The best VPN for gaming: Expert tested

A gaming VPN service creates an encrypted tunnel between the device you are gaming on and the internet. Gaming-ready VPNs offer enhanced security and the option to disguise your IP address, which is especially important if you are concerned about stream sniping or DoS attacks. If your internet service provider employs activity-based speed and traffic throttling, a VPN may also help you bypass such restrictions as the ISP won't be able to see what you are doing. 

VPNs give you a level of security and privacy, but there are downsides to using a VPN while you're gaming. VPNs, by their nature, will often reduce speeds by up to 20% -- and potentially far more when you connect to far-away servers -- as they encrypt and reroute traffic. These extra steps can also impact your latency, ping, and response rates, which can make all the difference if you are involved in competitive gaming. 

Unless you are a consistent target of internet trolls trying to track you down through your IP address, I don't think it is worth purchasing a VPN purely for gaming purposes. Typically, a gaming VPN will only protect your privacy on devices with native support -- such as PCs and mobile devices -- and if you want to implement a VPN on console, you will likely need a router with inbuilt VPN support or you will have to configure your existing router, which can be a complicated process. 

However, if you plan to use a VPN to also protect your day-to-day activities, for streaming purposes, and for travel, I would still recommend signing up for one. A VPN is able to give you blanket security coverage, reducing the likelihood of being tracked online and giving you the option to shift to different locations, which can be useful for many purposes.

Also: The best travel VPNs

A gaming VPN should be secure and have the performance necessary to handle the demands of online gaming. As a baseline, every VPN on our best VPNs for gaming list needs to have reasonable speeds, a lack of gaming lag, and decent ping results.

Many providers recommended in this list have been subject to in-depth testing and reviews by members of our ZDNET team. We've been talking about other VPNs for years, spoken with their management and their users, and developed a generally favorable impression.

ZDNET tests VPN services from multiple locations, but we can't test them from all locations. Every home, every community, every local ISP, and every nation has a different infrastructure. 

We analyzed the best VPNs for gaming below using the following criteria that were most important in helping you make an informed decision:

• Performance: Our top VPNs must have a minimum level of performance. After all, there's no point in using a VPN while streaming if your connection continually drops or lags, making gaming impossible.
• Router support: Many VPNs are complicated regarding setting up a VPN to blanket cover all of your devices through a router. However, considering that consoles do not natively support VPN apps, we highlighted the best options for VPN usage beyond a PC or mobile device.
• Security: There's no point using a VPN unless its security protocols and encryption levels are up to scratch. We also ensured the development team behind each recommended VPN cared about making security improvements over time and patching reported bugs.
• Kill switch: A kill switch prevents you from having an unprotected connection. It is an important feature for a VPN, as it protects by preventing a return to a default Wi-Fi connection should your internet connection unexpectedly drop.
• Geoblocks and streaming: We know VPNs can be key to accessing local content and services while you're away from home. We ensured that our top recommendations performed well in these factors and are unlikely to slow down your connection while you are streaming. 
• Platforms: What systems and devices can you run the VPN on? Our VPN recommendations, naturally, have to offer easy-to-use and intuitive mobile apps. 
• Countries & servers: In how many different countries does the VPN have servers? This can include physical and virtual servers and whether or not there are enough -- at least 50 or so -- to provide variety.
• Trial length & price: Each VPN we recommend has a solid money-back guarantee and many will offer mobile users a seven-day trial. 

For a more extensive breakdown, check out our comprehensive VPN testing methodology page.

Choosing the best gaming VPN for you will involve hands-on testing. All of the VPNs on this list have 30-day money-back guarantees, so you'll be able to test out the service for a month and get a full refund if the performance isn't what you hoped it would be.

When you are selecting your new gaming VPN, you need to consider the following factors:

• Cost: You need to consider the overall cost of your new VPN plan. Try to take advantage of promotions, but ignore countdown timers -- they typically are just marketing tools. While top-notch VPNs can cost upwards of $10/month, many are available for only a few dollars. Many VPN providers will also give users a free seven-day mobile trial. We recommend that free VPNs be avoided -- with a few exceptions -- as they may sell your data or bombard you with adverts.
• Simultaneous connections: If you're paying for a VPN suitable for your PC or gaming console, you might still want to use it across multiple devices, such as on a smartphone. We recommend you sign up for a plan with support for at least six devices. Thankfully, many paid VPN plans now offer at least this, or unlimited connections. 
• Streaming: If you intend to use your gaming VPN to stream content on Twitch, for example, ensure that the VPN can accommodate your favorite services. You will need a fast connection that is unlikely to drop halfway through your latest gaming session.
• Contract length: You also need to decide how long you want a VPN. A two-year term tends to secure the best prices, but other options are available. After you've made a selection, you typically have a 30-day money-back guarantee. 
• Apps and extensions: When selecting a VPN, you might want to try out its accompanying mobile apps and extensions to ensure you're getting the most out of your subscription. Some VPNs, for example, have great desktop software but lack in the mobile app department, which may not be as intuitive or easy to use. 

Also: The best VPN free trials

We recommend Surfshark as one of the most consistently affordable VPNs for gaming, as it suits a variety of budgets and will not throttle you based on data usage. However, while the price point is excellent, Surfshark doesn't always match the speeds of the top VPNs in the market today. 

Alternatively, you could try Windscribe's free plan, which is great regarding server choice and speed. The downside is that you are limited to 2GB/month unless you agree to various initiatives, such as signing up with your email address.

The answer to this question will typically depend on the best speeds you can achieve. If you aren't concerned about your server location, I recommend trying your VPN's 'smart' or automatic connection function first, as it will usually find a server close to you, improving latency and the speed available. However, if you want to appear from a different country, examine your VPN's available servers and try to find the 'fastest' server recommendation.

VPNs use different protocols to manage data transfers between your device and VPN servers. 

Wireguard is the best option for gaming VPNs, as this protocol generally offers the best speed, with stringent levels of cryptographic protection to keep your connection private. Many of today's best VPNs support this protocol.

Internet speed, often called "bandwidth," is the speed at which data can be transferred over the Internet. If you're downloading or uploading a big file, you want lots of bandwidth. 

Ping time is how fast you can send out a request and receive an answer. It's the round-trip response time, and it's very sensitive to distance and hops. When watching a video, you want to get all that video information down to your machine, but once it starts to transmit, it's usually running a good, steady flow. 

Ping time, however, is how long it takes after you pull the trigger in a game for it to know you pulled the trigger. If the game thinks you squeezed off a shot half a second after you did, the results could be radically different -- and this can be significant, especially for people who game more than casually.

Ping is the travel time between two points, so the ping you might see listed in VPN reviews may not mean much to you. Your two points and the reviewer's two points will always be different. This is one reason why we haven't listed ping speeds for these VPNs. It's more important for you to measure the ping from where you are to where you're connecting.

VPNs give you a level of security and privacy. They can protect you against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which could compromise your connection, and a VPN allows you to connect to servers in different locations, but it's also about more than gaming. 

VPNs protect gaming consoles in the same way they protect your other devices, but unlike simply connecting via a PC or mobile device, using a VPN connection with your PlayStation 5 or Xbox can involve a more complicated setup. Gaming consoles don't support native VPN apps, but you can still get the protections, location spoofing, and anonymity of a VPN.

The key is running your VPN client on a router or sharing the internet connection of a PC and bridging your VPN connection. Most VPN vendors have guides that show you how to set this up. 

If you're trying to download an online game early, such as when release times are locked to specific regions -- or you want to take advantage of location-based sales and promotions -- it might work if you connect to your VPN before you log in to the platform. 

However, a note of caution: such as in the case of Steam, it may monitor your account for 'consistency' in your location history and may take a dim view of such activities, as using a VPN for these purposes is "strictly against the Steam Terms of Service and may result in restrictions on your Steam account."

Separately, some games are geo-restricted and are unavailable in other countries. You could use a VPN to access them, but you might be shouldering the same risks of account suspension or deletion.

While we can't showcase every worthy gaming VPN on the market, we wanted to mention some great alternatives if our top VPNs do not completely suit your needs.