When you're looking to bolster your internet security
with a VPN
, it doesn't matter whether you're on a PC, a Mac or a phone — your VPN works the same way under the hood. Using the best VPNs
, you can protect your anonymity online, stay concealed from anyone tracking you and change your location to explore content from all over the world.
If anything is different about a Mac VPN, it's much more likely to be the app you use to control it. Distinctions between Mac and Windows apps can be cosmetic, but Mac VPNs often have different features available, including various VPN protocols (though the list of server locations is usually the same).
That said, a good VPN keeps the differences between operating systems to a minimum. That's why the list of best VPNs for Mac is pretty similar to the list of the best VPNs overall. For each recommendation below, I'll explain how it earned its place on the list and mention any particular Mac-focused features worth noting.
In this story
Best VPNs for Mac in 2026
Sam Chapman for Engadget/Yahoo Tech
Free trial:Fully free plan; 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans
Monthly price:$9.99
Best deal:$2.99 per month for 24 months
Learn more from Engadget's deep-dive Proton VPN review .
Proton VPN is an excellent all-around VPN. Whatever you need a VPN service for, whether it's streaming, anonymity or getting around network blocks, Proton VPN can likely get it done with no fuss.
For starters, it's fast, with a special VPN accelerator that boosts speeds by processing lots of information at once instead of putting it all in a queue (this is called parallel processing). It isn't quite as swift as Surfshark or NordVPN, but it matches those speeds with a smooth app that almost never takes longer than a second to connect to a server. It also keeps speeds consistent worldwide: I started my tests with a speed around 60 Mbps and never dropped below 45 Mbps. That's more than enough for high-def streaming on your Mac.
It also feels good to use in other respects. Proton VPN's Mac app gives you a choice between scrolling through the server list for the location you want, picking it off a scrollable, resizable map screen or finding it using a search bar. All the settings you'll need to customize — including its appearance, the protocol you'd like to use and any special features — are sorted into four tabs in the preferences section. You'll have to go to the menu bar to find them, but that's nothing Mac fans aren't used to.
I also appreciate how much more mission-focused Proton is than most other VPNs (outliers like Mullvad and Windscribe notwithstanding). It's partly owned by a nonprofit and has an extremely solid privacy policy backed up by repeated audits. I've never seen it leak my real IP address, and I've tried a lot of ways to make that happen. It even has Secure Core servers that boost physical security without slowing down your connection in any noticeable way.
It's also impossible to talk about Proton VPN without mentioning its free plan, which is one of the best there is — only hide.me beats it, for reasons I'll cover below. You can use Proton VPN as much as you want for free, provided you're OK with not being able to choose your own server location. If you choose to pay, the price is always reasonable, never costing more than $9.99 per month.
- Excellent download speeds
- Perfect unblocking score
- Relatively cheap monthly price
- Can't choose server on free plan
- Expensive long-term plans
Sam Chapman for Engadget/Yahoo Tech
Free trial:7 days, plus 30-day refund guarantee
Monthly price:$15.45
Best deal:$1.99 per month for 27 months
Check out Engadget's full Surfshark review for details.
Speed is the big reason to choose Surfshark. Thanks to an innovative approach that connects all its servers much more closely than a traditional VPN would, Surfshark moves data around faster than any other service. If the primary thing you want out of a VPN is fast browsing and good video quality, Surfshark leads the pack. Beware, though, that its ping times aren't quite as fast as download speed, so you might not have the same experience gaming or video chatting.
On Mac, Surfshark downloads and sets itself up in a flash. It's easy to navigate, with tabs that clearly explain where all its extra features are and what they do. It's also very similar to the Windows app, so you'll have an easy time if you switch systems often. It does have a slight problem with pop-ups, but these do contain vital information for newbies — they're just a little annoying if you're a veteran user of VPNs.
Surfshark is totally secure, with ever-present encryption and a nearly 10-year operating history without any major breaches. It's based in the Netherlands, where you'll be protected by the EU's favorable data laws. If you're unsure what you're doing, it also comes with one of the better FAQ pages I've ever perused.
It also offers excellent sign-up deals. The first time you subscribe, you can get 27 months of service for about $2 a month. You can only renew on an annual plan, but that's still less than $4 per month. Aside from the VPN, there are a lot of useful tools available through the Surfshark One package, including an antivirus, safe search and Incogni data removal.
- Fastest download speeds
- Servers in 100 countries
- Unlimited simultaneous connections
- Too expensive for one month
Sam Chapman for Engadget/Yahoo Tech
Free trial:7 days on Android; 30 day refund on all plans
Monthly price:$12.99
Best deal:$3.39 per month for 24 months
Visit Engadget for a full NordVPN review .
A lot like Surfshark, with which it shares a parent company, NordVPN is a flawed but ultimately high-quality VPN service. Although its apps have the same problem with unnecessary notifications, they're otherwise easy to use, especially on Mac. Whenever I've used NordVPN on a macOS device, it always downloads fast, connects quickly to any server location and never gets hung up when disconnecting.
NordVPN's interface on Mac spends a little too much space on a big map, but once you get used to working the side menu, it's easy to find the server locations you need. You can add favorites for easy retrieval later, or auto-connect to the fastest server if the location doesn't matter.
This side menu is also where you'll find NordVPN's specialty servers. This standout set of features includes Onion Over VPN (which connects you safely to the ultra-anonymous Tor network), Double VPN (which runs you through two VPN servers in case one malfunctions) and P2P servers for anyone who often uses torrenting clients. NordVPN's Mac app unfortunately lacks split tunneling, but it includes all the special servers.
NordVPN's other selling point is an expansive server network that reaches 153 locations in 117 countries. All these locations leave your download speeds nearly untouched; only Surfshark is faster. During my streaming tests, NordVPN had some slight issues unblocking Netflix in its Nigeria location, but I believe that was a one-off problem — it's great at streaming everywhere else.
The best price we’ve seen for NordVPN is $81.36 for 24 months, working out to $3.39 per month. However, this is only for the Basic tier. To get the full set of features, including Threat Protection to block malware and trackers, you'll need to add 50 cents per month and get a Plus subscription. In my eyes, it's worth the money.
- Very fast speeds
- Wide server selection
- Hard to get best pricing deals
- Apps have some annoyances
Sam Chapman for Engadget/Yahoo Tech
Free trial:7 days on mobile; 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans
Monthly price:$12.95
Best deal:$2.44 per month for 28 months
To learn more, read my in-depth ExpressVPN review .
ExpressVPN is a service surrounded by a lot of hype, most of it earned. It may not be the perfect VPN for every situation, but it's improved a lot in the last year, and it was already great to begin with. Notably, my usual complaint was that it's too expensive, but that's no longer true. Since switching to a tiered pricing system, ExpressVPN has cost about the same as its competitors, at least for the initial two-year billing period.
That makes a good Mac VPN into an even better deal. The main reason to recommend ExpressVPN is its streamlined simplicity — this is a VPN like a luxury car, with everything unnecessary stripped out and everything else finely tuned. To get started on Mac, all you have to do is download the app, follow the installation instructions, then click the big button. You'll be done in under five minutes.
Much of ExpressVPN's ease of use comes from how cleanly it works. It never gets stuck on connections, the search bar works instantly to find server locations and all its settings are accessible within two clicks. It's more than solid on the backend, too, with total security that never leaks your real location. It does lack some of the extra features of the other VPNs on this list, but if you're just looking to stream new shows, you probably won't miss them.
ExpressVPN's current best price gets you a two-year subscription for under $2.50 per month. It's on a tiered system, but the Basic level includes the entire VPN. Just note that the two-year rate is introductory only; afterwards, costs rise to $8.32 per month.
- Fast download speeds
- Great unblocking record
- Completely secure
- Good app design
- Expensive
- Not many features outside VPN
Sam Chapman for Engadget
Free trial:14 day refund guarantee except on cash and crypto payments
Monthly price:5 Euro
Best deal:5 Euro per month
Read a more detailed Mullvad review .
The best thing about Mullvad is its near-total privacy. It's impossible for a VPN to be completely private and impenetrable, since nothing in the world is foolproof, but Mullvad gets as close as it can. You don't need to give them any information to sign up — not even an email, since every Mullvad account is identified by a random 16-digit number.
Where most VPNs at least need financial information so you can buy your subscription, Mullvad lets you pay by mailing cash to its office in Sweden. It's got a dependable privacy policy with no holes, has undergone 17 different audits with more presumably in the pipeline and could not comply with a 2023 search warrant because its servers had no saved data.
Mullvad should be your go-to VPN if you need to protect your activity online, or want to keep things as “hidden” as possible. It's also got one of my favorite Mac interfaces. Working entirely out of the task bar makes it easy to get in and out when you need to connect. Settings are easy to reach and use, with helpful in-app explanations. One of my favorite touches is the circular arrow that shuffles you to another server in the same location; when one server isn't quite working, you can switch it up with one click. Even when one Mullvad server gets stuck on a site, I've yet to see two failures in a row.
- Very cheap monthly service
- Extremely private
- Good download speeds
- Small server network
hide.me VPN
Free trial:Fully free plan; 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans
Monthly price:$11.99
Best deal:$2.69 per month for 26 months
In the past, hide.me has been my pick for the best free VPN , simply because its plan is the only one that actually has no limits. Proton VPN’s free tier also gives you unlimited data, but it doesn't let you choose your own server. Windscribe lets you choose, but only gives you a limited amount of usage per month.
Only hide.me has the holy trinity of no ads, no data caps and free choice of servers. It's not all the servers, but eight locations for free is still $0 per country. Allegedly, hide.me will throttle your speeds once you've consumed a certain amount of data, but I've never seen that limit enforced — the internet always remains usable through the free VPN. In a major point in its favor, there aren't any paywalled features, either. The free plan limits nothing except your choice of server locations.
Perhaps I've never noticed because hide.me's speeds are very good across the board. It's not the fastest VPN of them all, but in all 91 countries where it has servers, you can stream from anywhere in the world without issue. Mac users should be happy to hear that the macOS version of hide.me has the same features and design as the Windows edition, including two levels of kill switch and an effective ad blocker called SmartGuard.
- Fully free with no data limits
- Fast apps with great interfaces
- Free IPv6 support
- Free plan has limited locations
- Claims to cap speeds after you use 10GB in a month
Sam Chapman for Engadget/Yahoo Tech
Free trial:Fully free plan; 7-day money-back guarantee on paid plans as long as you've used less than 10GB
Monthly price:$9.00
Best deal:$5.75 per month for 12 months
You'll find more information in this full Windscribe review .
Windscribe plays an important role in the VPN ecosystem. From its app design to its marketing posture, it's the gadfly of the bunch, taking potshots at industry leaders from the outside. It can get away with this because, when called upon to deliver instead of criticize, Windscribe actually does a pretty good job.
It's reasonably fast, delivering global average speed drops of around 25 percent (much faster on nearby servers). And it's more than reasonably good at streaming, unblocking Netflix in 15 out of 15 tests. It never leaks your real IP address, and it uses the right VPN protocols — along with two it built itself, which are good at getting around network-level blocks. Privacy is also a high point, as Windscribe recently fought an entire court case to avoid having to reveal user information it never saved in the first place.
Windscribe comes with a free app that gives you access to 10 server locations and up to 15GB of data per month (if you confirm an email and tweet about Windscribe). Just take note that the Mac app, and frankly all the apps, are ugly and not designed to coddle beginners. Customer support is the same way, with a strong reliance on a chatbot that seems to hate you personally. In case it wasn't clear, Windscribe is better if you're a power user than if it's your first time picking up a VPN.
- Fast and private
- All features at least partly available for free
- Build your own paid plan
- Awkward app design
- Limited ability to use some features
- Monthly data caps
Sam Chapman for Engadget/Yahoo Tech
Free trial:24 hours on Windows and macOS, three days on Android, seven days on iOS; 30 day refund on all plans
Monthly price:$12.99
Best deal:$2.03 per month for 26 months
Visit the full CyberGhost review on Engadget to learn more.
CyberGhost has one particular perk that makes it a top choice for streaming — a list of servers optimized to get onto TV and sports platforms. Not only are the servers built for streaming, but each one is aimed at unblocking one particular streaming service. Instead of one general Netflix server, for example, it has one designed to unblock Netflix UK on an Android TV (among many others).
CyberGhost has 106 of these servers in 22 different countries, which is itself a small fraction of a network that reaches 100 countries overall. Although all the servers are great for streaming, the optimized locations went above and beyond, getting a perfect score in my unblocking test.
Still, it’s not ideal compared to the VPNs above it on the list. My download speeds declined by about 25 percent when I used CyberGhost, just enough to become a problem when watching shows in UHD. The actual process of connecting to a server can drag sometimes, too.
Those are small flaws in a service that's otherwise great value. If you're concerned about it, though, CyberGhost has one of the only VPN free trials that doesn't require any payment information at all. Just download the free trial app and you'll get between 24 hours and seven days to see if CyberGhost can handle the type of streaming you want to do.
- Automation features
- Servers for specific streaming platforms
- No payment method required for free trial
- Drops speeds about 25 percent worldwide
- Connections sometimes lag
Other Mac VPNs we tested
The eight services above are the best VPNs for Mac, but they're not the only ones. All told, you'll find more than 100 VPNs on the market, most of them offering Mac apps. The vast majority of them aren't worth your time or money, but there are a few that I considered more thoroughly before rejecting them.
One of those is Private Internet Access , an extremely cheap VPN with a wealth of features that didn't do well enough in the speed tests to get my wholehearted recommendation. In the same boat, there's IPVanish , which does everything reasonably well but doesn't do anything better than anybody else. Most Mac VPNs fit into that same category of good-but-not-great, including Norton VPN , which doesn't compete as well in the VPN space as Norton Antivirus does in its own field.
There aren't too many VPNs I would urge Mac users — or anybody — to avoid. However, I always advise caution when dealing with free VPNs, since they frequently advertise their free plans to lure you into downloading malware . If a free VPN isn't supported by paid subscriptions, like Proton VPN, hide.me and Windscribe, it's probably making its money by preying on customers.
It's also a good idea to double-check a VPN's background before downloading it onto your Mac. For example, PureVPN has repeatedly misrepresented whether it's passed a real independent audit. Although there's no direct evidence of anti-user behavior from PureVPN's Mac app, I'd recommend not downloading it until it comes clean.
How to install a VPN on your Mac
As a Mac user, your first instinct when installing a VPN may be to check the App Store and download the version you find there. However, it’s almost always a better idea to install the VPN app directly from its website. The App Store doesn’t always stock the complete version, and you may find some features missing. Some of the best VPNs, including Proton VPN and Mullvad, aren’t on the App Store at all — their respective website is the only way to get them.
Do you need a VPN on your Mac?
A VPN is a vital security tool, but it's mainly for protecting your anonymity online, not for securing your Mac itself. While Macs are generally less susceptible to malware and viruses than Windows PCs — though both platforms are safer when you stick to their respective app stores — you can always invest in some good antivirus software if you want a double layer of protection. At a minimum, if you install updates immediately and always remain skeptical of clicking on links, your Mac will likely stay safe.
On the other hand, if you want increased privacy combined with a much freer online life, you definitely need a Mac VPN. A VPN does two key things: it hides your IP address so nobody sees who you are on the internet, and changes your virtual location so websites think you're coming from somewhere else. The former defends your right to privacy from advertisers, corporations, hackers and the government. The latter can unlock shows, movies and sports events only available in other countries.
If you're on a network that blocks parts of the internet — or a country that blocks most of it, like China — you can get full access through a VPN. Finally, there's the risk of getting spied on via vulnerable public Wi-Fi networks; a VPN makes your browsing history invisible no matter how you're getting online.
