We ran a series of tests to see how much a VPN impacts connection speeds
NordVPN claims to be the “fastest VPN on the market”, but how fast is it?
We used NordVPN for our tests….
How to test VPN speeds
In order to be as thorough as possible, we ran two different types of test. Firstly, a simple test using Ookla’s SpeedTest service, this is a user-friendly web interface which measures your current download/upload speed.
To make sure we’re running a fair test and that our results aren’t influenced by browser performance, we also ran a similar test via the command line using speedtest-cli.
Using a VPN in another Country/Geographic location is likely to be slower
While most VPN providers obviously aim to provide a connection which is as fast as possible, there is a definite penalty involved when using a VPN which is in a different geographic location.
Let’s say we’re in the USA, and we’re using a VPN based in Australia, that means every request we make, and every response we receive has to travel all the way between the USA and Australia. If we’re using that Aussie VPN to access content served by servers in the USA, we’re adding thousands and thousands of miles of unnecessary travel, all of this results in a significant loss of speed.
The tip here is to make sure you’re using a relevant VPN, if you absolutely need to use a VPN based in a particular location, that’s fine, but its usually best to choose one located nearby.
Will NordVPN slow down my web browsing?
Here are our speed results with no VPN connection running:
Now, let’s connect to a VPN. FWe’ll do a “lucky dip” and use NordVPN‘s “quick connect” feature.
OK, we’re connected, let’s run a test!
Not bad, our download speeds tend to fluctuate through the day depending on how many of our team are on video calls etc. but to get a similar (in this case, even quicker) download speed than our original test is very positive.
The upload speeds here definitely suffered, so it’ll be interesting to see what our next results are in this area.
Next, we’ll reconnect using a different VPN server:
Now we’re talking, while there’s still a drop in upload speeds (~25%), we’re getting close to our original speeds here.
What about internet speeds outside of a web browser?
There are tons of things in a browser which can affect page load speeds, so to make it simpler and to isolate things like slow JavaScript and third party scripts etc. let’s run some tests using the command line.
Interestingly here, our download is much quicker than our upload. This could be a quirk based on local usage or something browser-related, but let’s see how this looks when we’re connected to a VPN.
These tests seem to fluctuate quite a bit, and after some digging it turns out its been primarily based on how many people in the team are currently on video calls rather than anything necessarily related to the VPN.
It’s worth noting that there are some VPNs (particularly when using “Quick Connect” roulette), that do have a pretty slow connection, so I find it’s usually just a matter of reconnecting if you happen to encounter a slow one. In my experience slow VPN connections with NordVPN aren’t common, maybe one out of every 20 times I might need to reconnect.
Conclusion
NordVPN is fast, if you need a stable, reliable and secure VPN I’d recommend their £3/$3 per month plans.