Best VPN for iPhone 2025: Enhance Your Privacy on the Go

Surfshark is the best VPN for iPhones overall. We appreciate that Surfshark offers split tunneling on iOS and MacOS, not just on Windows and Android -- a rarity among VPN providers. Despite its relatively wallet-friendly pricing, Surfshark doesn't compromise on features, like advanced privacy settings or speed. You can use Surfshark on as many devices as you want simultaneously, which is great if you have a household full of devices you want to protect, and more generous than most competitors.

ExpressVPN is the best iPhone VPN for beginners, thanks to its excellent privacy protection and streamlined, user-friendly mobile interface on iOS and iPadOS (as well as Android and all other platforms for that matter). In July 2025, ExpressVPN announced that its server network included connection options in all 50 of the United States, making it a great choice for travel and for unblocking regional sports, like NFL or WNBA games. It's a great overall VPN, although you'll pay more for that excellence -- ExpressVPN is more expensive than most of its rivals.

NordVPN is the fastest VPN for iPhones, delivering blazing-fast speeds perfect for 4K video streaming or online mobile gaming. Its fast server speeds, coupled with an impressive global roster of 7,900-plus servers in 125 countries, make NordVPN one of the best iPhone VPNs for streaming and travel.

Proton VPN is the most versatile iPhone VPN, offering an impressive server network alongside customizable settings and features that are great for power users. Proton is privacy-focused and open-source, and it performed well in our latest speed tests, trailing only NordVPN.

A virtual private network, or VPN, significantly boosts your Apple iPhone's privacy. A VPN hides your public IP address, so your ISP or mobile carrier can't see what websites you visit or apps you use. Similarly, apps and websites you use won't be able to tell where you're actually connecting from because your public IP address -- which is sort of like a street address, but on the internet -- is hidden, which can make it look like you're in another city, state or even country.

Because VPNs can make apps think you're in a different geographical location, you can unblock region-restricted content, like streaming foreign Netflix libraries or international Amazon Prime Video content. Using a VPN, you can watch The Waterfront on Netflix from anywhere around the globe or stream 28 Days Later on BBC iPlayer from outside the UK. If your mobile phone carrier throttles your video streaming quality on a cellular connection, you may even experience faster speeds and therefore better streaming video quality on your phone using a VPN.

Our team of experts at CNET has rigorously tested dozens of the top VPN providers on multiple platforms, including iOS and iPadOS. We evaluated each service based on several factors, including privacy features, internet speed loss, usability, streaming service unblocking and overall value for money. During our iPhone VPN app assessments, we were impressed with how responsively and intuitively each of our top picks performed on iOS devices. Whether you want to avoid streaming video throttling on a cellular connection, need to unblock geographically restricted streaming content or are traveling internationally for the summer but need access to content from your home country without grappling with annoying captchas, one of the best iPhone VPNs is a great addition to your app arsenal.

When we evaluate the best iPhone VPNs, we spend weeks testing the features offered on each VPN's iPhone app to see how they compare to the competition. We carefully consider the look and feel of the app and the overall usability of the software, including how easy it is to establish a connection, bearing in mind the generally smooth user experience iPhone users are accustomed to.

We test the performance and reliability of the VPN connection on each of the protocols available in the provider's iPhone app, while paying special attention to how the app performs when switching between Wi-Fi and a mobile network. We test for leaks and ensure each service's kill switch is working as it should, in addition to testing the functionality of every other feature available on the VPN's iPhone app. If a provider offers unique features (or includes a rare-to-iPhone feature like split-tunneling) we make sure to call them out and document our experience using them.

Many VPNs also offer easy access to customer support directly from their iPhone app, so we test that functionality and evaluate how seamlessly the app is able to connect the user with a support agent as well as the general effectiveness of the support itself.

We test each VPN's ability to circumvent geographical restrictions and access content on popular streaming sites on the iPhone, while taking into account previously-tested speed performance and noting any issues with buffering or stream quality. Finally, we evaluate each provider's pricing to determine the service's overall value.  

PIA

Private Internet Access is a decent cheap VPN that undercuts most of its rivals at $12 per month, $40 for the first year (renewing at $50 annually) or $79 every three years. We like its customizable apps and privacy-forward design that includes open-source apps as well as a reader-friendly privacy policy. PIA is one of the few VPN providers that offers split tunneling on MacOS, so Apple aficionados may appreciate the flexibility to route some apps but not others through a VPN. 

However, PIA’s high 48% average speed loss is about double what you can typically expect from a fast VPN, making it a tough sell for folks with slow or unreliable internet connections. Additionally, we experienced many CAPTCHAs with PIA when trying to access websites like Google. And its app design, while mostly user-friendly, felt outdated compared to most of the competition. While PIA is a good budget VPN, for a little bit more money, you can get a lot more value with a VPN like Surfshark or Proton VPN.

Read our PIA review.

IPVanish

IPVanish's iPhone app is fairly easy to use and includes a prominent "Connect" button on the home screen that'll get you connected quickly. If you navigate to the "locations" screen to select a specific server, you can either connect to the "optimal location" or choose from a list of servers. However, after you've connected, there's no indication of whether you're connected or not unless you navigate back to the home screen. Even if you connect to the optimal location, the Connect button on the locations screen still says "Connect" -- which can lead to some confusion. 

Although IPVanish's iPhone app isn't as streamlined as the others on this list, it includes split tunneling functionality -- a feature most VPNs don't offer with their iPhone apps. Even so, it's difficult to enthusiastically recommend IPVanish to iPhone users considering that far superior services are available for the same price or cheaper. IPVanish costs $13 per month, $40 for the first year or $53 for the first two years combined. However (as this information is not made sufficiently clear on IPVanish's pricing page), be advised that the price of the annual plan more than doubles to $90 after the initial term, and the two-year subscription renews at $180 every two years after the first two years. Also, IPVanish's 30-day money-back guarantee only applies to the annual and two-year subscription plans, not the monthly plan. (Disclosure: IPVanish is owned by CNET's parent company, Ziff Davis.)  

Read our IPVanish review. 

The only free VPN for iPhone that we recommend is Proton VPN. Its free tier employs the same encryption standards as its premium tier, doesn't impose any use or speed limitations and doesn't sell your data. There's no shortage of free VPN options available for iPhone, but we generally don't recommend most free VPNs for a number of reasons. First, many free VPNs make money by collecting your personal data and selling it to third parties -- putting your privacy at risk and defeating the purpose of using a VPN in the first place. Many free VPNs may also inundate you with annoying pop-ups and unwanted advertisements, and some may even contain malware. Additionally, free VPNs impose limitations on use, are burdened by overcrowded servers (which can negatively affect speeds and stability), typically lack streaming support and often employ substandard encryption.

In our testing, ExpressVPN was the VPN that performed the best for streaming on iPhone as well as on every other device we tested. If your main priority is to unblock international streaming content on your iPhone with a VPN, we recommend going with ExpressVPN because it has proven year after year in our tests to be the most reliable service for geo-unblocking content from all over the world.

The best VPNs for iPhone are already highly intuitive and deliver exceptional performance on iOS devices. But you can expect even more refinements throughout 2025 and beyond in terms of performance and features. Specifically, many of the top VPNs have been rolling out additional services like password managers, antivirus protection, secure email and identity protection features that you can bundle with the VPN service. We've started seeing many of these additional features added to existing VPN apps but we're likely to see them integrated more into a single app for each provider instead of having multiple apps for each of your bundled services.

We're also likely to see a greater degree of parity between apps on different platforms (especially with more providers re-implementing split-tunneling on iPhone and other Apple apps), so users can have access to the same set of features regardless of which operating system they're using. Additionally, we'll see providers committing to more regular audits, refining their pricing structures and a wider implementation of forward-thinking privacy features like post-quantum protection.