A gaming VPN service creates an encrypted tunnel between the device you are gaming on and the internet. Gaming-ready VPNs offer enhanced security and the option to disguise your IP address, which is especially important if you are concerned about stream sniping or DoS attacks. If your internet service provider employs activity-based speed and traffic throttling, a VPN may also help you bypass such restrictions, as the ISP won’t be able to see what you are doing. 

VPNs give you a level of security and privacy, but there are downsides to using a VPN while you’re gaming. VPNs, by their nature, will often reduce speeds by up to 30% — and potentially far more when you connect to far-away servers — as they encrypt and reroute traffic. These extra steps can also impact your latency, ping, and response rates, which can make all the difference in competitive gaming. 

Unless you are a consistent target of internet trolls trying to track you down through your IP address, we don’t think it is worth purchasing a VPN purely for gaming purposes. Typically, a gaming VPN will only protect your privacy on devices with native support — such as PCs and mobile devices — and if you want to use a VPN on a console, you will likely need a router with VPN support, or you will have to configure your existing router, which can be a complicated process.

Also: The best travel VPNs

If you plan to use a VPN to also protect your day-to-day activities, for streaming purposes, and for travel, we would recommend signing up for one. A VPN is able to give you blanket security coverage, reducing the likelihood of being tracked online and giving you the option to shift to different locations, which can be useful in various scenarios.

A gaming VPN should be secure and have the performance needed to handle the demands of online gaming. As a baseline, every VPN on our best VPNs for gaming list needs to have reasonable speeds, minimal gaming lag, and decent ping results.

Many providers recommended in this list have been subject to in-depth testing and reviews by members of our ZDNET team. We’ve been talking about VPNs for years, spoken with their management and their users, and developed a generally favorable impression.

ZDNET tests VPN services from multiple locations, but we can’t test them from all locations. Every home, community, local ISP, and nation has a different infrastructure. 

We analyzed the best VPNs for gaming below using the following criteria to help you make an informed decision:

• Performance: Our top VPNs must have a minimum level of performance. After all, there’s no point in using a VPN if your connection continually drops or lags, making multiplayer gaming impossible.
• Router support: Many routers don’t make it easy to set up a VPN to cover all your devices. Considering that consoles do not natively support VPN apps, we highlighted the best options for VPN usage beyond a PC or a mobile device.
• Security: There’s no point in using a VPN unless its security protocols and encryption levels are up to scratch. We also ensured the development team behind each recommended VPN cares about making security improvements over time and patching reported bugs.
• Kill switch: A kill switch prevents you from having an unprotected connection. It is an important feature for a VPN, as it protects you by preventing a return to a default Wi-Fi connection should your internet connection unexpectedly drop.
• Geo-blocks and streaming: VPNs can be key to accessing local content and services while you’re away from home. Considering these factors, we ensured that our top recommendations performed well and are unlikely to slow down your connection while streaming.
• Platforms: What systems and devices can you run the VPN on? Our VPN recommendations have to offer easy-to-use and intuitive apps suitable for various hardware.
• Countries and servers: In how many countries does the VPN have servers? This can include physical and virtual servers, and whether there are enough — at least 50 or so — to provide options.
• Trial length and price: Each VPN we recommend has a solid money-back guarantee of at least 30 days.

• Support: As with any subscription software, you may encounter problems with installing apps, using the service, renewing, or canceling. We list VPNs with an available support team.

For a more extensive breakdown, check out our comprehensive VPN testing methodology page.

Choosing the best gaming VPN will involve hands-on testing. All the VPNs on this list have 30-day money-back guarantees, so you can test out the service for a month and get a full refund if the performance isn’t what you hoped it would be.

When you are selecting your new gaming VPN, you need to consider the following factors:

• Price: VPN prices vary, and although the most expensive services can cost you upwards of $10 to $20 per month, you can also find solid, reliable VPNs for as little as a few dollars. Keep an eye on renewal rates, as some VPN providers hike prices after introductory periods. Many VPN providers will also offer a free seven-day mobile trial. We recommend that you avoid free VPNs — with a few exceptions — as they may sell your data or bombard you with ads.
• Simultaneous connections: If you’re paying for a VPN suitable for your PC or gaming console, you might still want to use it across multiple devices, such as smartphones. We recommend signing up for a plan supporting at least six devices. Thankfully, many paid VPN plans now offer at least this or unlimited connections.
• Streaming: If you intend to use your gaming VPN to stream content on Twitch, for example, ensure that the VPN can accommodate your favorite services. You will need a fast connection that is unlikely to drop halfway through your gaming session.
• Gaming servers: Does the VPN provider offer specialized servers for streaming or gaming? You might prefer a VPN with servers specifically offered to reduce lag.
• Usage length: You need to consider your preferred price point given how long you think you will need a VPN. If you’re in it for the long haul, consider a two-year subscription, as you also tend to earn the best prices with the most extended terms. Some VPNs offer longer options. 
• Apps and extensions: When selecting a VPN, try its accompanying mobile apps and extensions to ensure you get the most out of your subscription. Some VPNs, for example, have great desktop software but a mobile app that may not be as intuitive.

Also: The best VPN free trials

We recommend Surfshark as one of the most consistently affordable VPNs for gaming, as it suits a variety of budgets and will not throttle you based on data usage. While the price point is excellent, Surfshark doesn’t always match the speeds of the top VPNs in the market today.

Alternatively, you could try Windscribe’s free plan, which is great in terms of server choice and speed. The downside is that you are limited to 2GB per month unless you agree to various initiatives, such as signing up with your email address.

The answer to this question will typically depend on the best speeds you can achieve. If you aren’t concerned about your server location, we recommend trying your VPN’s “smart” or automatic connection function first. It will usually find a server close to you, improving latency and the available speed. If you want to appear as if you’re in a different country, examine your VPN’s available servers and try to find the “fastest” server recommendation.

VPNs use different protocols to manage data transfers between your device and VPN servers. 

Wireguard is the best protocol for gaming VPNs. It generally offers the best speed and stringent cryptographic protection to keep your connection private. Many of today’s best VPNs support this protocol.

Internet speed, often called “bandwidth,” is the speed at which data can be transferred over the internet. If you’re downloading or uploading a big file, you want lots of bandwidth. 

Ping time is how fast you can send a request and receive an answer. It’s the round-trip response time, and it’s very sensitive to distance and hops. When watching a video, you want to get all that video information down to your machine, but once it starts to transmit, it’s usually running at a good, steady flow.

Ping time, however, is how long it takes after you pull the trigger in a game for it to know that you pulled the trigger. If the game thinks you squeezed off a shot half a second after you did, the results could be radically different — and this can be significant, especially for people who aren’t just gaming casually.

Ping is the travel time between two points, so the ping you might see listed in VPN reviews may not mean much to you. Your two points and the reviewer’s two points will always be different. This is one reason we haven’t listed ping speeds for these VPNs. It’s more important for you to measure the ping from where you are to where you’re connecting.

VPNs give you a level of security and privacy. They can protect you against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which could compromise your connection. A VPN also allows you to connect to servers in different locations. 

VPNs protect gaming consoles in the same way they protect your other devices. Unlike simply connecting via a PC or mobile device, a VPN connection with your PlayStation 5 or Xbox can involve a more complicated setup. Gaming consoles don’t support native VPN apps, but you can still get the protections, location spoofing, and anonymity of a VPN.

The key is running your VPN client on a router or sharing a PC’s internet connection and bridging your VPN connection. Most VPN vendors have guides that show you how to set this up.

If you’re trying to download an online game early, such as when release times are locked to specific regions — or you want to take advantage of location-based sales and promotions — you might be able to do this if you connect to your VPN before you log in to the platform.

A note of caution, though: platforms like Steam may monitor your account for “consistency” in your location history and take a dim view of such activities, as using a VPN for these purposes is “strictly against the Steam Terms of Service and may result in restrictions on your Steam account.”

Separately, some games are geo-restricted and are unavailable in other countries. You could use a VPN to access them, but you might be shouldering the same risks of account suspension or deletion.