In the wake of the Proton controversy, I’ve been looking towards alternatives towards their services. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a good alternative to ProtonVPN. I’m looking for the following in a VPN service:
- Port forwarding support
- Open source
- Android app and Firefox extension available
- Relatively cheap, around $3-4 month (okay with annual pricing)
The only options I found were Private Internet Access and Windscribe, but I found issues with them. If I’m cutting ties with Proton based on ideals I disagree with, I should be rejecting alternatives on the same basis.
Based on what I saw in the PIA subreddit, Private Internet Access seems to have some issues with service reliability and concerns about its ownership having ties to Israel, implying Zionist affiliation. Windscribe seems to have better service, but they have had a questionable social media history: edgy marketing including an AI-generated Hitler and a controversy where, according to them, they joked about a guy being mentally ill but their post easily looked like they were saying trans people are mentally ill.
Is there an option I missed? Should I try one of these options despite their faults? I’d like to know your thoughts.
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Njalla is the most trustworthy vpn, imo. The founder is one of the founders of the Pirate Bay. He is quite committed to privacy.
Ivpn, not really cheap though
Riseup is also trustworthy, but its unbearably slow
I’m still waiting for my mullvad VPN (fascist CEO) to end and decided to then switch to iVPN.
Get yourself a cloud host with locations you want and run your own Algo VPN. It deploys in minutes, is disposable, and is completely under your control. Keeping one up 24/7 might cost $5/month depending on your host.
Even easier and super censorship-resistant (battle-tested in Russia of all places, where all conventional options are blocked): AmneziaVPN
https://github.com/amnezia-vpn/amnezia-client (Also available on official website, Google Play and App Store. No Firefox extension is available, but Linux/Windows/MacOS apps are all in place)
All you need to do is spin up a server on any VPS and give AmneziaVPN app root credentials to it. The rest will be done automatically within seconds. You don’t need to set up anything manually. In fact, you never need to ssh to your VPS at all.
(Obviously, do not use this installation method if you have anything else on the server. For that case, manual AmneziaWG install is available)
A major selling point of VPNs is mixing the traffic of all users.
If you are in a surveilled country, you’re the only one using your VPS, and the destination server is in a surveilled country, then all your traffic will look like: you -> VPS -> destination. You would have to have multiple VPS servers in non-surveilled countries, and constantly rotate the servers to avoid the intermediate hops from getting associated to your identity, and that’s hoping that the VPS company doesn’t get subpoenad (since they likely have your credit card info and can leak your identity).
I am going to recommend AzireVpn, I used to be a customer and was very happy, but switched to proton some years ago because I had my email with them. Not sure if their apps are open source and if they have browser extensions though.
Ooh, they have port forwarding. I’ll definitely look into them further
You can self-host for free on Oracle. It only costs you your time
Might as well sign up for googles VPN and install Metas AI agent as root.
You realize you can encrypt your traffic, get your DNS over HTTPS and use encrypted client hello (ECH), right? Oracle sees that you connect to some cloudflare or google IP, mostly. They can’t even see which site you’re going to.
Isn’t ECH and DoH basically just using cloudflare as a VPN? I feel like a lot of privacy folk don’t trust cloudflare, considering how much of the internet is now centralized on them I’m sure they’re a juicy target for subpoenas.
Edit: also, if you use ECH and DoH and trust cloudflare, then what would be the point of the Oracle VPS?
You don’t need to use cloudflare at all, use cloud 9 or adguard if you like those better
If you don’t trust any of them, you can use ODoH, where cloudflare gets an encrypted request from a proxy. The proxy is only aware of your IP and CF is only aware of the request and the proxy’s IP. So if the proxy doesn’t report your IP to CF, CF doesn’t know who you are.
You can host the ODoH relay on your VPS and it will protect your DNS queries from the provider, while being able to monitor that the provider doesn’t send your IP to CF. CF gets queries from the VPS, but not able to see your real IP. Your ISP similarly only sees encrypted blobs.
Tbh ODoH sounds like Tor but with much greater chance of collusion between proxy and resolver. I’d still trust it less than a reputable VPN.
And hosting the ODoH on an Oracle VPS doesn’t make it more trustworthy. Oracle has your credit card info. They could report or sell the info, and Cloudflare would now know that the VPS belongs to you, making the setup identical to just sending DoH requests directly to Cloudflare.
Edit: also it seems like ECH only proxies the first packet, and your normal traffic would still go directly between you and the server, or your Oracle VPS and the server. A big part of VPNs is hiding your identity from the server. And VPNs mix the traffic of many customers, unlike a private VPS.
The question is whether Oracle working together with Cloudflare is a more likely scenario or the “trusted” VPN provider literally selling your data anyway.
I think a trusted DNS server and an Oracle proxy is going to be more secure than trusting one provider with all your data
They don’t need to work together, they can just sell the data to the same company (Google, Facebook) or both get subpoena’d by the government.
Their main business is not privacy. If they are caught selling data, they’ll still survive. A VPN provider on the other hand would be staking their entire company.
I’m in the same ship and pretty stuck. Was just about to start paying for plus too, I was just waiting for Black Friday sales. What now? I liked Proton VPN because it is easy - download from Bazaar, log in, advanced kill-switch and auto-connect-minimised on. There doesn’t seem to be easy competitors?
Does anyone know anything about NymVPN?
https://f-droid.org/packages/net.nymtech.nymvpn
Are there any trusted reviews for this?
Last I checked they don’t sign their releases, which was a big red flag
Port forwarding seems difficult to find.
Check out hide.me https://vpn.techlore.tech/providers/hideme/ and others there: https://techlore.tech/vpn.
I’m looking as well.
Interesting website, thanks for sharing.
Someone yesterday on Lenny mentioned Obscura which I hadn’t previously been aware of. Looks cool but that’s all I know. Planning on trying them out myself when my ProtonVPN subscription ends:
Exit hops never see who you are Exit servers (run by Mullvad) connect you to the internet but never see your personal info. Obscura masks your real IP address when relaying to the exit server.
Looks like it’s just mullvad in a trench coat.
Surfshark. Not open source. But so far works well for a decent price.
Mullvad went fascist and doesn’t work with streaming services.
Still have protonvpn too, but it wasn’t working well on my pc. Won’t renew proton.
And in the process of ditching other proton services too. What a shame. Unless they ditch Andy Yen, not going back.
I use Mullvad but know nothing about them. Apparently they were good back in the day when I got them, no idea now.
It works.
Mullvad supports right-wing extremist parties
Hey now, they’re not right wing extremists. All they want to do is deport all the non-whites, since they’re criminals!
Even ignoring the fact that they discontinued port forwarding, there is the whole controversy about their CEO donating to far right politicians. It’s a shame because they seem to be pretty good service-wise, and I might’ve considered going with them despite the no port forwarding.
He’s not the CEO as far as I’m aware, but it’s still a valid reason to stay away from Mullvad.
He’s one of the 2 owners. Half of all the profits go to him
Mullvad is arguably the best VPN provider for security and anonymity.
Unfortunately, they stopped offering port forwarding a few years ago because people were hosting some awful stuff and causing their servers to be confiscated by authorities. Their reasoning for it was sound - servers being disconnected meant it was disrupting other users on that server as well.
They refunded everyone for their remaining time (if requested) after removing port forwarding.
Mullvad is a mole
AirVPN user for the past few years. No complaints except their website user interface.
Really? A friend left AirVPN because of the connection always dropping. Dunno what they moved to afterwards, but no complaints in the group chat since. It was difficult to have a call with them because the connection just kept dropping a few minutes into the call.
Weird. I’ve never had an issue with their reliability. I have only ever used the Netherlands or US servers though
Same. AirVPN seemed to be the only one offering static port forwarding at decent price when I was comparing options.
I tried them about a year ago but everything was miserably slow
Not all of their servers are created equal.
I tried 3 different servers and they all sucked. At some point you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt
I will throw in a +1 for AirVPN. I also like their pricing structure. It’s very flexible. I have it on my laptop and my phone.
They seem legit except they discontinued port forwarding and they’re out of my price range.
It seems reasonably priced, the website is shoddy and I havent heard it mentioned enough to compare is all.
Their 1 year plan is just under $3/mo.
They still have port forwarding https://airvpn.org/faq/port_forwarding/
Whoops I responded to the wrong comment. This was meant for the reply mentioning IVPN.
I’ve seen AirVPN and IVPN mentioned in this type of thread but haven’t fully evaluated them yet as I’m in the same situation of gathering options.
They appear to be the only ethical 2 left since the mullvad incident
What about Windscribe?
windscribe is also bit weird to deal with. I have exchanged messages with their customer support or whatever on reddit and it wasn’t ideal, and have also interacted with their ai chat on their website. I had issues with their product on linux and their ai gave me the console instructions that if entered would have deleted my operating system.
Seems like they’re trying to hard. Wow.
They are one of the ones who seem decent until you look into them more, or experience them for yourselves, but that is just my opinion. It pays to try to do your own research, that isn’t necessarily easy with vpns, most of them are dodgy in one way, or another. If they offer 70% etc off deals… they are obviously trash, so that is a decent way to shorten your list, after that it gets more complicated.
I’m considering them despite the UI issues and the fact that they don’t have a Firefox extension. I just don’t know if I want a service that doesn’t have the latter. For context, I’m particular about the extension because I want to able to whitelist specific websites from the VPN. Currently, ProtonVPN’s app doesn’t offer that (and I’m not sure any other VPN offers that either) so I have to enable split tunneling to disable VPN for Firefox, then install the extension to use the VPN in Firefox, except for websites I’ve whitelisted.
For context, I’m particular about the extension because I want to able to whitelist specific websites from the VPN
If you are able to export VPN configurations, can’t you use an extension like FoxyProxy for either of these? Admittedly, this can be a little tedious, and you might have to do some research first.
Alternatively, you might want to see if you can just download a portable version of Firefox and exclude one of the Foxes through split tunneling.
I wonder if that could also be possible, albeit difficult, with a Firefox profile or some container settings.
That’s not a bad idea either. You would only need to install FoxyProxy on one profile, without juggling conditions (a plus) but then you’d lose out on shared bookmarks and history (a minus). I guess only OP knows what’s right for them
Interesting, I’ll have to look into that.
