Mullvad VPN review: The ultimate privacy-first VPN

Sweden-based Mullvad has long been the privacy purist’s VPN. It collects remarkably little information about its users and continues to prioritize anonymity over the convenience features favored by most competitors.

When I say that Mullvad takes your privacy seriously, I mean it. Unlike other VPNs, Mullvad goes so far as to disconnect your account from an email by auto-generating an account number for you. They will even let you pay in cash. And this level of anonymity goes well beyond just registration, permeating everything you do with the app.

Since our last review the service has undergone another independent audit and adopted post-quantum encryption on all platforms, further cementing its place as one of the most secure and trustworthy VPNs on the market.

Since my last review, Mullvad has focused on refining its privacy-first services. It has leaned even more into security and censorship-resistance rather than flashy consumer extras and feature bloat.

The biggest change is the company’s complete phase-out of OpenVPN support in favor of WireGuard-only connections across all apps. To support this transition, Mullvad introduced GotaTun, its new WireGuard implementation written in Rust, which is designed to improve performance and efficiency. The implementation is already active on Android with support for desktop and iOS apps coming later this year.

The company has additionally expanded its anti-censorship toolkit with Lightweight WireGuard Obfuscation (LWO) and QUIC Obfuscation, both aimed at helping users bypass restrictive firewalls and VPN blocking systems.

Mullvad also completed a full third-party audit of its backend account and payment systems while expanding the number of supported payment currencies for credit card transactions.

When you open Mullvad’s Windows app it strikes one as modern and clean. It starts with a static map in the primary section of the window and a red banner up top to indicate you’re not currently connected, with the device name and remaining time left on your account listed.

Towards the bottom of the app screen you’ll find a button showing your currently selected VPN server and below that a Connect button which you can click to connect to the chosen server.

When connected, you’ll see a Switch location and Disconnect button at the bottom of the window. The top of the screen, meanwhile, becomes a green banner with the Mullvad VPN logo indicating you’re now connected to the VPN.

If you jump into the country listings, you can either select a country, select a specific location within the country if more than one is available, and even drill down to individual servers.

With just under 600 total servers, Mullvad’s network remains small compared to competitors that advertise tens of thousands of servers. In practice, however, I rarely felt constrained by location options and never encountered noticeable congestion during testing.

The app itself is very easy to read and understand both in the Windows and Android versions. The default Windows app panel is automatically pinned to the bottom-right corner of the screen, but you can change this under settings if you wish.

Mullvad skips many of the consumer-oriented extras found elsewhere, such as dedicated streaming servers, identity protection tools, cloud storage bundles, and smart DNS. Instead, it prioritizes privacy-focused features that have the most impact for users.

It does include a kill-switch, split-tunneling, multihop, and ad-/tracker-blocking. It even takes its kill-switch one step further with a feature called Lockdown mode that will only allow your device to connect to the internet when it’s connected to a Mullvad VPN server. All of these features can be found by clicking the gear icon on the homescreen to access the settings menu.

Since 2024, all WireGuard connections through Mullvad come with default “quantum-resistant” encryption technology. Mullvad was among the first VPN providers to implement post-quantum protections. Since then, similar features have become increasingly common across the industry.

Another nice tool to use with the VPN is Mullvad’s connection check webpage. It lets you know if the app is working and currently connected to Mullvad. It also checks to see if you have any DNS leaks, are suffering from a WebRTC leak, or using a blacklisted IP address.

Mullvad has apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Android TV, all of which are open-source.

Mullvad’s pricing is pretty cut and dried. For one month you’ll pay €5, or about $5.82 at the time of writing. It also offers subscription options for one year and a staggeringly long one decade. For what it’s worth I usually don’t recommend any form of ultra long-term VPN subscription plan. A lot can happen in 10 years, and even the most popular services can run into unexpected trouble.

Despite these long-term subscription options, the price still remains the same €5 every month. That makes Mullvad VPN an extremely affordable short-term, month-to-month VPN, but a more expensive long-term option.

It’s also worth noting that Mullvad recently did away with automatic renewals on its subscription plans. According to the company, this was “in order to store less data” such as on-file credit cards and other private information. As a result, you will need to manually re-up each month, or year, or decade, in order to keep using the service. A bit tedious, but that’s the price you pay for ultimate privacy.

Mullvad subscriptions can be paid by Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, bank wire, credit card, PayPal, Swish, Eps transfer, Bancontact, iDEAL | Wero, and Przelewy24. Additionally, you can also pay by mailing them cash along with your payment token in order to maximize anonymity.

In order to test Mullvad VPN’s speeds I measured connection rates across servers in different countries around the world for multiple days and then compared them to my baseline internet speed.

The average download speeds across all servers were decently impressive, clocking in at 53 percent of base speeds. The upload speeds were similar, maintaining an average of 49 percent of the baseline. While not among the very fastest VPNs I’ve tested, Mullvad’s performance remained comfortably fast enough for gaming, streaming, video calls, and everyday browsing.

Beyond raw speeds, connections remained consistently stable across servers with no unexpected slowdowns or performance fluctuations that I found. Latency remained low throughout testing as well, making Mullvad a strong option for gaming, video calls, and other real-time online activities

The bottom line is that Mullvad’s speeds are more than enough for everyday internet activities, with the usual caveat that your experience may vary depending on your location in the world, equipment, and ISP. While it isn’t the absolute fastest VPN available, Mullvad’s combination of strong speeds and privacy-focused design remains one of its biggest strengths.

Mullvad has a lot going for it, but unfortunately one area where it doesn’t impress is in unblocking streaming services. In my testing I found that the ability to access services such as Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max while connected was extremely hit or miss. Some servers had no issues while others detected the VPN and blocked access.

This time around I found a slight improvement to the services I could access though. While Mullvad is certainly not the best VPN for streaming, it does okay at unblocking content. The good news is that once you’re able to find a connection that isn’t blocked, the speeds are fast enough to provide a seamless viewing experience with no buffering.

The short answer is: excellent. Mullvad prides itself on user privacy, anonymity, and security. And it shows, too. Even from the time that you first pay for the service it takes this seriously.

Mullvad doesn’t require an email address, username, or any personal information to create an account. Instead, users are assigned a randomly generated account number, helping minimize the amount of personal data associated with the service.

You also have multiple options to pay for the VPN including by cash—unique among all other VPNs to my knowledge. Should you choose this method, the company adds credits to your account number after receiving the cash and shreds the envelope. Credit cards and PayPal are also accepted, though your payment will be identifiable through those services (but not linked to your online activity).

My DNS leak tests for both the Windows and Android apps came up clean with no leaks detected. This means you can trust Mullvad to keep your true IP address hidden while connected to its servers. By default its DNS leak protection is always-on and can’t be disabled.

Mullvad’s kill switch also performed flawlessly during testing, preventing traffic leaks during disconnects, reconnections, and device restarts. Unlike many VPNs, the kill switch protection is enabled by default and deeply integrated into the application.

Mullvad provides an additional feature called DAITA, or Defence against AI-guided Traffic Analysis, which you can turn on under the settings menu. DAITA is designed to make it harder for observers to identify patterns in your VPN traffic, even when they can’t see the contents of the data itself. It’s the sort of protection most users will never need, but privacy enthusiasts and users operating under restrictive network conditions may appreciate the extra layer of obfuscation.

DAITA is one of Mullvad’s most innovative privacy features and ranks among the most advanced anti-traffic-analysis tools currently available by any VPN service.

In regards to VPN protocols, Mullvad keeps it simple by exclusively offering WireGuard. It is generally considered to be the most secure protocol currently available and likely the best option for users anyways.

You also have the option to tweak and configure each connection to your own needs by choosing Ports, Obfuscation, and whether you want to use a Quantum-resistant tunnel.

Moving onto its privacy policy, Mullvad’s policy has exactly what you’re looking for in a VPN. Though it has now been split into two different documents: the general privacy policy and the “no-logging of user activity policy.” In those two documents the company says it does not “store any activity logs or metadata.” There’s no logging of your online traffic, DNS requests, connections, timestamps, IP addresses, bandwidth, nothing.

The only data Mullvad saves are the total number of current connections of all users on its network, the CPU load per core on its servers, and the total bandwidth used per server. It also logs the real-time number of connections per account as the service allows five simultaneous for each account.

In 2023, Mullvad completed migration of its servers to RAM-only diskless servers, meaning data does not persist on its servers nor can it be confiscated should the servers be physically removed—this goes for both the servers it owns and those it rents.

Mullvad has also built a strong track record of commissioning regular independent audits of its apps, infrastructure, and privacy practices. To date, the service has undergone 18 independent audits with the most recent being in early 2026 by security firm Assured Security Consultants. Independent audits are always a good sign that a VPN is sticking to its no-logs policy and maintaining strong security. They go a long way towards building user trust.

Mullvad is owned and operated by Amagicom AB and based in Sweden. This means that it could be subject to mandatory government data sharing regulations since Sweden is a member of the 14 Eyes signals intelligence-sharing alliance.

Sweden’s participation in the 14 Eyes alliance will concern some privacy advocates. However, Mullvad’s no-logs design means there should be little-to-no identifiable customer activity data available even if authorities were to request it. Notably, Mullvad does seem to publish a notice on its blog whenever it’s subject to a search warrant.

Mullvad remains one of the few retail VPNs willing to sacrifice convenience in pursuit of privacy. It won’t give you the best streaming experience, the largest server network, or a long list of bonus features. What it does offer is one of the most transparent and privacy-conscious VPN services available today.

Its dedication to protecting user anonymity has never been in question and only continues to grow stronger. With this level of commitment to privacy as well as performance, Mullvad continues to be one of our top recommendations.

Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.