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All these features are valuable and go a long way toward justifying the cost of
other VPN services. But given that Mullvad offers the rock-solid basics at a
fraction of the price, it’s hard to argue that they’re necessary.
VPN PROTOCOLS
There are many ways to create a VPN connection, but I prefer the OpenVPN
protocol. This is an open-source project that has been thoroughly picked over
for any potential vulnerabilities. I am happy to see that Mullvad supports
OpenVPN in all of its apps.
WireGuard is the heir apparent to OpenVPN. It’s also an open-source project,
but it uses newer technology and is intended to be faster and simpler than
OpenVPN. I have not done extensive WireGuard testing since the technology is
very new, but my anecdotal experience has been overwhelmingly positive.
Mullvad has invested heavily in WireGuard, putting it in a great position for the
future. For Mullvad’s Android and iOS apps, WireGuard is the only option. It’s
the default for the Linux and macOS apps, too, although these support other
protocols as well. In my testing, the Mullvad Windows app had support for
WireGuard, but defaulted to OpenVPN.
SERVERS AND SERVER LOCATIONS
Mullvad has servers in 36 countries across the
globe. That’s a decent offering, but it’s far below the
average of 52 countries I’ve seen offered by
competitors. A large distribution of servers gives
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locations and also increases the likelihood of
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at the time. ExpressVPN leads among the VPNs I’ve
reviewed, offering servers in 94 countries without
relying heavily on virtual servers (more on this
later). Mullvad also doesn’t have enormous
diversity among its server offerings, with only one
country in South America and no coverage in Africa
or Central America