So you want to know everything about NordVPN, including how good – and fast – a VPN provider it is, as well as all the latest news on the service? Well, you’ve come to the right place, because this article comprises of an extensive review of NordVPN complete with a full range of performance tests, combined with a roundup of news pertaining to the service, plus an extensive FAQ that addresses the most commonly asked questions about this VPN.
But first, let’s kick off with a quick TL:DR summary of the review for those who don’t want the in-depth stuff, and just want to know whether NordVPN is worth buying, and how it compares to rival VPNs, in a nutshell.
NordVPN: 2-minute review
NordVPN’s torrent support is a definite strong point, and there’s as much to like on the privacy front too, with plenty of smart features to help keep you safe and anonymous online. Performance levels are good, and this is one of the faster VPNs we’ve ever reviewed, and for Netflix (or other streaming content) unblocking, it got us into what we needed (although sometimes only via the VPN’s browser extension).
NordVPN’s mobile apps are better than you’ll find with most VPN providers, its Windows client is generally pretty good, and they’re all quite user-friendly overall. Speaking of which, there are a lot of quality tutorials to help you get set up with the VPN, and great customer support, which is all good for the less tech-savvy folks out there, should they run into trouble somehow.
An expansive network of servers rounds all this off nicely, and NordVPN’s commendable no-strings-attached 30-day money-back guarantee is worth a mention. If you aren’t happy, you can get your money back in the first month with no hassles.
You can think of NordVPN as a high-quality jack-of-all-trades VPN. It does everything to a good standard, and while some rivals may offer better performance in specific departments, if you want everything doing well – and a consistent service above all – NordVPN won’t steer you wrong.
Keen to find out more about NordVPN? Then read on to learn every detail you could ever want to know…
NordVPN: latest news and updates
It hasn’t been that long since we last looked at NordVPN, but the company been busily improving its service in several key ways.
A new Threat Protection system blocks ads, trackers and malicious websites, and also scans your downloads for malware. It only inspects downloads so won’t catch everything, but you can run it alongside your regular antivirus without any hassles or conflicts. It’s in beta and only fully available on Windows and Mac as we write, but mobile support is on the way.
NordVPN has launched an extension for Microsoft Edge. Log into your account and you can access the same NordVPN network direct from the Edge browser. (It’ll only protect your browser traffic, of course.)
NordVPN has increased its bug bounty to $50,000, giving more encouragement for ethical hackers to find and fix any security issues.
On the corporate front, Nord Security has signed an agreement to merge with Surfshark. The companies will share information and resources, but still operate separately, with their own product ranges and roadmaps.
NordVPN: our full NordVPN review
Panama-registered NordVPN is a hugely popular VPN provider with more than 14 million customers around the globe. The company sells itself on features, and there are plenty to explore.
How many servers does NordVPN have?
The NordVPN network has 5,500+ servers in 80+ locations across 60 countries.
What platforms does NordVPN have apps for?
You get Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux and Android TV apps, and NordVPN also offers tutorials to set up the service on many more device types.
How many devices can you use with NordVPN?
NordVPN boasts support for six simultaneous connections. That means you can set up NordVPN on as many devices as you like, but only six of them can be connected to the service at the same time. This is probably enough for most people, but other VPNs go further. Private Internet Access supports up to 10 simultaneous connections, Ivacy can handle 12, and IPVanish, Surfshark, Windscribe and others have no fixed connection limits at all.
- Want to try NordVPN? Check out the website here
What features do you get with NordVPN?
NordVPN offers all the technical features you’d expect, including OpenVPN support, and NordVPN’s WireGuard-based NordLynx for strong encryption and high performance, a kill switch, and DNS leak protection to keep your identity safe.
Not-so-common extras include double data encryption and Onion support for extra security, and ad, phishing and malware detection and blocking via NordVPN’s Threat Protection. P2P support is a major plus, and a clear no logging policy and NordVPN’s Panama registration give above average reassurance that your internet activities won’t be visible to anyone else.
If you’re intimidated by this feature overload, or just run into some unexpected problems, NordVPN’s 24/7 support is on hand to point you in the right direction, via email or live chat.
NordVPN’s prices are a little above average after a special deal in the first year, and if you’re not quite convinced that this is the VPN for you, a 30-day money-back guarantee gives you a risk-free route to sampling the service for yourself.
Got any further questions about the basics of NordVPN? Then see our FAQ at the end of this article (jump straight down to it using the link in the bar above).
NordVPN pricing
NordVPN has three main plans: monthly billed accounts are $11.99, and right now annual plans cost just $4.92 a month, while opting for the two-year plan cuts the price to $3.29. (The company has new offers all the time, but a more in-depth and up to the minute explanation can be found at our dedicated NordVPN price and deals article.)
Beware the small print, though. The one and two-year deals include an introductory discount, and both renew as a standard annual plan, which sees a major price hike to $8.29 a month. NordVPN doesn’t exactly make this clear on the website, but you can find these and all the other renewal costs on its Pricing page.
Is NordVPN good value for money?
On the face of it, yes, at least for the first term, but it’s true that bargain hunters can find better deals than NordVPN elsewhere. Private Internet Access’ annual plan costs just $3.33 a month, for instance, and Ivacy’s five-year plan is a tiny $1.19 a month (that’s an upfront $71.64).
Still, it’s far from the most expensive VPN around, and we think NordVPN is fairly priced for what you get.
What methods can you use to pay for NordVPN?
There are plenty of payment options provided by NordVPN, with support for cards, PayPal, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (via CoinPayments), and assorted other systems (AmazonPay, UnionPay, SOFORT Banking and more).
Does NordVPN have a free trial?
The company used to have a service-wide free trial, long ago, but unfortunately it was dropped due to abuse.
New Android and iOS users get seven days of app usage for free, though. And if you sign up, NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee gives you more than enough time to get a feel for how the service performs.
Does NordVPN offer a good level of privacy?
The privacy value of all VPNs starts with the support for encryption technologies. NordVPN scores well here for its strong AES-256-GCM encryption, and supports perfect forward secrecy to regularly change keys (this time using 4096-bit Diffie-Hellman), ensuring that even if an attacker manages to penetrate one session, they’ll be locked out of the next one.
Once you’re connected, NordVPN uses its own private DNS to keep your internet browsing away from third parties. Its apps also include protection from DNS leaks, to make sure your online activities are safe.
NordVPN also offers a Double VPN system (on Windows, Mac and Android) where your traffic goes to one VPN server, then is re-encrypted and sent to a second NordVPN server, before heading off to its destination. If you’re looking for the maximum level of anonymity, this extra layer of protection makes it even more difficult for anyone to trace an internet action back to you.
If that’s still not enough, NordVPN also supports Onion over VPN. This encrypts your traffic and routes it through a NordVPN server first, then directs it to the Tor network, where it passes through three randomly chosen Tor nodes before reaching its destination. This is just about as private as internet access gets, but there is a cost. Tor is slow at the best of times, and all this bouncing around multiple servers will cut your speeds significantly.
How secure is NordVPN?
Impressively secure. NordVPN has something in its armory to further bolster your security, and that’s a kill switch. A kill switch is in place to prevent any data leaks in case the VPN connection drops.
NordVPN stands out here for actually having two kill switches. A general internet kill switch blocks all net access when you’re not connected to the VPN (this can easily be turned off if it’s inconvenient), while an app kill switch closes your chosen applications if the connection goes down.
NordVPN says the service blocks DNS leaks, too, and our checks with DNS Leak Test, IPLeak and other sites confirmed this. Our DNS address was always the same as our IP address, with no DNS, WebRTC or other leaks detected. So overall, security and privacy are tight. (For more details on services that deliver top-notch security, check out our roundup of the most secure VPN providers, where NordVPN ranks highly).
Has NordVPN ever had its own security breached?
The less positive news is that a NordVPN server was hacked back in 2018, and this, plus the company’s lack of transparency over the issue, have to be a concern. We see no evidence that there was any impact on customer privacy, though, and NordVPN has taken plenty of post-hack steps to try and restore confidence.
What did NordVPN do about the hack?
NordVPN updated its entire server network to run in RAM only, without disks, ensuring that even if someone hacked a server in future, there would be no local files for them to inspect.
The company also invited security research group VerSprite to audit its apps, helping to identify and fix security issues. And a bug bounty program was introduced, giving an incentive for anyone to uncover and report security problems with the service.
Recently NordVPN joined Private Internet Access and ExpressVPN in having its Android app certified by the ioXt Alliance. The certification covers checks on cryptography, network security, software update procedures and more, and NordVPN came out very well with maximum scores in every category.
Steps like these can’t entirely make up for NordVPN’s poor response to the 2018 hack, but they’re still hugely positive, and expose the company’s services to a level of scrutiny rarely seen anywhere else.
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What is NordVPN’s logging policy?
NordVPN claims to have a strict ‘no logs’ policy. Most VPNs say much the same, but the company’s privacy policy defines this more clearly than most, saying:
‘Nord guarantees a strict no-logs policy for NordVPN Services, meaning that your internet activity… is not monitored, recorded, logged, stored or passed to any third party. We do not store connection time stamps, used bandwidth, traffic logs, IP addresses or browsing data.’
That covers not only general logging of your internet activities, but also session logging details such as recording your incoming IP address when you connect to the service, and the IP you’re allocated. (When other VPNs say, ‘no logging’, they often carry out some form of session logging, so it’s good to see NordVPN rule it out).
Can NordVPN back up these claims?
A VPN can say anything on its own website, but unlike most of the VPN competition, you don’t have to take NordVPN’s claims on trust. In 2020 NordVPN hired Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) to run a second independent audit on its infrastructure and services, and to verify that its logging policy description is accurate.
This was an in-depth project, NordVPN explained: ‘It involved interviews with our employees, server configuration inspections, technical log inspections, and inspections of other servers in our infrastructure. PwC Switzerland’s practitioners also verified that we were actually using the configurations that they had inspected.’
A July 2020 blog post reported PwC’s conclusion that ‘they saw no signs that we had in any way violated our no-logs promise.’
The report doesn’t have much in the way of technical detail. There are lots of legal restrictions on the content, too, and for instance we can’t even quote from it (sounds like an excuse, but it really isn’t – ExpressVPN’s no logging audit report is affected by a similar condition). NordVPN customers and trial users can take a look, though, and we have to applaud the company for taking this step. It means NordVPN has far more evidence to support its no logging claims than most other VPN providers.
Performance testing: How fast is NordVPN?
While privacy features are normally the top priority for a VPN, performance is almost as important. Uncrackable encryption isn’t nearly as appealing if it reduces your internet speeds to a crawl, which is why we put all VPNs we review through some intensive performance tests.
Our procedure involves connecting to our nearest server from UK and US locations with 1Gbps connections, then running repeated checks using several benchmarking sites and tools (SpeedTest’s website and command line app, Netflix’s performance test, nPerf, SpeedOf.me and more). We perform the tests using the best two protocols when possible, then repeat the full test run in morning and evening sessions.
OpenVPN results were a mid-range 250Mbps in the UK, 220-350Mbps in the US. That’s not bad, but if you’re setting up OpenVPN on a router and need the maximum possible speed, CyberGhost, Hide.me, Mullvad and ProtonVPN all reached more than 400Mbps in recent testing.
However, switching to NordVPN’s custom NordLynx protocol saw downloads leap to 580-680Mbps in the UK, 730-760Mbps in the US. That’s above average, and more than many devices and internet connections can handle, but it still can’t quite match the likes of CyberGhost (830-850Mbps), IPVanish (880-890Mbps) and TorGuard (950Mbps).
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Can NordVPN unblock Netflix or other streaming sites?
The ability to access geoblocked websites is a key advantage of any VPN service. NordVPN doesn’t explicitly claim to unblock any particular website or service, but statements asserting that it allows you to “keep access to your favorite websites and entertainment content, and forget about censorship” sound good to us.
The only way to really find out, then, is to test NordVPN’s skills in this capacity, and we started our evaluation of its powers in this respect by attempting to access BBC iPlayer content. In the past we’ve had some problems unblocking the service with NordVPN, but not this time, and NordVPN got us in with all three of our test servers.
Amazon Prime Video has also been a challenge in previous reviews, but it looks like NordVPN has moved forward again now, and we managed to access US-only content from three US servers.
Netflix has some of the most effective anti-VPN technology around, but it didn’t make any difference here. NordVPN successfully unblocked the US library, the UK and more.
Our good run continued with the final Disney Plus test, with NordVPN getting us access from its US, UK and Australian servers.
Does NordVPN support torrents?
The short answer is yes, it does. They’re not available on all locations, but NordVPN does provide hundreds of P2P-friendly servers in the US, UK, and many other locations around the globe. Wherever you are, there should be a suitable server nearby.
VPNs which only support P2P on some servers can be inconvenient to use, particularly if you connect to a non-P2P server, launch your torrent client and find it doesn’t work. NordVPN’s Windows app has a P2P server list, though, where you can choose the country you need in the usual way, no hassles at all.
To verify NordVPN’s P2P support, we connected to three countries and tried downloading torrents. In each case we connected and downloaded files as expected, with no performance or other issues.
Is there anything else that makes NordVPN a good choice for torrenting?
Along with its direct P2P support, NordVPN has a number of other features which could make it a smart choice for those using torrents. There’s its strict no logging policy (verified by audit), multiple layers of DNS and traffic leak protection, payment via Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and privacy extras including Double VPN and Onion over VPN.
Are any rival VPNs better than NordVPN for torrents?
NordVPN clearly offers a strong all-round package in terms of torrents, but ExpressVPN is also worth considering for torrenting. The core features of both services are similar, and while ExpressVPN doesn’t have quite as many extras (no Double VPN, for instance), it supports P2P on all its servers and is arguably easier to use. So, you can make your choice based on which of those factors is more important to you, and there’s further info to hand in our roundup of the best VPNs for torrents.
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How easy is it to set up NordVPN apps?
Sign up for a VPN and you’ll doubtless want to install a client and try it right away. At NordVPN, all you have to do is tap the VPN Apps link, and the website automatically offers you the app download link for the device you’re using, along with further links for its other supported platforms: Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux and Android TV.
NordVPN’s extensive array of 50+ tutorials explain how to manually set up the service, and include coverage of a further 20 platforms and device types (including Chromebooks via Chrome OS, Windows Phone, Raspberry Pi, routers, NAS devices, and more besides).
There’s far more detail here than you might expect. NordVPN has multiple Windows tutorials, for instance, covering installing the regular client, OpenVPN, or manual setup guidance for various protocol types on Windows 7, 8 and 10.
But the site isn’t just about the basics. If you’re looking to set up NordVPN as a SOCKS5 proxy, there are tutorials for Deluge, qBittorrent, uTorrent and more.
How good is NordVPN’s Windows app?
The Windows app client opens by displaying its many server locations on a map. You’ll be at home with this right away because it works much like every other map you’ve used – left click, hold and drag to pan around, spin the mouse wheel to zoom, hover your mouse over a highlighted location to see a tooltip of its name – and left clicking any location will connect you to that server.
Map interfaces aren’t always convenient to use, but here there is also a left-hand sidebar with a more standard alphabetically sorted list of countries. You can scroll to the country you need, click a button and connect to the best server in that location. Very easy.
Click an icon to the right of the country name and the app displays a list of cities (if there’s more than one) or the individual servers within that country. Alternatively, enter part of the name of any city in the search box (typing ‘Chi’ is enough to get you Chicago), and if NordVPN has servers there, you’ll see any matches.
Separate Specialty lists enable choosing servers for a particular task: P2P access, using Onion over VPN, the double encryption of Double VPN, or giving you a dedicated IP. These work much the same as the regular list, so for example you can click P2P and allow the software to choose the fastest server for you, or browse the full list and choose something manually.
The Favorites system has gone, replaced by an extended Recent list of your 10 most recently chosen locations. That’s probably going to be enough for most people, but we’re struggling to see why the app couldn’t support both a Favorites and Recent list.
Connection times are reasonable. The default NordLynx protocol typically got us connected in 2-3 seconds, and switching to OpenVPN took 10-12 seconds. That’s not long to wait, but IVPN WireGuard connections took barely a second, and the best OpenVPN apps are online in 6 seconds.
The client handles the rest of the connection process very well, updating the interface to display its status and the current location, and using Windows desktop notifications to tell you when the VPN is turned on or off.
Switching servers is easy, too. If you’re connected already, you don’t have to close that connection before you can open another. Just click any server and the client automatically disconnects, then reconnects to your choice.
Right click the NordVPN system tray icon and you’ll see a list of your recent connections, making it easy to access them again. That’s a real convenience which could mean you rarely need to open the full app.
Tap the ‘Disconnect’ button and you’ll find options to pause your connection for 5, 10 or 15 minutes. If you need to quickly use a website which doesn’t work with the VPN, click ‘Pause’, choose your preferred interval, and the client then disconnects. When you’re finished, hitting ‘Resume’ restores the VPN, but if you forget, the client reconnects automatically after your chosen time period.
There’s a small usability annoyance here, as disconnecting now takes two clicks (you must now click ‘Disconnect’, ignore the pause intervals and click ‘Disconnect’ again). But otherwise, this is a welcome addition which should reduce the chance that you accidentally leave yourself unprotected for long periods of time.
What settings does the NordVPN Windows app offer?
The Settings dialog has some unusual plus points. It doesn’t just allow you to launch NordVPN on startup, for example. You can also have the client automatically connect whenever you access an insecure wireless network, and it’s possible to specify a particular country or region you’d like to use.
NordVPN’s kill switch (a system to avoid data leaks if the VPN connection drops) also offers more control than most. An internet kill switch blocks all access to the internet unless you’re connected to the VPN, while a separate app kill switch closes particular apps if the VPN drops (your torrent app, for instance).
We tried various ways of forcibly closing the VPN, but in all cases the client correctly blocked our internet traffic and warned us of the problem. The only small omission is that the client doesn’t have an ‘auto-reconnect’ option, leaving users to restore their connections manually.
What protocols does the NordVPN Windows app support?
Protocol support includes OpenVPN TCP and UDP, along with NordVPN’s own NordLynx. The Windows app sets these automatically, and you won’t even see the OpenVPN options until you turn this off (in Settings > Auto-Connect, where you disable ‘Choose a VPN protocol and server automatically.’) But once you’ve figured that out, you can switch protocols with a couple of clicks.
Expert-level features include the option to set your preferred DNS for VPN connections. Switching DNS could improve browsing performance, help block access to malicious websites, or impart other benefits. Even better, you can add multiple DNS servers and switch between them as and when required.
A bonus ‘Obfuscated Servers’ feature claims that it may help you connect even in countries and locations which block VPNs.
Although NordVPN is now making big claims about its Threat Protection feature, the Settings box still has an On/Off switch for its earlier ad-blocking CyberSec feature. There’s no mention of Threat Protection in Settings at all. It’s all a little confusing, but presumably this is because Threat Protection is still in beta, and the Settings will get a revamp when it’s released in full.
Put it all together, and although NordVPN’s Windows client has some issues, it’s generally well-presented, easy to use, and a comfortable place to view and control your VPN status. (Incidentally, you might also want to check out our pick of the best Windows 10 VPNs).
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How good is NordVPN’s Mac app?
NordVPN’s Mac offering has a similar interface to its Windows app. You can pan around a world map to choose a location, or just scroll up and down a location list, and there’s a Settings box where you can tweak how the app works.
Look more closely, though, and there are a few significant changes from Windows – some positive, some not.
A Mac-only Presets feature works as a supercharged Favorites system, allowing you to combine a location and VPN settings to get the results you need.
For instance, you could create a P2P preset which connects to a specific server, with settings optimized for downloads, and which automatically launches your P2P app whenever it starts. Or you could have a browsing preset, optimized for security, which enables ad and tracker-blocking and connects to your nearest location. It’s a very flexible system which we’ve not seen anywhere else, and we hope it arrives on Windows soon.
Other parts of the app don’t work as well. Unlike Windows, we couldn’t see an option to access Double VPN or Onion over VPN locations. And although there’s a Favorites option, it only works with specific servers. You can’t mark Atlanta as a favorite, for instance – you must choose something like ‘United States #5064’, then hope you remember the city name.
The app Settings pane is fractionally more limited than Windows (with no split tunneling), but still gives you more than you’ll see in many Mac apps: a kill switch; NordLynx, OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocol support; auto-connect when you access untrusted Wi-Fi; and an on/off switch for NordVPN’s ad, tracker and malicious site blocking.
There’s a little room for improvement here, but overall, this is a likeable app, mostly easy to use and with more features than most of the Mac competition.
How good is NordVPN’s Android app?
The NordVPN Android app is one of the most popular around, with more than 10 million downloads, and a decent 4.4 rating on Google Play.
After an easy setup, the app displays your available locations on a world map. This works like most other maps: drag to pan around, pinch to zoom in, tap a location marker to connect to it. But that can still be a lot of work to get to the location you need, and overall, the map isn’t the quickest or most practical way to find or choose a server on a device with a small screen.
Fortunately, NordVPN’s Android app also supports a conventional countries list. Swiping up gets you an alphabetical list of countries, and you can scroll down to the US (or anywhere else), tap it, and immediately get connected to the best server in that country.
If you need more control over your location choice, tapping a More button displays all the cities in that country.
You can expand locations to list all their individual servers, too, although as there’s no server load or other information, this probably won’t help you very much.
The Settings box starts with a time-saving auto-connect feature. In a tap or two you could use this to, for instance, automatically connect on all Wi-Fi hotspots apart from your home and other trusted locations, ensuring you only turn on the VPN when you know you need it.
The app doesn’t have its own kill switch, but simple instructions explain how you can set one up on your device (System Settings > NordVPN settings, then enable ‘Always on VPN’ and ‘Block connections without VPN’).
Protocol options include NordVPN’s speedy NordLynx, along with OpenVPN TCP and UDP.
Unlike Windows, the Settings box has an on/off switch for the new Threat Protection feature. It describes this as ‘Threat Protection Lite’, though, which we believe means it’s just a new name for the previous CyberSec. (You get blocking for ads, trackers and malicious websites, but no download scanning.)
The features keep coming with the ability to set a custom DNS server, split tunneling to disable the VPN for specific apps, and even tapjacking protection (you get an alert if a malicious app overlays a window on your screen to trick you into performing an action).
There’s even a bonus extra in Dark Web Monitoring, where NordVPN alerts you if your email address appears in an online data breach.
The app isn’t perfect, then, and we’re not sure the map element of the interface adds a lot. But otherwise, it’s a likeable and feature-packed piece of software which effortlessly outperforms most of the competition.
How good is NordVPN’s iOS app?
Although NordVPN’s iOS app has the same slightly awkward map interface as the rest of the range, the developer has done a marginally better job of implementing it. The location list on Android can fill the screen, for instance, but on iOS it has been reduced to a left-hand sidebar, leaving the maximum screen real-estate for map details.
If you prefer the regular country list, that’s available, too. Here you can connect to any country, city or server with a couple of taps. And the iOS app improves on the rest of the range here, too, because it has a Favorites system to save your most commonly-used locations. (Good news for Apple fans, but we’d prefer NordVPN to be more consistent, and have important features like this available on every platform.)
Useful settings include the same auto-connect feature we saw on Android. You can tell the app to automatically connect to the VPN on untrusted networks, only on Wi-Fi, or keep the VPN active all the time.
If that’s not quite convenient enough, you’re able to add NordVPN connections to Siri from within the app. As NordVPN points out, connecting is then as easy as ‘asking Siri nicely.’
The Protocols menu gives you a wider choice than the Windows and Android apps, with options including NordVPN’s WireGuard-based NordLynx, as well as OpenVPN UDP or TCP, and IKEv2.
As with Android, the app has also gained support for Dark Web Monitoring, where you’ll get alerts if your credentials are exposed online.
Overall, NordVPN’s iOS app is a significant plus for the service. If you’re tired of other VPNs, where iOS users get the absolute bare minimum of features and functionality, give it a try – you might be pleasantly surprised (also check out these other great choices when it comes to the best iPhone VPNs).
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Does NordVPN have browser extensions, and do these work well?
NordVPN does have browser extensions, and if all you’re looking to do is protect your browser, these can be pretty useful.
If you’re not connected and realize you need to unblock a website, for instance, you normally have to stop, find and launch the NordVPN app, locate and browse the countries list, click your preferred option, wait to see when you’re connected, and finally switch back to your browser.
NordVPN offers Chrome, Firefox and now Microsoft Edge proxy extensions which allow you to choose a VPN location, then connect and disconnect directly from the browser window.
The extension interface drops the map in favor of a single panel with a handful of options: a short list of recommended locations, a Quick Connect button to hook you up to the fastest server, and a Search option to find a specific country only (there’s no option to choose a city, region or specific server).
A small Settings dialog allows you to block WebRTC leaks in Chrome, reducing privacy risks, or to enable Threat Protection Lite’s ad, malware and phishing protection. A bonus Split Tunneling feature allows you to disable the VPN for selected websites (those sites will see your real IP address and location, not the IP of the VPN server).
You’re not going to be overwhelmed with the feature set, then, but the extension is quick and easy to use. You’re able to connect in a couple of clicks, and because this is just a proxy, protecting browser traffic only, connection times are near instant.
We checked out NordVPN’s Chrome, Edge and Firefox add-ons. Sometimes VPN capabilities can vary between browser extensions, but there are only a few differences in naming conventions here.
The Firefox extension calls its Split Tunneling feature ‘Bypass List’, for instance, but it has the same purpose (to specify websites which won’t use the VPN) and works in the same way. Essentially, all NordVPN’s browser extensions have the same functionality, and once you’ve mastered one, you’ll have no problem using any of the others.
How do NordVPN’s extensions compare to rivals?
Overall, this isn’t as capable a setup as you’ll see with some of the competition. ExpressVPN’s browser extensions control and work with the full ExpressVPN client, so once you enable them within your browser, they protect your entire system. (ExpressVPN tops the rankings in our pick of the best browser extensions). The NordVPN extensions are simple proxies, and protect your browser alone.
Still, the proxy approach is perfect for simple website unblocking, connections are much faster, and using NordVPN within a browser could be useful in a few situations (if some of your apps don’t work with a VPN, for instance, or the VPN hampers your system performance). There are bonus privacy tools, too, including WebRTC blocking (which might prevent some IP leaks) and ad and malware-blocking via CyberSec.
In short, we’re happy that NordVPN offers browser extensions at all – most VPN providers don’t – and overall, this is a plus point for the service.
What customer support can you expect from NordVPN?
NordVPN’s first line of customer support is its support website. Articles are sorted into multiple categories, and a search box allows you to find content by keyword.
The site isn’t organized quite as well as we’d like. Head off to ExpressVPN’s support site, for instance, and you’re presented with the options ‘Get instructions’, ‘Troubleshoot now’ and ‘Contact support’; very clear pointers on where you need to go next. At NordVPN, you get the sections ‘FAQ’, ‘General Info’, ‘Billing’ and ‘Connectivity’, and it sometimes takes a little more work to find the details you are after.
Once you get to the tutorials and guides, though, there’s a lot to like here, with plenty of detailed but easy-to-follow setup and troubleshooting advice.
If you can’t locate what you need, an excellent chatbot offers instant and surprisingly intelligent help. NordVPN has a web page where you can download individual OpenVPN configuration files, for instance, but not the full set. We typed ‘where can I download all the ovpn files’ into the chatbot, clicked a suggested ‘OpenVPN configuration files’ link, and the bot gave us a link to ‘all zipped OVPN configuration files.’ That’s help as it should be.
If it turns out the bot can’t help you, NordVPN also offers 24/7 live chat support with real human beings, and in our experience this works very well. We posed a simple question and received a friendly opening response from a support agent within a couple of minutes.
Email support is available, too. Replies take a little longer – hours, rather than minutes, in our experience – but that’s comparable with many other VPNs, and NordVPN responses were generally accurate and detailed enough to solve our problem.
- Our exclusive NordVPN deal represents a hefty saving
NordVPN review: Final verdict
NordVPN is an appealing VPN provider with great performance, loads of features, and an excellent no logging audit. It’s not the cheapest VPN around, and we’ve a few small issues with the app interfaces. But the company has added a bunch of welcome improvements recently, and overall, it’s a polished and professional service which will deliver good results for most users.
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NordVPN FAQ
Here are some answers to other questions you may have about NordVPN, or indeed VPNs in general.
What is a VPN and how does it work?
A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a secure way to connect to the internet. A VPN gives you software that you can install on your devices, providing a ‘tunnel’ to send your data down in encrypted form, therefore making that data traffic more secure, and giving you a higher level of privacy online. See here for more details on how a VPN works – and remember that it delivers more than just security and anonymity, but can also let you access geoblocked content via servers in different countries, and more besides.
