Best gaming VPN 2024

Over the past decade, I’ve used or tested pretty much every VPN service available. During that time, the one consistently fast service has been NordVPN. I’ve had it set up on PCs and laptops running Windows and Linux, on a MacBook Air, and on mobile devices. I even have it installed on my router.

Although the number of servers will prove useful for picking the perfect online gaming experience, you have another option. If you prefer to host online games with family and friends, NordVPN’s Meshnet LAN is particularly suited to the creation of a fast, secure network, whether the devices are local, or elsewhere in the world.

As my VPN of choice, I’m inclined to be favorable towards NordVPN. While it is far from being one of the cheapest VPNs, it’s not enormously expensive and I find it easy enough to justify the cost. The WireGuard protocol (dubbed NordLynx) encrypts data much more quickly than much of the competition and comes with less performance tax than the likes of OpenVPN and other protocols.

All in all, it’ll always be my top choice. Over the last few years, it’s almost doubled both the number of countries you can access through it and its limit on simultaneous connections, and I’ve no doubt it’ll continue to expand and improve its service in years to come.

Read our NordVPN review.

It’s hard to say which of the VPNs on this list is the most well-known, but ExpressVPN is probably in the top 3. Highly regarded among VPN experts for its speed and simplicity, Express VPN is also one of the few VPN services to offer reliable streaming access to overseas Netflix libraries.

But how does it handle online gaming? Speed-wise, our test resulted in a latency average of 34.81 ms, but the jitter was higher than expected. You can enjoy smooth gaming with this VPN, but with higher-than-expected jitter, it may be on the brink of choppiness.

Other than this, ExpressVPN does not offer any gaming-specific features. But then again, it’s fast enough not to have to. ExpressVPN is the ultimate all-rounder VPN service, as useful to streamers and torrenters as it is to gamers. It also has the benefit of being compatible with pretty much every major game or service – perhaps in part due to the frequency with which it refreshes its servers’ IP addresses. Even if it does get blocked somewhere, it’ll soon worm its way back in.

It may be one of the pricier options, so if you need a cheaper one, it’s not going to be for you, but it does justify its price in several ways. Not only does it have a reliable 24/7 customer support team, but it’s consistently being grown and expanded with, for example, the addition of extra simultaneous connections or new servers in previously uncovered regions.

Read our ExpressVPN review.

Surfshark offers various pieces of privacy and security software. While its other products are good, Surfshark VPN stands out as being a strong competitor in any list of the best VPNs, gaming or otherwise.

Our test found that Surfshark VPN is a good choice for online games. The latency is under 50ms, as is the jitter rate, which promises a good gaming experience. Incidentally, Surfshark VPN is easy to set up and supports sign-in through Google and other methods. This saves you having to go through convoluted set-up processes if you’re new to VPNs

If you have a large household and need a VPN on multiple devices, the scope to install Surfshark VPN on everything is accommodated with its unlimited connections. This is notably more than the likes of NordVPN or Expressvpn, but while having no cap is increasingly more common these days, Surfshark deserves credit for being one of the first to do this.

It’s notably cheaper than quite a lot of the big providers on this list, and it even has the courtesy of offering customers a free trial – well, on mobile that is. If you’re on a PC, you’ll have to get it on your phone and then use it to create a hotspot and connect your PC through the phone, but it won’t give you the same experience as having it directly on your PC. There’s always the 30-day money-back guarantee to fall back on, at least, though it has been known for Surfshark to make it a little more difficult to get that refund by insistently pushing for you to wait until the last day.

Its strengths outweigh its flaws though and if you want a cheap way to give your whole household an extra layer of privacy online, this is probably the best way to do it.

Read our Surfshark review.

CyberGhost is one of the most well-known brands in the VPN market, with a cute ghost personifying the brand in the logo. One of its most appealing features for gamers, in particular, is that it has a number of servers that have been specifically optimized for running videogames.

Naturally, we put them to the test to see how they did, and the results were promising. Although the jitter average was higher than expected, they’re still more than capable of providing a smooth gaming experience that would satisfy everyone except for perhaps super competitive pro gamers.

If you’re one of those pro-gamers and you’re feeling doubtful consider this: it has an incredible 45-day money-back guarantee. This gives it a strong advantage, because you probably won’t use the refund – but if you do, it’s there. My experiences with CyberGhost over the years have been good, and I know people who rely on it exclusively.

The one area that I’d like to see some improvement is with its cap on simultaneous connections. CyberGhost can be used on seven devices at once, and while that was one of the higher caps a few years ago, most of its competitors have pushed it up a little bit, leaving CyberGhost in the dust. Indeed, unlike most other VPNs have changed a fair bit over the years, whereas CyberGhost is much more static.

Nonetheless, even in an unchanged form – it’s a pretty decent offering. It offers compatibility with all major online games and services too, so you can be confident that you’ll have an easy and smooth experience with it.

Read our CyberGhost review.

PureVPN lives up to its ‘pure’ name by subjecting itself to regular third-party privacy audits. This isn’t a case of making everything look good for inspection day, then being reckless with customer data the rest of the year either, as these audits are carried out at random points throughout the year. There would be no time to cover its tracks, even if it wanted to.

In addition to the above-average dedication to protecting privacy, PureVPN has one of the widest selections of device support. In total, you can use on desktop operating systems, mobiles, smart TVs and media sticks, and browser extensions.

But how does this help if you’re looking for the best gaming VPN?
PureVPN lists gaming-optimized servers among its features. The first server we tried came back with poor results (59.56 ms latency, 26.00 ms jitter), resulting in switching. The new results were an improvement, but still not great.

In short, PureVPN, while fast, doesn’t appear to offer any particular advantages in performance for gamers. You can add useful add-ons to your package (Port Forwarding and Dedicated IP) which can potentially improve online gaming performance, but most other ISPs offer these as well.

Still, we don’t want to give the impression that this is a bad choice. For the extra privacy-conscious among you, it may even be the very best choice. It also has a fairly decent allowance for simultaneous connections (10), and while it’s not infinite, that’s still more than a lot of others offer.

Proton VPN operates a range of servers optimized for different VPN activities. While it offers a free option, the highest speeds and P2P support are available only with the Plus plan.

However, my tests revealed that Proton VPN might do the job. Using the exact same test as the other VPNs, I found its average latency was 45.94 ms – just below the 50 ms mark. The jitter average, however, was excellent (10 ms), which is perhaps where the VPN Accelerator feature comes into play. This all

While on paper this makes Proton VPN the best free gaming VPN, realistically you will need a full subscription to get the most out of it.