NordVPN Review 2025: Do You Actually Need a VPN Anymore?

Wait, Do You Even Need a VPN?

I know that sounds like a strange way to start a VPN review. But honestly, I think it is the right question, and I'm not entirely sure most people ask it before dropping money on a subscription. The VPN industry has spent the last decade running a marketing blitz that would make energy drink companies jealous. Every other YouTube video has a sponsorship spot telling you that hackers are lurking on every coffee shop Wi-Fi, that your ISP is reading your emails, that the government has a folder with your name on it. And look, some of that is grounded in real concerns. But some of it is also designed to scare you into a two-year contract.

So before I get into what NordVPN does and how well it does it, I want to be honest about the landscape. If you are browsing the web in 2025, most of your connections are already encrypted via HTTPS. Your ISP can see that you visited netflix.com, but they can not see what you watched. Your bank connection is encrypted. Your email is encrypted in transit. The "public Wi-Fi is dangerous" narrative was a lot more true in 2012 than it is now. Does that mean VPNs are useless? No. But it depends on what you are actually trying to do.

And that is the framing I want to use for this whole review. Not "is NordVPN good at being a VPN" -- it is, and I will get to that -- but "given what NordVPN does, is it the right tool for the problem you actually have?" Because I think the answer varies a lot depending on who you are.

The Privacy Argument (And Its Limits)

The most common reason people buy a VPN is privacy. They do not want their ISP logging their browsing, they do not want advertisers building profiles, they want some degree of anonymity online. NordVPN, specifically, is headquartered in Panama -- outside the jurisdiction of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance -- and has had its no-logs policy audited three times by Deloitte. They have moved their entire server fleet to RAM-only infrastructure, which means there are no hard drives to subpoena or seize. When a server reboots, everything is gone.

That is genuinely impressive on paper. And I do believe NordVPN takes privacy more seriously than most competitors. But the tricky part is this: when you use a VPN, you are choosing to trust your VPN provider instead of your ISP. You have not eliminated the middleman; you have replaced one with another. You are betting that NordVPN will honor their no-logs promise, that their audits are thorough, that there is not some scenario they have not anticipated. I think that bet is reasonable with NordVPN. I'm less sure about the fourteen other VPN services with identical marketing copy and zero audits.

There is also a question about what privacy actually means in practice. A VPN hides your IP address from websites, sure. But if you are logged into Google while browsing, Google still knows exactly what you are doing. If you use Facebook, Meta knows. If you accept cookies -- and most people click "accept all" without thinking -- tracking continues uninterrupted. A VPN is one layer of privacy. It is not the whole thing. I think a lot of people buy VPNs expecting a level of anonymity that the tool alone can not deliver.

The Streaming Use Case: Where It Gets Interesting

Alright, privacy philosophy aside, there is a more concrete reason a lot of people want NordVPN: getting around geo-blocks for streaming. And I have to say, this is where NordVPN actually impressed me more than I expected.

I tested it with Netflix libraries in about a dozen countries, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Disney+, and a handful of smaller regional services. NordVPN worked with most of them. Not all -- I had trouble with one Netflix region and a Japanese streaming service that seemed to detect the VPN no matter which server I tried. But the hit rate was high. Something like 80-85% of what I attempted worked on the first or second try.

The thing NordVPN has going for it here is SmartPlay, which is their DNS-level technology that automatically routes streaming traffic through the right channels. You do not have to think about it or configure anything. Just connect to a server in the UK and open iPlayer. It worked. Speed was fine too -- I watched stuff in 4K without buffering from a European server while sitting in India, which honestly surprised me. The NordLynx protocol (their wrapper around WireGuard) keeps things fast. On a 300 Mbps connection, I was getting around 260 Mbps to nearby servers and around 150-180 Mbps to servers across continents. That is more than enough for anything you would reasonably do.

But here is the thing I keep coming back to. Streaming services do not want you doing this. They have contracts with content providers that are region-specific, and they are constantly updating their detection systems. What works today might not work next month. NordVPN has a team dedicated to staying ahead of the blocks, and they are good at it -- better than most competitors I have tried. But it is still a cat-and-mouse game, and buying a two-year VPN subscription primarily for streaming access to foreign Netflix libraries is... I'm not sure how to put it. It works, but it is building on sand, if that makes sense.

Speed and the NordLynx Protocol

I mentioned NordLynx already but it deserves more space. For years, VPN speed was the main pain point. You would connect and immediately feel the difference -- pages loading slower, video quality dropping, downloads crawling. NordLynx basically fixed this for NordVPN. It is built on WireGuard, which is a newer, leaner VPN protocol, and NordVPN added a double NAT system on top to address some of WireGuard's privacy quirks.

In practical terms? The speed penalty is negligible for nearby servers. I ran tests at different times of day over about two weeks, and the average drop was around 8-12% for servers in the same region. That is barely noticeable. Even connecting to servers on different continents, I rarely dropped below 150 Mbps on a 300 Mbps line. For context, 4K streaming needs about 25 Mbps. You have headroom.

Latency is the one area where distance still matters. Connecting to a server in my own country added maybe 3-5 milliseconds of ping. Connecting to the US from South Asia added 150-200ms. For browsing and streaming, that is fine. For competitive gaming, it is not. If you are hoping a VPN will somehow improve your ping to a game server, it probably will not, unless you happen to be on a route that is poorly optimized by your ISP -- and even then, it depends. I have seen people claim VPNs reduce gaming lag and I think that is true in maybe 10% of cases and false in the other 90%.

The Server Network and Those "Specialty" Servers

NordVPN runs over 6,400 servers across 111 countries. That is a big number, and it matters mostly because more servers means less congestion on any individual one. During peak hours, if you are on a service with only a handful of servers in a given country, speed can drop. NordVPN has enough capacity that I never noticed this.

They also have specialty servers that I want to talk about because some of them are actually useful and some feel more like checkbox features. Double VPN routes your traffic through two servers instead of one, encrypting it twice. Is this necessary for most people? Almost certainly not. But for journalists in authoritarian countries or anyone in genuinely high-risk situations, there is an argument for the extra layer. Onion over VPN combines NordVPN with the Tor network, which is a similar thing -- extreme privacy for extreme situations.

The P2P-optimized servers are genuinely useful if you torrent. They are configured for the kind of sustained, high-bandwidth transfers that torrenting requires. And the obfuscated servers, which disguise VPN traffic to look like regular browsing, actually work in places like China and the UAE. I could not test this personally in China, but I spoke to a couple of people who use NordVPN there and they said the obfuscated servers work "most of the time." That is about as good as it gets for VPN access in China.

Threat Protection: More Than I Expected

One feature that caught me off guard was Threat Protection. I went in expecting a basic ad blocker that NordVPN slapped a marketing name on. And there is some of that -- it does block ads and trackers. But it also scans downloaded files for malware, blocks known phishing sites, and strips tracking parameters from URLs. It runs independently of the VPN connection, which means it works even when you are not connected to a VPN server.

I ran it alongside uBlock Origin for a week and then ran it on its own for another week. Threat Protection caught a few things that uBlock missed, mostly around tracker blocking at the DNS level. It also flagged two test files I intentionally downloaded from known malware repositories. It is not a replacement for proper antivirus software, but as an extra layer? It is better than I expected. The catch is that the full version with malware scanning only works on Windows and macOS desktop apps. The mobile version is lighter.

Meshnet: The Sleeper Feature

I almost skipped Meshnet because it sounded like a niche feature for networking nerds. And it kind of is. But it is also surprisingly practical once you understand what it does. Meshnet lets you create encrypted peer-to-peer connections between your own devices or with other NordVPN users. Think of it as creating a private network that works over the internet.

I used it to access files on my desktop from my laptop when I was traveling. No port forwarding, no fiddling with my router. Just turned on Meshnet, linked the devices, and it worked. I also set it up with a friend in another country so they could route their traffic through my connection (with my permission, obviously). The latency was comparable to a regular VPN connection.

Is this something most people need? Probably not. But for the people who do need it -- remote workers, people with home servers, gamers who want LAN-style connections over the internet -- it is genuinely useful and I have not seen anything quite like it from other VPN providers.

The Travel Case

Traveling is honestly the scenario where I find VPNs most clearly useful. Not because of security theater, but because of practical problems. You are in a hotel in Spain and your bank flags your login because it is coming from a foreign IP. You are in Thailand and want to watch the show you were halfway through on your home Netflix library. You are in China and need to check Gmail.

NordVPN handles all of these well. The wide server network means you can usually find a server in your home country that works. The obfuscated servers work in restrictive countries, at least most of the time. And the speed is fast enough that you are not constantly reminded you are on a VPN.

But I'm getting off track. The point is not that NordVPN is good at this -- it is. The point is that if travel is your main use case, a VPN is clearly worth the money. If you rarely travel and mostly sit on your home connection, the value proposition gets murkier.

The Apps

I should mention the software itself. NordVPN has apps for basically everything: Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox, and even apps for Android TV and Fire Stick. The design is clean. The map interface is intuitive -- click a country, connect to a server. It takes about three seconds.

The one complaint I have is the upselling. NordVPN really, really wants you to also buy NordPass (their password manager) and NordLocker (their encrypted storage). There are prompts inside the app, and after every major update there seems to be a new modal asking if you want to try the "Plus" or "Ultimate" bundle. I already paid for the VPN. Please stop trying to sell me adjacent products from within the product I already bought. It is not aggressive enough to ruin the experience, but it is annoying enough to notice.

The Linux app is command-line only, which is either fine or a dealbreaker depending on who you are. I use Linux as a secondary OS and the CLI works fine, but I get why some people want a GUI. The mobile apps are solid -- maybe a slight step down from the desktop experience, but close enough that I would not call them a weakness.

The Kill Switch and Leak Protection

These are the boring-but-important features. A kill switch cuts your internet if the VPN drops, preventing your real IP from leaking. NordVPN has two versions: one that blocks specific apps and one that blocks all internet traffic. During three weeks of testing, I had the VPN disconnect four times -- all during server switches, never during a stable connection. Each time, the kill switch kicked in within a second. I ran DNS leak tests after every reconnection and found zero leaks. IPv6 leak protection is on by default.

I know that sounds dry, but this is actually the stuff that matters. If your VPN does not have a working kill switch, everything else is academic. NordVPN gets this right.

Pros and Cons

What It Costs

NordVPN's pricing is structured to make the long-term plan look like an incredible deal and the monthly plan look like highway robbery. Which, to be fair, is exactly what it is. Here is the honest breakdown, because I find pricing tables without context kind of useless:

If you pay month-to-month, it is $14.99 per month. That is among the most expensive VPNs on the market. I would not recommend this unless you are trying it out before committing.

The one-year plan runs about $4.59 per month, billed as a lump sum of roughly $55. That is reasonable. Not cheap, but reasonable for what you get.

The two-year plan drops to about $3.59 per month, billed at around $86 upfront. This is where most people end up, and honestly? At that price, if you use even two of NordVPN's features regularly, it is hard to argue against the value.

They also have "Plus" and "Ultimate" tiers that bundle in NordPass and NordLocker. I am not going to tell you those are necessary. NordPass is fine as a password manager but not best-in-class. If you already have a password manager you like, skip it. The 30-day money-back guarantee is legit -- I tested it once on a previous subscription and got my refund through live chat in about ten minutes.

NordVPN vs. The Others

So Here Is What I Would Do