What are the top 3 VPNs right now?

Everybody has a different set of priorities when it comes to VPN. Some prefer the one with the highest speed while others like the one with the most server location. Some people want the cheapest option while others want the best at everything, no matter the cost.  

In 2020, VPN has become a 20+ billion dollars a year business. There are dozens of VPN providers out there and all of them competing for the same market. With so many options to choose from, there must be a way to find the best VPN for you, right? 

In this article, we gonna look at some fundamental features that make a VPN great, and then I'm gonna present what I thought to be three of the best VPN providers right now. 

• Absolute privacy. The VPN company must be based in a country with strict laws and regulations regarding individual data privacy. They also must employ a strict zero-logs policy, which means that they won't keep any records on what their users do while connecting to their VPN networks. 

• Absolute protection. The VPN company must use the latest, military-grade encryption which is the 256-bit AES encryption or whatever the latest method of encryption available at the moment. They also must have a kill switch protocol to ensure the safety of the users if they suddenly lost connection with the VPN networks.  

• Absolute security. To achieve absolute security, there has to be a method to prevent DNS leaks, and the options to use a protocol like OpenVPN, IPSec, or other protocol that has been acknowledged and recommended by the industry.  

• Reasonable price. The option to use a VPN must be available to the general population which means the price has to be affordable. Even if the company wants to charge the users with a higher price tag than the industry standards, the price has to be proportional to the features and performance that the users able to utilize.  We look to find the best vpn for the money in our reviews so keep reading to find out exactly who we choose as the top pick for your users.

• A great number of servers and their locations. The number of available servers and its location would not only improve speed and stability but also ensure the users have much stronger protection and anonymity. They also have to be able to freely change the servers and locations whenever they want to. 

• High-speed download with unlimited bandwidth. Using VPN will inevitably decrease your base internet speed but despite that fact, the company must be able to provide its users with a reasonably high-speed connection without any limitation whatsoever on the bandwidth that the users allowed to use while connecting through their VPN network  

• Great accessibility. There are three things that must be fulfilled to provide the best accessibility for the customers, ease-of-use, support for multiple platforms, and multiple devices usage. The software has to be easy to use with a pleasant user interface. The VPN must available in multiple platforms, the more the better. And the VPN must be able to be used simultaneously by multiple devices. 

• Excellent support. The company must provide multiple ways for the customer to contact them whenever a problem arises when using their services. The response obviously must be reasonably fast and satisfactory. They also have to provide extensive documentation on their official website so that users could refer to that information whenever they need to.  

• Access to Geo-restricted streaming contents. Netflix is notorious in the industry for its effort to prevent VPN to access its content that is restricted to a particular location. Bypassing this restriction should be an available option that the VPN company provided for its customers.  

• P2P capability. Not many VPN providers would allow torrenting through their network. Mostly because they don't want to deal with the repercussion when their user uses it to download copyrighted contents. But there are companies out there that are bold enough to let its user use their connection for P2P activities. Some of them even create a dedicated server for it.  

If you want a great VPN service then you have to pay for it, there's no way around it. There may be a good free VPN service out there but I guarantee it will have severe limitations in place, like limited speed, bandwidth, available servers, etc. 

With that out of the way, these are three of the best VPN providers that would give you the best bang-for-your-buck: 

ExpressVPN

Based on British Virgin Island, Express VPN was established in 2009 by Express VPN International Ltd and has been placed among the top as the best VPN by multiple reviewers from reputable magazines and websites, such as CNET and Techradar.  
 
Express VPN has all of the fundamental features that I mentioned above and then some. The most notable advantage it has over other VPN providers is speed and the number of server locations. Express VPN has more than 3000 servers in 160 locations, spread across 94 countries.  
 
Express VPN also consistently performs better than its competitor with its higher speed and stability. It does, however, a bit more expensive than the rest with its best plans being a USD6.67 for a year with a three-month bonus. Given the impressive overall performance, I think that is a reasonable price to pay. 

NordVPN

This Panama-based company has been in the VPN business since 2012 and has since become a favorite among VPN users. Its sleek design and above-average performance make it easy to recommend NordVPN to both beginner and veteran VPN users alike. 
 
Just like Express VPN, NordVPN also successfully fulfills all of the basic requirements of a great VPN that I mentioned above. The two additional features that stands out from the rest are its Double VPN feature where you can get an added level of security at the expense of lower speed and its Malware protection. 
 
Another good reason to use NordVPN is its affordable price. With its two-year plan, you got a 68% discount that makes you only need to pay USD3.71 per month. That is very generous. NordVPN acquires the status as one of the best VPN providers by achieving those perfect balance between price and performance.  

Cyberghost

Cyberghost is a VPN provider based in Bucharest, Romania. It has been in business since 2011 but there has been a sudden influx of users, or ghosties as the company likes to call them, flocking to use their services in the past few years.   In our review of Cyberghost we found a lot of good things about their services which put them in third place, which isn't bad considering how many VPN providers there are in the world now.
 
One of the reasons for this phenomenon is certainly because of their attractive pricing plans. For its 18 months plan, Cyberghost only charged you USD2.75 per month with a 45-day money-back. That is one of the lowest price points in the industry.  
 
But it does come with a cost though. Cyberghost has slightly lower performance than the other two. Mind you, it is still above the industry average and it still has all of the necessary features that I mentioned before but it is clear that Cyberghost is the best choice for entry-level users who tries VPN for the first time. 

For top-level VPN providers like Express VPN, NordVPN, and Cyberghost, all essential features have been impeccably fulfilled. The question of which one is the best for you finally comes to your preference and what you actually need from them.  

For first time user, Cyberghost will give you an above-average performance with very impressive pricing plans. For seasoned users, NordVPN offers a great balance between price and performance.  

You can't go wrong with any of these three, but for me personally, I go with ExpressVPN. After all, if I have to pay for these services, might as well choose the one with the best overall performance, don't you agree?