Windscribe VS VyprVPN

There are more VPN providers today than ever. So choosing the right one can be challenging. Marketing will never tell you the whole story, so you need to dig deeper to determine if a particular VPN service is right for you.

To properly assess a VPN’s performance, we run a multitude of comprehensive tests to see if one outperforms the other. In this post, we’ll use the results of those tests to figure out who to recommend between Windscribe and VyprVPN.

Comparison highlights

Windscribe and VyprVPN pricing

Looking at our pricing information, there isn’t much to set these two providers apart on cost. VyprVPN charges a bit more for its monthly subscription, but its yearly price is lower. However, Windscribe also offers a “Build a Plan” subscription. With “Build a Plan,” you pay $1 per month per server location. And you can add as many locations as you like (there comes a point, of course, where you’ll be better off signing up for either a monthly or yearly plan).

VyprVPN subscriptions come with the industry standard 30-day money-back guarantee. That makes Windscribe’s 3-day money-back guarantee appear somewhat anemic. It would be nice if Windscribe lengthened its refund period. In its defense, it does offer a free tier, which can be used to test the service before signing up.

Windscribe and VyprVPN features

Both providers cover all of the most popular platforms. Windscribe goes the extra mile by providing a Linux client app. That’s not something you see very often. While VyprVPN also supports Linux, it only provides a command line client app. Windscribe supports FireTV, Nvidia Shield, and KODI. That’s a lot of coverage.

Both Windscribe and VyprVPN support routers and provide instructions on configuring them on their websites.

Both providers also support split tunneling, though somewhat selectively. Split tunneling lets you control which apps (or URLs) go through the VPN and which go through your ISP gateway. VyprVPN can split tunnel on macOS and Android, while Windscribe supports the feature in its macOS and Windows clients. Hopefully, both our providers will expand support for the feature to more platforms moving forward.

Concerning the number of simultaneous connections, Windscribe is unbeatable. It places no limit on concurrent connections. That’s very generous. VyprVPN, for its part, caps this at five connections. That’s pretty much the industry standard.

Speed

Crowning a winner in this category isn’t going to be very difficult. Clearly VyprVPN’s speeds are better than Windscribe. I remember reviewing Windscribe in the past, and its speeds were significantly better. Let’s hope it manages to enhance its speeds to bring them back to their previous levels.

Bottom line: if you’re someone for whom VPN speed is critical, VyprVPN will be the better choice.

Streaming capabilities

While Windscribe does support streaming, it only works with Netflix US. That’s not what one could call comprehensive support. But it also comes down to how VPN providers choose to define themselves. Some want to be a “jack of all trades” type of service, while others would rather focus on a VPN’s core mission of providing online security and privacy. That’s the path taken by Windscribe.

Looking at VyprVPN’s streaming support, it pops out that it’s a much more streaming-friendly VPN provider. So for streaming, VyprVPN also takes the win.

Look at our recommended VPN providers for streaming if streaming over VPN is important to you.

China

Windscribe and VyprVPN both work in China – that’s not something you see every day. So making a connection from China should be possible with both providers, but you might have to do a bit of server surfing before finding one that actually works. Getting a VPN to work from China is becoming increasingly difficult, with many variables at play. That’s probably why neither provider prominently highlights the feature in their marketing.

You can look at our post listing the best VPN providers that work in China. Remember to download your VPN apps before landing in China – they’re likely to be blocked from within the country.

Setup and interface

Both our providers’ desktop apps are well-designed and work pretty well. But despite being proper desktop apps, their design is more akin to a mobile app. So the apps’ UIs are small and can feel a bit cramped. Desktops have more screen real estate than mobile devices; it would have been nice if they designed their desktop apps to use the larger screen.

Still, both apps are easy enough to use and navigate.

In VyprVPN’s app, server selection is list-based, and you can search for servers by country and city. The app can also connect you to the fastest server automatically.

In Windscribe’s app, server selection is also list-based only, although you can find servers by region and city. And just like VyprVPN, Windscribe’s app can automatically connect you to the fastest server in your chosen region.

Both Windscribe and VyprVPN have Settings pages that allow users to customize the apps to their needs. Windscribe definitely exposes more settings to its users. And that makes Windscribe’s app more complicated to understand than VyprVPN’s app, but with the benefit of accommodating more complex setups. So tweakers or “edge case” users should have everything they need. And less technical users can still use the app without changing those settings, and they’ll be fine.

VyprVPN provides simpler option menus. But they include the settings that the overwhelming majority of users would need. So it all depends on the type of VPN user you are. For customization, go for Windscribe. For ease of use, VyprVPN would be a better choice.

Both Windscribe and VyprVPN provide mobile apps that support iOS and Android. Each provider’s mobile app is easy to navigate and use. And both apps are adapted to smaller screens.

Servers

Windscribe’s VPN network is “middle of the road” – it has a medium-sized network. You’ll find some bigger ones as well as some smaller ones. And while some VPN users want massive server networks, I feel that Windscribe’s network would be fine for most users. I tend to prefer smaller networks because it gives me the impression that more care goes into each server’s configuration. But impressions aside, VyprVPN’s network is significantly larger, so if you’re the type of user that needs an extensive network (there are good reasons to want to have many different servers to choose from), then, VyprVPN will be the way to go.

Below is a list of countries where each provider hosts VPN servers:

Security

Windscribe and VyprVPN both support secure VPN protocols. Windscribe supports OpenVPN, IKEv2, and WireGuard. VyprVPN supports WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, and Chameleon. Chameleon is a custom protocol developed by VyprVPN. It’s stated to be a modified version of OpenVPN that scrambles the packets transiting through the VPN tunnel to get around DPI inspection. That’s probably how VyprVPN manages to work out of China.

Windscribe and VyprVPN both use 256-bit AES encryption with 4096-bit RSA keys for OpenVPN and IKEv2. WireGuard uses different ciphers that are no less secure – in fact, the ciphers used by WireGuard are newer and perhaps more secure.

Both our providers also include a kill switch in all of their apps. And they both use their own no-logging DNS servers by default.

Both Windscribe and VyprVPN are very similar on the security front. We’re giving the win to Windcribe as it only supports robust VPN protocols – and still manages to work from China.

Privacy

VyprVPN is based in the United States, and Windscribe is based in Canada. Both Canada and the US are part of the Five Eyes Alliance: an intelligence-sharing network between nations that includes the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States – the head of the organization. So neither provider is ideal regarding its jurisdiction.

Moving on to privacy policies, Windscribe’s privacy policy is excellent. Windscribe tries to collect as little data as possible to provide its service. It collects only the following data points:

• Username
• Connection timestamp
• Amount of data transferred
• Number of simultaneous connections

The last point on the list may seem odd, given that Windscribe allows unlimited simultaneous connections. It counts the number of simultaneous connections to avoid abuse and account sharing. So if you have an extremely high number of simultaneous connections, you may come under Windscribe’s scrutiny. There’s no word on the threshold, but I would expect it to be unusually high. So I wouldn’t worry. Windscribe’s privacy policy is one of the best we’ve seen.

VyprVPN, for its part, isn’t as clear-cut as Windscribe. It made some big changes to its privacy policy in 2018. Before that, its privacy policy stated that VyprVPN collected “the user’s source IP address, the VyprVPN IP address used by the user, connection start and stop time, and total number of bytes used.” That’s not exactly lean.

Post-2018, its overhauled privacy policy states that the VPN provider doesn’t collect any user data. It also underwent an independent audit to back up its claims. So today, VyprVPN is a no-logging VPN provider.

Still, Windscribe takes the win for privacy.

Configuration

Shared IP addresses provide better privacy than dedicated IP addresses. Because the IP address is shared between many users, all the traffic from all those users appears to be coming from the same source. And that makes correlating any of that traffic to a single user almost impossible.

Windscribe and VyprVPN both provide their users with shared IP addresses by default. You can get a dedicated IP address from Windscribe as a paid add-on, which can be useful to host servers that should be accessible from the internet while benefiting from the VPN’s security gains.

Only Windscribe blocks ads and malware. The feature works via DNS blackholing, which references your DNS requests against a blocklist containing malware domains and ad networks, blocking any matches. It’s a great feature that works exceptionally well.

Customer service

Windscribe and VyprVPN provide email support and a searchable knowledge base with answers to the most common issues on their respective websites. Windscribe additionally supports live chat.

We wanted to test each provider’s response time regarding customer service emails. So we sent each of them three questions in three separate emails. The first two questions are quite common and shouldn’t be difficult to answer for any support rep. The third question is purposefully more challenging. The point of the third question is to find out if their representatives have the ability to answer more technical queries. The third question differs for each provider because they don’t support the same features.

The results are below:

So we didn’t get “fast” support from either provider. The response delays averaged two days (VyprVPN) and two and a half days (Windscribe). That can be a long time to wait if you’ve got a pressing issue. So I would hope to see both providers’ response times improve.

Both Windscribe and VyprVPN’s answers were well-written, polite, and informative enough to answer my questions. But I have to say that Windscribe’s responses demonstrated a firmer understanding of networking, VPNs, and online privacy. That’s not to say that VyprVPN’s answers were lacking in any way – they weren’t. It’s just that Windscribe went the extra mile and explained everything I needed to know right in the body of the email. It didn’t just give me a summary and a link to its knowledge base.

While both providers here are comparable in terms of support, Windscribe takes the win for its more comprehensive answers.

The winner: Windscribe

So the winner is Windscribe. Given the results above, I feel Windscribe will be the better choice for most users – despite its streaming support being far from stellar. That’s Windscribe’s biggest downside (with its speeds – but I’m confident those will get better in time).

VyprVPN has much better streaming, and its speeds are significantly better. But there are two big turn-offs: 1) Its past data collection, and 2) Its custom VPN protocol (Chameleon). But don’t get me wrong: I still feel VyprVPN is a fine choice, and I trust that its collection practices have changed.

Keep in mind that this is a “VS” post between two providers, and I can only pick one. Given what a VPN is – a privacy and security-enhancing tool – I tend to favor the ones that perform the best on a VPN’s core mission. In this case, that’s Windscribe. But I’d happily sign-up for a VyprVPN account. If the results were strictly based on speed or streaming, VyprVPN would be the winner. This isn’t good vs. bad; they’re both good.

In a nutshell, Windscribe takes it for the reasons below:

1. Its security and privacy practices are excellent.
2. It only supports secure, open-source VPN protocols (no custom protocols here).
3. It provides an ad and malware blocker.
4. It can cater to more advanced users.

For most VPN users, the better all-around choice will be Windscribe.

See also:

• NordVPN vs Windscribe
• Windscribe vs PrivateVPN
• ExpressVPN vs VyprVPN
• VyprVPN vs AtlasVPN