Mullvad is a Sweden-based VPN that doesn't just talk about protecting your privacy, it does something about it.
Signing up, for example, is as easy as clicking a button to generate an account number. The website creates a unique account number for you and you're done. Mullvad does not need your email address, name, country or other personal information; account identification is sufficient.
The company goes on to recommend that you pay in cash, bitcoin, or bitcoin cash, making sure that it knows next to nothing about you. If that's too much, you can pay as usual by card, PayPal, bank transfer or Swish.
Mullvad's core service is packed with privacy-friendly technology. It only uses the OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols, for example. There is industrial-grade encryption (AES-256 GCM certificates, 4096-bit RSA with SHA512, perfect forward secrecy). There are multiple layers of protection against DNS and IPv6 leaks, you have a variety of hidden options to bypass VPN blocking, port forwarding support is built in and the list goes on.
- Mullvad VPN subscription options:
- 12-month plan: €6 per month (total cost €72) (Opens in a new tab)
The network is of a reasonable size. Mullvad may have “only” 800 servers (NordVPN has over 5400), but they are P2P-friendly and well spread across 67 locations and 38 countries.
The company has its own apps for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and Linux, as well as an extension for Firefox, and you can connect up to five devices simultaneously.
Not sure if you can trust what these apps do? It's usually a good idea to be skeptical, but Mullvad is more transparent than most. Their apps are not only open source, so anyone can verify the code, but they're also externally audited.
Pricing is extremely simple at €5 (€5,70) per month (opens in a new tab), no long-term contract required. It's half the price you'll pay for monthly billing with some providers, and cheaper than many annual plans. Even better, Mullvad offers a 10% discount if you pay with cryptocurrencies.
However, if you're happy to stay longer, there's a lot of money to be saved. Private Internet Access costs just €2.03 per month for the first term of your three-year plan, for example, a fraction of the price.
Mullvad, however, marks an advantage for its refund procedure. Not only is there a 30-day money-back guarantee, but you can also refund the Bitcoin payment in certain situations. There are some potential complications (the refund help page - opens in a new tab) has more), but it's still better than the "no bitcoin refund" coverage we see with most providers.
Privacy
Figuring out a VPN's logging policy is often a real challenge, but again Mullvad is different, explaining the finer details on an excellent policy page.
The key point is that nothing is saved that can be connected to a specific account. No traffic, no DNS queries, no IP addresses, not even connection times, dates or bandwidth used.
Mullvad explains that he monitors the current number of logins in each account, to make sure that no one can use more than the five allowed. But he is not registered, so there is no way of knowing how much he was using five months, weeks or even minutes ago.
The bottom line of all this is that you don't have to worry about how Mullvad handles court requests to access your usage data, because, well, there isn't.
Mullvad backed up its privacy claims with a 2021 infrastructure audit (opens in a new tab) and a comprehensive Cure53 audit (opens in a new tab) of its desktop and mobile apps.
They found some issues, but that's what we expected: Cure53's audits are very, very, very thorough. However, Mullvad has resolved the issues and promised regular audits in the future. It's nice to see a provider open up to this level of scrutiny and overall we think Mullvad seems much more trustworthy than most of the competition.
Install
Getting started with Mullvad is as easy as generating an account number and buying time (cards, PayPal, Bitcoin, and other payment methods are supported, as mentioned). The website presents this clearly and gives you an unusual level of control. Most providers sign you up for an auto-renewing subscription by default, for example; Mullvad's first options are for single payments only. (You can also purchase a subscription, but you must specifically choose this option.)
A full download page (opens in a new tab) directed us to the Windows client, but also included links to the Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android apps, the latest beta, the Firefox extension, and the How To Guide. Mullvad's WireGuard and OpenVPN setup.
We grab and install the Windows client in seconds. We activated it by entering our account number (Mullvad does not require a username or password) and it was ready to go.
Interface
While some VPN apps look and feel very different between platforms, Mullvad takes a more unified approach. Whether you're using Windows or Android, Mac or iOS, or even Linux, each app is nearly identical, with little more than a few settings that vary between versions.
The apps look good, with a colorful panel, a map showing your current location, and a "Secure my connection" button.
Touching the place name allows you to choose another from a list of countries and cities. It's surprisingly basic, with no "Fastest" or "Automatic" option to select the best server for your current location (default after installation is still Sweden), no search box, favorites, or server loading indicators.
What you get, oddly enough, is the ability to filter by server providers. Are Mullvad customers really more interested in seeing M247 or Leaseweb servers than, say, listing all locations in Asia or saving their own favourites? Really?
Whichever location you choose, Mullvad won't waste any time connecting you. Even OpenVPN was up and running in about 6-8 seconds, less than half the time we see with some apps.
Features and settings
Mullvad's basic location picker didn't give us hope for the rest of the app, but it actually has a lot more features than expected.
The company doesn't make much of it on the website, for example, but the apps have built-in ad and tracker blocking. (Malware Blocker is available in desktop betas as of this writing and may be fully available by the time you read this.)
NordVPN, Surfshark, and a few others have ad blocking, but you're usually told very little about the technology they use and how it works. Mullvad, again, is much more transparent. Its Github site (opens in a new tab) tells you exactly what blocklists it uses, and you can even download them.
Split Tunneling support on desktop (not available on mobile apps) allows you to specify apps that will not use the VPN. It's not as flexible as some (ExpressVPN's desktop app gives you more options), but Mullvad's solution looks better and did everything we needed.
Multi-hop VPN is another desktop-only feature that first sees your connections routed to a Mullvad server, leaving another server's VPN. The feature works fine, but it's hard to find. You won't even know it exists unless you check your OpenVPN settings and enable bridge mode (and, no, we wouldn't think of doing that either).
However, most of the app settings are simpler. You can choose to launch the app and/or sign in when your device boots; enable or disable notifications; enable a switch to block internet traffic if the VPN goes down; and use a custom DNS server.
It's a more configurable setting than many apps, though it lacks some features. In particular, we would like the ability to connect automatically when accessing certain networks or types of networks. However, Mullvad disagrees, suggesting that the feature is a security risk because hackers could set up a network with the same name and your device could connect automatically.
Desktop apps have another rare expert-level extra in a very flexible command-line interface (opens in a new tab), which allows you to script changes settings, connect to chosen locations, view status, or close session automatically. This will be too complicated for most people, but if you want to do something advanced, perhaps create a script that automatically logs you into Mullvad before launching a specific application, this could be very useful.
Support
If Mullvad isn't providing the service you need, their web-based help center (opens in a new tab) is here to help you get back up and running. There's a decent amount of content here, most of it providing really useful information, but it doesn't begin to match ExpressVPN or NordVPN.
The articles are not well organized, for example. The Help Center doesn't show the articles you're most likely to need first, either on your home screen or when you search. You may need to search for the information you need, and even if you do find it, the articles often assume a high level of technical knowledge.
There's also no live chat support, but Mullvad allows users to contact support from within their apps or via email. We asked a question and received a friendly and helpful answer (much better than the website) within 90 minutes. That can't compete with the two or three minute wait we typically see with live chat from the major providers, but it's also a lot better than the 12+ hours we often wait elsewhere, and all in all, Mullvad delivers an acceptable level of support. .
