At the beginning of September, the awards for the best virtual private networks were handed out in the first annual VPN wiki Awards. Products were awarded in the categories of Best VPN, Best Free VPN and Fastest VPN.
The Best VPN 2022 is Surfshark
The award for the best VPN for 2022 goes to Surfshark. It earned first place for its large number of advanced features, unlimited number of connectable devices, and very affordable price. The VPN’s speed is also above average. Surfshark is based in the Netherlands. Surfshark’s overall score is 9.4/10.
The second place belongs to NordVPN, which stands out for its high connection speed, superior features or independent auditing. NordVPN unblocks streaming services, which is also due to the large number of servers. NordVPN’s rating is 9/10.
The bronze medal went to VPN Private Internet Access, whose operator is based in the USA. The plus points of this VPN include a good price, an open source app and the ability to use it on up to 10 devices. The final score for Private Internet Access is 8.8/10.
Best Free VPN: First place for Bitdefender
The best free VPN is Bitdefender VPN Free with a score of 8.2/10. The average speed of 83 Mbps is sufficient for watching 4K video. Users have 6 GB of data at their disposal, and they can unblock YouTube videos. The company is headquartered in Romania.
The second best free VPN is Windscribe Free, which managed to unblock both Netflix and YouTube. Its advantage is a usable volume of 10 GB of data every month. The average speed of 25 Mbps is one of the weaker results among free VPNs. The same goes for the 25 available servers. The provider Windscribe Free is based in Canada, and the resulting VPN score is 7.8/10.
The third best network was named Free VPN Planet, which has an above-average number of servers and unlimited data. It can be used to watch YouTube videos, for example. The weakness is the low number of countries available. Free Planet VPN is based in Romania. The VPN has earned a score of 7.6/10.
The fastest VPN is Perfect Privacy
First place in the fastest VPN category goes to Swiss-based Perfect Privacy. In repeated tests organized by the VPN wiki, the average download was measured at 482 Mbps, the average upload at 236 Mbps and latency at 85 ms.
The silver medal belongs to the not very well-known Panda Dome VPN, whose operator is registered in Spain. The average download speed of this VPN was 388 Mbps and the upload speed was 91 Mbps. An average response time of 92 ms was measured.
The third place was taken by a virtual network with the aptly named FastestVPN. The operator of this VPN is based in the Cayman Islands. Long-term testing showed an average download speed of 352 Mbps, clearly the highest upload speed of 254 Mbps and a latency rate of 220 ms.