank-transfer methods

There is no free tier and no trial.

We loaded NordVPN’s pricing page the same day, during its Black Friday promotion. The promotion read “78% off + 3 extra months”. The page listed three tiers, Basic, Complete and Prime:

• 27-month plans: $3.49, $3.99 and $6.99 a month, billed up front as $94.23, $107.73 and $188.73
• 15-month plans: $4.99, $5.99 and $8.99 a month
• monthly plans: $14.99, $19.99 and $29.99

The page states renewal prices for both the one-year and two-year plans, at the same yearly amounts. Basic renews at $139.08 a year, which is $11.59 a month. Complete renews at $219.48 and Prime at $296.28. There is no free tier. New users in listed countries can get a 7-day trial on the one- and two-year Prime plans. A card or PayPal is required.

Price over time is the main difference. For the first 27 months, NordVPN Basic costs $94.23 and Mullvad costs $151.20. Renew NordVPN once and you have paid $233.31 for 39 months of service. The same 39 months of Mullvad cost $218.40, or less if you pay in euros or with cryptocurrency.

So Mullvad is cheaper from the first renewal onward. It is also cheaper month to month, at $5.60 against $14.99, and its price never surprises you. NordVPN is cheaper only if you buy the promotional term and leave before it renews.

Both allow a kind of anonymous payment. Mullvad takes cash and Monero. NordVPN takes cryptocurrency and prepaid cards bought with cash in selected retail stores. But NordVPN still requires an email address for the account.

Privacy and audits

NordVPN is operated by nordvpn S.A. in Panama. Panama is outside the 5, 9 and 14 Eyes alliances. These alliances are groups of countries that share intelligence. NordVPN is also under no mandatory data-retention law. Its parent company, Nord Security, is based in the Netherlands and also owns Surfshark.

Mullvad VPN AB is in Gothenburg, Sweden, a 14 Eyes member. Its two co-founders own it through Amagicom AB. Our methodology counts jurisdiction, meaning the country whose laws apply. That is the first reason NordVPN’s privacy row beats Mullvad’s.

The second reason is the age of the audits. A no-logs audit checks that a VPN keeps no records of what its users do. NordVPN has six no-logs assurance engagements. PricewaterhouseCoopers did two, in 2018 and 2020. Deloitte has done one every year from 2022 to 2025. The latest ran between 10 November and 12 December 2025 and was announced in February 2026. Only logged-in customers can read the reports.

Mullvad has published fifteen external audits since 2018. The auditors were Cure53, Assured, Atredis, Radically Open Security, X41 D-Sec, NCC Group and Leviathan. They covered its apps, infrastructure, DNS, account and payment services and WireGuard implementation. Only one explicitly checked for logging of customer data: the Assured server audit concluded in May 2022. It found none. Our scoring weights the newest audit with a no-logs scope. So the 2022 date counts for less than NordVPN’s December 2025 engagement.

Mullvad pulls ahead on what each company keeps. A Mullvad account is a random number with no email. Its policy, updated 10 July 2025, says connection counts are checked in memory only. Transaction IDs are deleted after 20 days, and support emails after 70 days.

NordVPN keeps an email address for password recovery, a username to establish connections and the order ID for refunds. It says the account is not linked to VPN activity.

Both run every server in RAM, so nothing is kept on a hard drive. Mullvad uses no virtual locations and owns or exclusively rents every machine. NordVPN colocates “a big chunk” of its fleet, which means its own machines sit in other companies’ data centers. It also lists a virtual server type for locations with limited physical infrastructure. A virtual location appears to be in one country while the server sits in another.

The incident records point in opposite directions. Mullvad has one entry. On 18 April 2023, Swedish police searched its office with a warrant to seize customer data. They left with nothing, because no such data existed.

NordVPN has two entries:

• In March 2018, an intruder got into a rented server in a Finnish datacenter. The way in was a remote-management account the host had added. NordVPN disclosed the breach in October 2019.
• In October 2024, NordVPN received a Panamanian warrant and provided the user data it held. Its transparency report records this as one order that resulted in disclosure.

A transparency report lists the legal requests a company received. A warrant canary is a public notice that a company removes if it gets a secret order. NordVPN publishes its transparency report in its Trust Center and is phasing out its warrant canary. Mullvad publishes neither.

Security and protocols

Mullvad became a WireGuard-only service on 15 January 2026. OpenVPN had already left the desktop app in version 2025.14, and on that date it was removed from every server. The tunnel uses ChaCha20-Poly1305 with Curve25519 and BLAKE2s.

Quantum-resistant encryption is designed to withstand future quantum computers. Mullvad lets you turn on a quantum-resistant pre-shared key on every supported platform. It uses Classic McEliece 460896 plus ML-KEM-1024. Mullvad also offers DAITA, its defense against AI-guided traffic analysis.

A kill switch blocks your internet if the VPN connection drops. Mullvad’s kill switch is built in and on by default, and you cannot turn it off. Its other features:

• Obfuscation, which disguises VPN traffic so it is harder to block, comes as UDP-over-TCP, Shadowsocks and QUIC.
• Multihop is a WireGuard setting.
• Split tunneling covers Windows, Linux, macOS and Android, but not iOS.
• IPv6 can be enabled in the advanced settings.

Port forwarding was switched off on 29 May 2023, and there are no dedicated IPs.

NordVPN’s default protocol is NordLynx, its WireGuard implementation with a double-NAT layer. It also offers OpenVPN over UDP and TCP, IKEv2/IPsec and NordWhisper. NordWhisper is built for networks that block VPNs, and NordVPN’s obfuscated servers now run on it. Post-quantum key exchange is an opt-in toggle that works only with NordLynx.

NordVPN’s kill switch varies by platform:

• Windows: an internet kill switch and an app kill switch
• Linux and Android 8 and later: system-wide protection
• Apple App Store builds: “VPN bypass prevention”
• Fire TV Stick: nothing

Split tunneling exists on Windows, Android and Android TV only. NordVPN adds Double VPN, Onion over VPN, Meshnet and a paid dedicated IP. Port forwarding is available only through the separate Dedicated Server add-on.

IPv6, the newer format for internet addresses, is NordVPN’s weak spot. Its help center says it does not support IPv6 yet. No official page we loaded states whether the apps block it. Mullvad routes IPv6 through the tunnel when you enable it.

Streaming claims

Mullvad makes no streaming claim on any official page and has no smart DNS. Smart DNS is a streaming setting for devices that cannot run a VPN app. So the table shows “None documented”, and Mullvad scores zero in the streaming dimension.

NordVPN’s VPN pages make no per-service claims either. Its SmartDNS help article lists Netflix Originals, US Prime Video, US Disney+, US MAX, Paramount+ and Peacock for the SmartPlay feature.

We have not yet tested streaming access for either provider, so these are provider statements. NordVPN’s 30-day refund is the practical test window. Mullvad’s 14-day refund excludes cash and cryptocurrency payments.

Apps and devices

NordVPN publishes apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Android TV, Apple TV and Fire TV. The Linux app comes in command-line and graphical versions. The Fire TV app does not support the first- and second-generation sticks. NordVPN also has extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge, plus manual router setups including DD-WRT and OpenWRT. It allows ten devices at the same time on every tier. Only the Linux client is open source, meaning anyone can read its code.

Mullvad covers Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, with five devices at the same time. It has no TV apps. Its Firefox extension is only a leak-check and SOCKS5 helper. For routers, it offers WireGuard configuration files. Every Mullvad app is open source, and the Android build is reproducible. A reproducible build lets anyone check that the app matches its published code.

If your household has a Fire TV Stick and more than five devices, the apps rows decide the comparison before anything else does.

Support and refunds

NordVPN runs 24/7 live chat, email support and a large help center. It offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on the initial purchase made directly. Apple refunds App Store purchases.

Mullvad offers email support and a help center. You can write to it with a PGP key, which encrypts your email, or through an onion service, an address reached through the Tor network. Mullvad has no live chat at all. That is why it takes the lowest possible mark in the support dimension. Its refund window is 14 days and does not cover cash or cryptocurrency payments. We have not yet measured response times for either.

Alternatives

If you want Mullvad’s model with a Swiss jurisdiction, a free tier and streaming claims, read Mullvad vs Proton VPN.

If you want NordVPN’s features at a lower renewal price, read NordVPN vs CyberGhost and NordVPN vs Private Internet Access. Both cover providers whose plans renew at the price you paid. Private Internet Access also adds port forwarding and open-source apps.

IVPN is the other service we track with no streaming claims and no affiliate program. The comparison hub lists every pair. Our best VPN for privacy page ranks the field on privacy alone.

Which should you buy?

Buy Mullvad if you are choosing a VPN for privacy in the narrow sense:

• no email
• cash or Monero payment
• a kill switch that is always on
• IPv6 support
• open-source apps
• a price that stays at €5 whether you keep it for a month or a decade

In return, you accept five devices, no TV apps, no streaming support and no port forwarding. You also accept email-only support and a Swedish address.

Buy NordVPN if you want the broader product. It offers 150 countries, apps on every screen in the house, ten devices and documented streaming support. It also has Double VPN, Meshnet, obfuscation through NordWhisper and live chat at 3 a.m.

NordVPN has four drawbacks:

• the $139.08 annual renewal on the Basic plan
• no IPv6 support
• the 2024 Panamanian disclosure
• audit reports you can only read after paying

If you take the promotional term, set a reminder for month 26. That is when NordVPN stops being the cheaper of the two.

How we compared them

Every row in the table comes from the two providers’ data records. We checked them against their official pricing, feature, server, policy and audit pages on 31 October 2026. Scores come from our published methodology, with speed left out until our lab measures it. Mullvad has no affiliate program and NordVPN does. Neither fact changes a row. Read the full Mullvad review and NordVPN review for the detail behind each row. The Mullvad pricing page and NordVPN pricing page show every plan and its price history.