Reasonable alternatives to Mullvad?

VPN
1

Ok, I asked for refund because of port forwarding getting retired.
Got refund for 2 months of service even though I’ve been using it for over a month.

Felt really bad about it, given how nice the guys are.
After it, I’ve subbed to ProtonVPN to only discover later, they don’t offer port forwarding on the native MacOS app. And what they have is a workaround with OpenVPN and Tunnelblick.

The other hiccup is the killswitch implementation. It blocks the access to localhost completely. Meaning if I do local development, but prefer to stay connected to the VPN I either turn the killswitch off completely or I have to disable VPN. I don’t really care about the rationale, but compomising on this isn’t an option for the money.

I won’t mention the bugs for the iOS app I encountered, because it seems to be a well known set of problems.

Overall, my question is: is there a reasonable alternative for Mullvad that will have it’s connectivity speed, robustness, apps with simple UI, local service discovery while on VPN with killswitch enabled and port forwarding.

Because, at this moment, I feel that I’ve been spoiled by the QoS Mullvad gives for the money. And compromising with port forwarding may be an easier solution…

UPD and notice.

If you have ever used Proton Mail Plus and got a refund, be advised that if ProtonVPN would not satisfy your needs, they will try to block money back guarantee citing same user can request refund only once.

So in reality, ProtonVPN doesn’t abide by the money back guarantee under certain conditions they fail to list clearly.

TOS here Terms of Service | Proton

TLDR;

Don’t go with ProtonVPN unless you run Windows.
Try OVPN (was purchased by a sketchy company) or IVPN as commenters suggest. Purchase a 1 month of service to figure out if it’s worth it.

2

AirVPN and IVPN are only ones which are ones with proven track record on being ethical and not having data to hand to authorities.

I hope Proton see this as a chance to gain more people and add multi port forwarding.

3

These possible alternatives (AirVPN, IVPN) have much smaller server network compared to Mullvad, and now masses of users going on already pretty full servers, atleast on IVPN, it’s not going look good for experience.

4

I was unaware of port forwarding being cancelled Until I saw this post.

5

IVPN, Proton , maybe AirVPN are the VPNs that come to mind.

6

IVPN. I also switched yesterday, and everything works great. You even get DNS over https so u can use it with NextDNS for example.

7

IVPN = 10 USD a month and only * ONE * (1) port

AirVPN = 4 USD a month and up to * TWENTY * (20!!!) ports.

AirVPN been around for 13 years or something. Definitely legit.

8

I personally use ovpn.com hands down even with the acquired they did. Still beats all services I have found

9

OVPN.

how this wasn’t posted and other marketing heavy options like AirVPN and IVPN were is beyond me, especially given they protected The Pirate Bay from takedown even with a court order

10

I got a partial refund from Mullvad. My subscription was good until next year. I switched to IVPN and have been pleased with it thus far.

11

What does port forwarding mean?

12

Not even getting half of the speed I got with Mullvad when using IVPN. :frowning:

13

Ivpn and don’t even go for something else because it is the only VPN that you would ever need.

14

Proton has Port Forwading, and also its great.

15

Hi, It seems i have similar issue, what did you meant with port forwarding getting tired?

16

I have tested and used Mullvad, IVPN, Torguard, Surfshark, Proton and Nord VPN. Currently I have been using hide.me vpn and it has worked great. Torguard was the only other services where I pretty much got full download speeds. So far for service that isn’t well known I’ve been fairly impressed. It’s better than Nord, Surfshark, Proton. I like Mullvad and IVPN because of their privacy, but still isn’t as fast as hide.me.

17

OVPN based in Sweden too, same price as Mullvad if paid yearly. Total infrastructure ownership, no rented servers, no hard drives they use RAM memory only, and proven record of not logging.

“OVPN wins court order”
https://www.ovpn.com/en/blog/ovpn-wins-court-order

You can open up to 7 ports, “Do you support port forwarding?” https://www.ovpn.com/en/faq/network/do-you-support-port-forwarding

18

Can someone ELI5 why port forwarding is important for VPN and this is a problem. It it torrenting to maintain the ability for torrents to find you? I kinda assume that’s it but I don’t torrent but do use Mullvad.

19

As for me … only IVPN . Yes yes welcome in 10$ overprice . But simply there is no alternatives (at least I never saw)

  1. IKEv2 - awesome for mobiles . Stable with packet lost (as wire guard ) and does not require additional software . Also it harder to ban (my gov test openvpn ban. Wireguard yet unaffected. but IKE required by business users so it was unaffected all the times when openvpn and wireguard had protocol wide problems
  2. Socks5 server inside vpn. For split tunnel. I can switch browser or certain applications to work via vpn without interference for the rest traffic (which does not require vpn )
  3. Port forward - 1 port . But honestly I need it only for torrenting so I don’t give a damn . And 1 detail about PF on Ivpn - it network wide (except USA servers ) . You can change the server but still have the same port - instead of late mullwad - port binded to server location and GG
20

Build your own…find a VPS for like $5 a month…and make your own wireguard server.