The best VPN for Australia is a tool that can also spoof your location while encrypting your data, and improved online security isn’t the only benefit. The top providers around are perfect for unlocking streaming sites like Stan, Binge, 7Plus and 10Play, and help you keep up with your favorite shows and matches when you travel abroad. An Australia VPN can also support online gamers in avoiding bandwidth throttling, for example. Such software is also handy to protect your privacy when carrying out risky online activities like torrenting. Whether you’re living in or just visiting the country, enhanced privacy together with great unblocking powers makes an Australia VPN a no-brainer. However, since there are so many services around, it can be be tricky to pick between them. So, keep reading as we outline our list of the best five VPNs for Australia right now.
What makes a great Australia VPN?
As we mentioned before, Aussie ISPs work hard to snoop on your online activities. This means that your first priority when choosing your next Australia VPN should be privacy. A strict no-log policy and great encryption are a must here. Thankfully, any of our top five will have you covered in this respect. Then you’ll need to think about your own needs – are you a big streamer, a keen torrenter, need ultimate security, or just want the fastest speeds for gaming? Ensure your choice can do what you need it to. Also, make sure to take advantage of any money-back guarantee you’re entitled to if it doesn’t live up to expectations. It also goes without saying that you should opt for a service with servers located within the country for being able to safely browse locally. Again, all the providers on this list boast Australia-based servers. Overall, ExpressVPN tops the chart as the best Australia VPN right now. That’s thanks to its excellent streaming and site unblocking performance alongside rock-solid privacy features, it can easily suit any kind of VPN use. However, there are a number of close rivals, so keep scrolling and take your pick from our top five.
Today’s top 3 Australia VPN:
The best Australia VPNs today
If you’re after an Australia VPN you’re likely going to want to do it all – streaming, staying private, perhaps a bit of torrenting or gaming – so you need a service that can keep up. In our ExpressVPN review we found it to be the best on the market right now, beating out the competition in all the most important areas. When it comes to security, Express offers you a ton of top-notch features so that you will be safe no matter what you’re doing. These include essentials like a kill switch, split tunneling, and AES-256 encryption, but you’ll also get Perfect Forward Secrecy and ExpressVPN’s own proprietary WireGuard-based Lightway protocol. If you’re not the techy type, though, ExpressVPN could be just the right service for you. As soon as you launch its easy-to-use app, whether that’s from your living room in Perth or the moment you step out of Sydney airport, you’ll be protected. You can leave the settings as they come on its user friendly interface and browse safely. As an Australia VPN, Express has servers located across six cities Down Under, so you’ll have a fine selection to choose from no matter where you are. Plus, with its excellent streaming performance, you can appear to be located absolutely anywhere and get access to blocked content on Netflix, Prime, YouTube and more. Something that disappoints a little is the meagre five simultaneous connections, although that should be more than enough for most people. Also its top speeds dropped from 630 to 560Mbps this time, but these will be more than enough for most users. Overall, we reckon ExpressVPN is the best Australia VPN available today, but if you’re not convinced you can take advantage of the risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee that comes with every plan. Plus, there’s a tasty offer for Tom’s Guide readers only… NordVPN is well-known as a top-class VPN, and if you’re after an Australia VPN that’s versatile and powerful, you could do a lot worse. With over 5,500 servers worldwide and five locations within Australia’s borders, there’s a good spread to choose from no matter what you want to access. Fast speeds – likely capable of much faster speeds than your base Internet line – and great unblocking power allow Nord to provide an excellent streaming experience, too. However, it’s when it comes down to privacy that NordVPN really shines – delivering all the essentials plus a couple of really neat extras. One of those is Onion over VPN, which reroutes your traffic over the Tor network for ultimate anonymity. That comes with a speed penalty, but is definitely worth it if you want to stay hidden. A new great addition is its Meshnet feature. This allows you to create your own secure and encrypted network, by connecting up to 60 devices. This makes NordVPN the perfect provider for those who want to better secure their workload among multiple users. In general usage, Nord’s an incredibly fast VPN, and in our testing for our NordVPN review the WireGuard-based NordLynx proved to be secure and lightning quick reaching impressive peaks of 820Mpbs. That makes it perfect for gaming, streaming, torrenting, and virtually any other possible online activities . However, while the apps are powerful and work well, the map-interface on mobile can be a bit awkward to use. Although that isn’t a deal breaker, it’s not nearly as intuitive or simple to use as ExpressVPN. Beyond that, though, there’s not much between them, and we highly recommend Nord as an alternative. Head over to the NordVPN website (opens in new tab) to sign up After a cheap VPN for Australia? Give Surfshark a spin. For almost half the price of the previous options you’ll get a very similar experience and five Aussie locations – this is no bargain basement knock-off. With its simple yet powerful apps and excellent streaming service unblocking performance, Surfshark doesn’t certainly lack in quality. It even proved itself as the fastest service we’ve tested during our last round of testing, reaching a staggering top speed of 950Mbps with WireGuard. On the contrary, the OpenVPN protocol delivered only mediocre results. In terms of security, Surfshark has got you covered with its top-notch features like DNS leak protection, kill switch and an AES-256 encryption with MultiHop for extra safety, but also split tunnelling for easy access to areas outside the VPN. The provider also shows great commitment for users’ privacy, enlarging its security reach across four different tools that can be purchased together with its Surfshark One package. It is worth noting, though, that we experienced some kill switch issues when tested in extreme situations in our most recent Surfshark review. These occurred on its Windows app only. So, you don’t need to worry on mobile or if you are using Surfshark as a secure Mac VPN. For the price, Surfshark offers ridiculous value, and with a 30-day money-back guarantee backing you up while you test the service, there’s not a lot to lose. Head over to the Surfshark website (opens in new tab) to sign up Proton VPN, the Swiss-based provider behind the encrypted email service Proton Mail, is a safe choice when it comes to protecting your privacy. For starters, it boasts a strict no-logs policy together with quality apps all independently audited and open-source. This means that everyone can check the code for any bugs. What’s more, we couldn’t find any trackers on its website nor Android apps during our last round of testing. Proton VPN boasts a wide range of excellent security features, too. These include its efficient adblocker, NetShield, two terrific kill switches, powerful encryption, strong protocols to choose from, DNS leak protection and built-in Tor support for accessing Onion sites. Even though it offers fewer servers than its rivals - currently around 1,800 across 63 countries - paid subscribers can also connect through one of the 36 located across four Australian cities. Users can also opt for one of its Secure Core servers for extra security. These will reroute the connections through some extra safe servers based in some of the most privacy-friendly countries in the world (Switzerland, Sweden or Iceland). Talking about speed, its VPN Accelerator allows ProtonVPN to deliver great connection speeds. It’s worth mentioning, though, its performance was less impressive this time (dropping from 670 to 510Mbps with WireGuard and from 440 to 210Mbps with OpenVPN). Also in terms of streaming, it’s very capable and can unblock just about everything we threw at it. Proton comes with both paid plans and a completely free VPN with unlimited bandwidth, too. The provider has even recently enlarged its free network from just 29 to over 100 servers across Japan, the Netherlands and US. While you won’t be able to benefit from its streaming and torrenting capabilities, it’s certainly a good place to start if you want to see if it’s the one for you before investing your cash. Head over to the ProtonVPN’s website (opens in new tab) to sign up CyberGhost is our final pick, and it strikes a happy medium between great value and powerful features. Possibly the best feature of CyberGhost is its server filtering function. In-app, you can pick what you want to watch – Netflix, for example. Then you can choose a country, and CyberGhost will automatically show you which server will function best as a Netflix VPN. It’s a super smart system that makes it very easy to watch what you want. It is worth noting that during our last testing we were able to unlock just the US Netflix catalog, though. We also failed to bypass geo-restrictions on a handful of platforms including ITV, C4, 9Now, 10Play. Another top feature is a huge choice of speedy international servers – over 9,200 across 91 countries. There are 186 located in four cities in Australia only, and these have now been optimized for P2P traffic, making CyberGhost an excellent choice as a torrenting VPN, The apps aren’t quite as polished as the competition’s, but if you take into account the incredibly low price of the three-year plan, it’s a sacrifice many would be willing to make, although we’d probably go for Surfshark on balance. Overall, though, CyberGhost is an excellent service which we’re perfectly happy to recommend. Head over to the CyberGhost website (opens in new tab) to sign up
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It covers all the bases, and there’s very little we can fault with the service. One of the best is Proton VPN free version (opens in new tab) which, as mentioned above, is nothing compared to the full edition. While useful for very infrequent use, they’re no good for streaming and torrenting, and you’ll soon find yourself on the hunt for the best Australia VPN – even if it’ll cost you a couple of dollars a month. If you’re in Australia and want to watch blocked content, a VPN can help you there too. You’ll be bale to watch US or UK Netflix just by picking the right server, and even services like the free UK-only BBC iPlayer.
