mullvad
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Good choice for privacy, not so much for piracy. They removed their port forwarding feature a while ago.
IMHO if you don't have a globally-reachable address or forwarded port, you are not really a participant of the internet, you are just a receptacle xD
One service I never see mentioned is OVPN. They have a 1-to-1 feature parity with mullvad and were an easy drop-in replacement when mullvad closed their ports:
- wireguard
- port forwarding
- no usernames/emails/registration, only account numbers
- crypto payments/cash in the mail
- same price as mullvad
- multiple device keys
- multihop
- no bandwidth limits
- setup guides
- status dashboard
I used mullvad for years, sad to see them go, and all my scripts basically worked without any change other than the server addresses/public keys. Only downside is they don't have as many users so not as many servers. I wish more people would join up so I get more IPs to choose from :D
Mullvad is so great in a vacuum, but it seems like every other website has you writing out a captcha or blocking you outright exclusively because you're on mullvad.
Yes! And on top of it, embedded YouTube is also starting to block access
I've decided I'm not using websites that block mullvad anymore. I'm talking about a hard block like reddit does and not a captcha (captcha is fine by me).
If they're doing that much trouble to prevent me from using a VPN they must me doing some pretty shady shit with my data.
I will not move to another VPN because of all VPNs I feel Mullvad respects my privacy most.
What's going on with Proton the company?
Edit: ah fuck, thanks for the replies. Sigh.
Their CEO praised Trump/the Republican Party. He got widely criticised for it. Proton released a damage control statement but later deleted it after it made things worse.
People are now moving away from Proton as a result.
Wow! Add me to that group. I need to cancel my annual family plan.
I unfortunately bought a subscription before dickhead made his statement. Looks like I'm with them for a year >.<
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For fucks sake. I just started to move to proton last year...
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The CEO said that Trump chose a great pick and sided with Republicans and there was a firestorm over it, he doubled down on his position through the official Proton channel.
Ffs I literally just got proton. Fuuuuuck that
Like basically all tech companies, the leadership are libertarian tech bros. It sucks, but whatever. The problem is also that the CEO (?) has been making public statements to try and cozy up to the trump administration over the past few months
Some of that still falls under the LTB effect (These policies benefit the company so fuck everyone else, etc) and it DOES make sense for a company to try and earn themselves an exception for the upcoming hellscape in a market that will REALLY want VPNs. But it still leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
Not in an "I MUST LEAVE PROTON NOW" state since I like the products because they tend to be pretty honest about what they will and won't do when the goons come a knocking and that mostly boils down to "cooperate. So do X Y and Z to protect yourself by preventing us from having the information they want"). But that, plus protonmail being kind of a shitshow if you want to keep offline copies of your emails, is motivation to shop around.
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Proton recently closed their masterdon account because of the mutual hostility
*Mastodon
if anything they've reopened their account with Master Don
Andy yen praising trump is one thing and I kind of don’t care about that so much. What I do care about is how proton practices predatory sales to cash in on FOMO. Or if you subscribe for one month it’s an auto renewing subscription. Or that the best rates are if you sign up for a year. It’s weird for a not-for-profit structure to do billing like this
Mullvad doesn’t play games. A flat price and you get what you pay for.
AirVPN, IVPN, Mullvad, Windscribe
The requirement for port forwarding narrows that down to AirVPN and Windscribe, which is an unfortunately small set of choices.
What exactly does port forwarding do and why is it better for torrenting like I've heard? I've been using Mullvad for a couple of years now but if I could get faster torrent download speeds that would be great
Port forwarding lets you connect with other hosts peer-to-peer which a VPN would otherwise block if both sides are behind one. For torrents you'd get more peers (which doesn't matter if you're just downloading the latest and most popular stuff) and be able to seed more effectively.
And the way that many (most? (all?)) private trackers implement their monitoring kind of requires an open port.
Not all torrent sites require an open port. E.g. MAM works without an open port. It majorly impacts your ability to seed) but that isn't a problem because of how much bonus points you get. TL does not either.
Thanks!
Just adding onto the good answer you already got, but the thing that made this click to me was understanding that if you're not port forwarding, you're limited in the connections you can make to other peers. Specifically, you can only connect to peers who are fully available. Whereas if you're port forwarding, then you can connect both to people who are limited, and to people who are fully available.
I imagine you would get faster download speeds if you were port forwarding, but my impression is that this mainly is a factor for seeding, which matters more if you're on a private tracker that requires a certain download/upload ratio; it's way harder to keep that ratio above 1.0 if you're limited in the peers you can connect to.
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Still using Private Internet Access (PIA).
Honestly, dunno why they've fallen out of fashion due to the FUD about being owned by an unsavoury parent company, but the most important matter to me is if they keep logs, which they don't. One of the few VPN companies tested on this, in court, and in a recent audit. Plus still extremely cheap (if you go for 3yr+3mo).
Port forwarding works with with this docker NAS stack. Doesn't use gluetun, but there's a specialised docker-wireguard-pia container as part of the stack, with a script that handles port changes. Been flawless.
Yeah they are throroughly vetted and work well, competitively priced. I've never seen a reason to switch.
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Mullvad, IVPN and ~~Nym~~ (not tested with audits yet, do not trust as much as the other two).
For clearnet browsing. PIA, AirVPN and Windscribe for torrenting. Windscribe and PIA are probably good for either but this is my classification, take it as you will
I agree on this with the exception of PIA.
- Marketing is BS like most VPN
- Company is based in the USA
- They do analytics
- You cannot register "anonymously"
It's not the worst VPN you could choose but there is better options.
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PIA user here. It gets the job done
I would not put Nym in the same category as Mullvad and IVPN. It is a new and immature product. I have not heard that they have passed any sort of audit, their claims about non-log policy have not been tested yet.
Their infrastructure is decentralized only in name. In fact, they have the same problem as session, the cost of maintaining a server discourages decentralization so much that no one does that. As a result it nullifies any advantages their mixnet might offer, as chances are all your hops are between the servers of the same owner.
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Not a VPN, but you may also want to look into I2P.
https://proprivacy.com/privacy-service/guides/i2p-guide
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FNp0TRDG0BQ
Basically, a p2p protocol for the entire internet.
Its considerably more complicated to set up than most modern VPNs, where nowaday's its usually as simple as install an app with a GUI, verify some settings and you're good to go, and i2p is also quite slow...
... but its totally free, and you can torrent over it, and as far as I know, if you've set it up properly, it is basically undetectable by ISPs, due to how it uses 'garlic' routing: basically, a whole bunch of users net requests are encrypted, anonymized, and then smashed into a big packet... so an ISP would have to untangle all of that for every packet, and afaik, none of them have figured out how.
I2P would obviously be horrible for watching streaming content though, snail speed.
I love Mullvad, but if you need P2P its not the best option. If you just need a VPN, though, its amazing. Today I just switched to AirVPN and am running it on Arch through Eddie. Have my qbittorrent set up to only allow connections through Eddie and just forwarded my first port. I'm very happy with it.
I think the only downside is that I could get Mullvad for 5eur a month on a month by month basis. AirVPN is 7eur or 15eur for three months, so I have to lock into the three months to get the same price.
Worth noting that Italy (location of airvpn) hates vpns and is constantly fucking around with them, to the point air doesn't even actually operate in Italy to preserve users privacy. Right now, theres no immediate risk, but it' is worth keeping an eye on the political situation in Italy regarding VPN laws
I did read this somewhere before. I just have to take my chances at the moment. My other option was Windscribe, but unless you're paying for a year+ their prices are astronomical.
Yeah I use airvpn myself, its just worth throwing that info out for full transparency/disclosure
If you mainly do torrenting, AirVPN is a good option. I have recently moved away from ProtonVPN; it’s too expensive.
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Just throwing in another voice for PIA. Their corporate owners may be questionable, but I've been with them since before they sold out and have never heard a peep from my ISP for seeding terabytes of torrents. They don't keep logs, and they are audited to prove it regularly.
EDIT: They also have port forwarding, but not for every exit server.
I'd say the proven good ones are Proton, Mullvad, and IVPN.
Windscribe has really improved a lot and is worth considering. Still probably worth waiting for Freshscribe infrastructure before considering over the 3 I mentioned above.
Nym and Obscura are up and comers worth looking at. Nym is a decentralized VPN and Obscura has partnered with Mullvad to offer a true double hop (ie one in where both hops are not owned by the same entity).
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Great for use on my phone when I want to use public/airport wifi
If you just want the tunnel encryption you can try hosting a VPN on your own home network. It's what I do since I don't need to spoof my location.
You are asking in the piracy community so I'm assuming you're also using it to torrent (which a home VPN won't help with) but you didn't specifiy so I'm not sure
If you want port forwarding the choice is between AirVPN, ProtonVPN and Njalla. Iirc PIA also supports port forwarding, but their ownerships reputation is no good.
Mullvad, IVPN and many other services don't support port forwarding.
Why do we care about their ownership if it's proven that they don't log and let you forward ports?
Given there're alternatives I'd rather choose an independent service instead.
But that's a personal decision which is why I mentioned PIA with the disclaimer, instead of ignoring them.
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I have been happy with PrivateVPN, but I can't get a read on them.
They say no-log, but many VPNs probably lie about that. Small, based in Sweden.
I just saw on the kumo app literally just now that they got bought out by Miss Group and are no longer independent like when I started with them in 2019.
They have no strikes against them besides the not-disclosed buyout. No idea if I should switch, but they have good prices and port forwarding.
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