The Opera web browser has included a simple free VPN for a long time, but it only protects your browser traffic, has almost no functionality, and is generally very slow.
Opera has now introduced Opera VPN Pro, a true system-wide VPN that allows you to protect all of your app traffic on up to six Android, Windows, or Mac devices.
The service can be accessed from the Opera browser instead of a standalone app, in the same way as a free VPN: press a button in the address bar and connect. But it is a completely different service underneath.
You can now select countries (and sometimes cities), with 33 countries available. You can choose OpenVPN or IKEv2 protocols, depending on the platform. And instead of routing your traffic through Opera's overloaded free servers, Opera VPN Pro uses the same network as NordVPN, offering much better speeds (more on that below).
There aren't many features yet (more on that below, too), and there's no iOS app yet, but the price is certainly right. Opera VPN Pro costs €5.99 per month (opens in a new tab), which is about half the price of some monthly plans. It's down to $2.99 per month on the six-month plan (opens in a new tab) and just $1.99 billed annually (opens in a new tab), a minuscule $23.88 for a full year's protection.
Privacy
Most VPN providers go to great lengths to convince you of their strong privacy and that you will be completely safe with their service. Opera is, well, a bit more cautious. Here is the relevant part of their privacy policy (opens in a new tab):
"VPN Pro is provided by a third-party service provider... Data communicated through VPN Pro will be encrypted and routed through one of thousands of servers... However, we do not promise that the service is absolutely secure. Despite our efforts and the best efforts of our provider, criminals or other malicious actors can still access your data."
¿Es perturbador, unusualmente honesto, o ambos? We're not entirely sure, but it's something to keep in mind: Opera VPN Pro doesn't offer great privacy promises, and it's probably not the best choice for mission-critical tasks. the confidentiality.
Opera claims that VPN Pro is a no-logs service, explaining: "We do not collect or store any logs of the web pages you visit or links you click on servers dedicated to this service."
It looks promising. And since Opera VPN Pro is based on NordVPN's heavily audited servers and network, we'd be reasonably sure there's nothing dangerous here. But Opera hasn't audited its own apps or infrastructure, so at this point there's no evidence to back it up. Now we just have to accept the company's words about trust.
windows app
Although Opera VPN Pro can now protect your entire Windows device, it is still fully accessible from the Opera browser. You need to download and install Opera, launch it when you need protection, and click a VPN icon in the address bar to control the app.
It's a relatively cumbersome solution (installing a full browser requires a lot more resources than just a standalone client), but once you launch the app, it's much like any other VPN offering.
There's a simple dashboard with the current location and a Connect button, for example. Tap the location, a list appears with your recent selections at the top, the full selection of 33 countries below, and you can choose what you need. It's very basic, no city level locations, no server load numbers, no favorites, but it's also very simple and you'll understand how it all works in seconds.
The only other feature is a Settings icon. Tap it to bring up a VPN Pro section on Opera's General Settings page. It's even more basic than the location list, with little more than a few account management options and a reconnect feature (which automatically restarts if the VPN fails).
The application does not mention the protocols. Our investigations revealed that it was using a standard Windows IKEv2 connection, slower than WireGuard, but properly configured for maximum security.
immobilizer
The Opera VPN Pro website doesn't mention a kill switch, and our tests showed why: it doesn't appear to have one. When we forcefully closed our Windows VPN connection, Opera displayed a "Disconnected" message and reconnected in seconds, but it didn't block our internet and our device traffic was unprotected.
This reconnection feature is welcome and reduces the exposure of your data. It's not a substitute for a working kill switch, though, and our tests found it to have its own weird "feature" (or bug).
Let's say you're done with Opera VPN, closed your browser, and connected to something else through another Windows network connection, perhaps a secure connection for a work system. We will call this service X.
We found that if we forcefully closed X's connection, Opera VPN Pro would act as if it was a failure of its own service, displaying a warning and attempting to connect to its own network. But X was also trying to reconnect. Sometimes Opera would connect first, sometimes X, and other times that connection would fail after a few seconds, probably because the two systems were fighting over who was in charge, and both were trying to reconnect.
This may not happen much in real life. If you don't use a second connection, this may never happen. But the mere fact that the app could make such a fundamental mistake is concerning, and we wonder what other problems might be lurking somewhere in its code.
Performance
We tested Opera VPN Pro speeds with Windows systems in the UK and US using multiple speed tests over multiple sessions. It's a minimum of 120 individual checks and often much more.
Results were relatively average at 230-280 Mbps. That's what we expect from an IKEv2 connection (Atlas VPN also achieved 230-240 Mbps in recent tests, Hotspot Shield 220-260 Mbps). However, WireGuard-equipped VPNs are typically two to three times faster, with Surfshark and TorGuard hitting over 950 Mbps in their latest tests.
Opera's VPN has always focused on privacy and security rather than access to geo-blocked content, so we didn't expect much from our unblock tests. And of course it gave us very mixed results in both the UK (unblocked BBC iPlayer, couldn't even access ITV or Channel 4) and Australia (successful with 9Now, failed with 10 plays).
But the service continued to surprise us everywhere, unblocking Netflix in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan, as well as Amazon Prime Video and Disney Plus - a very strong track record.
If you're looking for even more, ExpressVPN, Hide.me, Ivacy, NordVPN, PureVPN, and Surfshark unblocked 100% of our sample sites in their latest tests.
Support
Opera Pro VPN's support site (opens in a new tab) is about as basic as we've seen, with a handful of extremely short articles that contain almost no useful details.
We open the article 'Can I use Opera VPN Pro on my laptop/desktop?' hoping to find step-by-step guides for setting up the service, eg. ExpressVPN offers seven in-depth tutorials just for Windows, but the Opera article was 58 words long and said a bit more than "it's available for Windows 8 and MacOS 10.15 or later, just download Opera Browser to use it."
Live chat is available, but only from Monday to Friday, from 8am to 4pm (CEST). You can leave a message and the support team will get back to you via email, but officially it can take up to 48 hours.
We posted a test question explaining that Opera VPN Pro connected for us, but then we couldn't access the internet in any app until the connection was closed. This is usually a DNS type issue, but would the agent give us a detailed answer to help us resolve it?
The good news is that the response came faster than expected, in around 18 hours. The bad news is that it only included the most generic advice that anyone with more than five minutes of VPN experience would discover on their own: uninstall and reinstall, or try it on another device.
final verdict
Opera VPN Pro extends Opera's free VPN by protecting all device traffic, unblocking Netflix, and offering a decent set of locations. If you're an Opera fanatic and just looking for the basic VPN basics, this might do the trick. But the sub-par speeds, Opera-bound interface, short list of features, missing kill switch, and lack of iOS support make it a poor choice for everyone.
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