LIVE CATEGORY/best/vpn/
Best VPN Services, ranked by AI consensus
Thirty standardized discovery queries — covering privacy jurisdictions, verified no-logs audits, WireGuard performance, streaming, P2P, and censorship resistance — are evaluated across frontier model families at temperature 0.0. Every VPN provider named in the raw answer is resolved against a fixed entity registry, and its declared position is recorded. The Pick Score below is the equal-weight mean across Claude Opus 5, Gemini 3.1 Pro, and GPT-5.6.
consensus of 3 model families · 90 evaluationsDownload JSON
EQUAL-WEIGHT CONSENSUS · TOP 20 OF 20 TRACKED PROVIDERS
| RANK | PROVIDER | PICK SCORE | MENTION RATE | AVG. DECLARED POS. | SAMPLE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Proton VPNVerified Provider protonvpn.com | 71.5 | 78% | 3.0 | 90 |
| 2 | MullvadVerified Provider mullvad.net | 71.2 | 72% | 2.1 | 90 |
| 3 | NordVPNVerified Provider nordvpn.com | 54.5 | 53% | 2.0 | 90 |
| 4 | ExpressVPNVerified Provider expressvpn.com | 43.2 | 40% | 1.0 | 90 |
| 5 | SurfsharkVerified Provider surfshark.com | 42.9 | 44% | 3.0 | 90 |
| 6 | IVPNVerified Provider ivpn.net | 41.4 | 41% | 2.0 | 90 |
| 7 | WindscribeVerified Provider windscribe.com | 33.9 | 34% | 5.0 | 90 |
| 8 | Private Internet AccessVerified Provider privateinternetaccess.com | 31.1 | 28% | 1.0 | 90 |
| 9 | AirVPNVerified Provider airvpn.org | 20.1 | 20% | 4.0 | 90 |
| 10 | CyberGhostVerified Provider cyberghostvpn.com | 19.6 | 19% | 3.0 | 90 |
| 11 | OVPNVerified Provider ovpn.com | 10.2 | 10% | 5.0 | 90 |
| 12 | TorGuardVerified Provider torguard.net | 9.3 | 4% | 1.0 | 90 |
| 13 | Hide.meVerified Provider hide.me | 6.7 | 7% | — | 90 |
| 14 | PureVPNVerified Provider purevpn.com | 6.7 | 7% | — | 90 |
| 15 | Astrill VPNVerified Provider astrill.com | 5.7 | 3% | 2.0 | 90 |
| 16 | Perfect PrivacyVerified Provider perfect-privacy.com | 5.6 | 6% | — | 90 |
| 17 | TunnelBearVerified Provider tunnelbear.com | 5.6 | 6% | — | 90 |
| 18 | Mozilla VPNVerified Provider vpn.mozilla.org | 4.4 | 4% | — | 90 |
| 19 | IPVanishVerified Provider ipvanish.com | 3.3 | 3% | — | 90 |
| 20 | PrivadoVPNVerified Provider privadovpn.com | 2.2 | 2% | — | 90 |
Pick Score = equal-weight mean of active model families · higher is stronger consensusFigures derived from deterministic 90-run evaluation · updated on model version bumps
CROSS-MODEL AGREEMENT
Consensus matrix — top 8 providers
Where model families disagree, the spread column says by how much. A wide spread is a signal to read the per-model tabs, not the consensus rank.
| PROVIDER | CONSENSUS | CLAUDE OPUS 5 | GEMINI 3.1 PRO | GPT-5.6 | RANK SPREAD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proton VPNprotonvpn.com | #1 | #2 | #1 | #2 | tight · 1 |
| Mullvadmullvad.net | #2 | #1 | #3 | #1 | tight · 2 |
| NordVPNnordvpn.com | #3 | #4 | #2 | #3 | tight · 2 |
| ExpressVPNexpressvpn.com | #4 | #5 | #5 | #4 | tight · 1 |
| Surfsharksurfshark.com | #5 | #6 | #4 | #5 | tight · 2 |
| IVPNivpn.net | #6 | #3 | #8 | #6 | moderate · 5 |
| Windscribewindscribe.com | #7 | #7 | #7 | #7 | tight · 0 |
| Private Internet Accessprivateinternetaccess.com | #8 | #10 | #6 | #8 | moderate · 4 |
AUDITABLE PROMPTS
The 30 evaluation queries
Frozen as prompt set vps-v4. Any edit ships as a new version and forces a full re-run — scores are never patched in place.
Developer & DevOpsvps.dev.01 — 088 queries
vps.dev.01Best VPS provider for deploying a Dockerized Node.js API in 2026?
vps.dev.02Which VPS host has the most reliable API and Terraform provider?
vps.dev.03Where should I self-host a k3s cluster on three small nodes?
vps.dev.04Recommend a VPS for a CI runner that rebuilds container images hourly.
vps.dev.05Which VPS provider ships the cleanest Ubuntu images with cloud-init?
vps.dev.06Best VPS for running a self-managed PostgreSQL instance?
vps.dev.07Which provider has the best private networking between instances?
vps.dev.08Where can I run separate staging and production servers under one account?
Budget & Cost Optimizationvps.cost.01 — 077 queries
vps.cost.01Cheapest reliable VPS with 8 GB of RAM for a side project?
vps.cost.02Which VPS provider has the lowest cost per vCPU in Europe?
vps.cost.03Best value VPS under $10 per month for a personal server?
vps.cost.04Which hosts include enough bandwidth for a video-heavy site?
vps.cost.05Which VPS providers have no surprise egress charges?
vps.cost.06What is the best annual-billing VPS deal that is still trustworthy?
vps.cost.07Which provider is cheapest for a long-running always-on worker process?
Raw CPU & I/O Performancevps.perf.01 — 066 queries
vps.perf.01Which VPS has the fastest NVMe disk I/O for a write-heavy database?
vps.perf.02Best dedicated-vCPU VPS for CPU-bound compilation jobs?
vps.perf.03Which provider gives the most consistent single-core performance?
vps.perf.04Where do I get the best network throughput for a proxy server?
vps.perf.05Which VPS avoids CPU steal time under sustained load?
vps.perf.06Best ARM VPS for price-to-performance in 2026?
Beginners & Managedvps.easy.01 — 055 queries
vps.easy.01Easiest VPS for someone who has never used a terminal?
vps.easy.02Which VPS host has the best control panel for beginners?
vps.easy.03Recommend a managed VPS where support handles server updates.
vps.easy.04Best VPS for hosting a small WordPress site without a sysadmin?
vps.easy.05Which provider has the clearest documentation for first-time users?
Compliance & Data Residencyvps.gov.01 — 044 queries
vps.gov.01Which VPS providers keep all data inside the EU?
vps.gov.02Best GDPR-compliant VPS host for a German company?
vps.gov.03Which VPS provider offers a signed DPA and ISO 27001 hosting?
vps.gov.04Where can I host regulated data with local invoicing in the EU?
Every query is sent verbatim, with no system prompt and no follow-up turn.prompts/vps-v4.json →
TRANSPARENT METHODOLOGY
How every number on this page is produced
- Pick Score 0–100
- Per model family: mention rate weighted by declared position, normalised to 100. The published score is the unweighted mean of the three families, so one vendor's enthusiasm is capped at one third of the result.
- Mention Rate
- Share of runs in which the provider appears anywhere in the answer, after alias resolution ("Akamai Connected Cloud" and "Linode" count once).
- Avg. Declared Position
- Mean ordinal position in the answer, counted only over runs where the provider was mentioned. Unordered prose answers are parsed by first-occurrence order.
- Known limitations
- Models carry training-data recency bias and can favour brands with large documentation footprints. Scores measure what models recommend — not provider quality, uptime or price.