ANNUAL PRICE: 2.19 USD/mo
MONTHLY PRICE: 11.95 USD
Private Internet Access is a leading US based VPN provider with a massive amount of servers. Half of them are located in the US, 230 in the UK, 180 in Canada, 200 in Netherlands, 170 in Australia, the rest are scattered around the world. This immense network most certainly delivers good streaming speeds and a very reliable service.
While PIA offers a reliable service and excellent streaming speeds that allow HD video streaming, PIA can also bypass Netflix proxy error for Netflix USA and Netflix UK libraries, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Amazon Prime.
PIA offers custom application for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android that can launch and establish VPN connection on system startup. On top of it, PIA allows running VPN on up to 5 devices at the same time and a free proxy service comes with every VPN subscription.
Security-wise Private Internet Access doesn’t collect any user logs, hence, even if requested by authorities, they have nothing to provide. Their NAT Firewall does a great job protecting from cyber attacks, built-in Kill Switch secures from unprotected data leaks. In addition, PIA has DNS leak protection along with IPv6 Leak protection.
PIA allows switching between UDP (faster) and TCP connections types that, depending on network, can speed up traffic. UDP is also greatly preferred for torrenting and streaming. Additionally, PIA allows port forwarding to 443, 80, 110, 53, 8080, 9201. Port 443 is the most widespread option because it is used to bypass strict firewalls when all the other ports are blocked. For instance, forwarding traffic through port 443 will likely bypass VPN block on most college and corporate firewalls. Please refer to VPN ports and port forwarding guide for more info on ports and their use.
Another excellent feature includes with PIA software is an option to select encryption level. 128-bit SSL encryption is considerably faster than 256-bit and it has no practical disadvantage when it comes to security.
Since SOCKS5 Proxy that is offered within the same VPN package can be separately installed on a specific app, PIA users can re-route only certain traffic through VPN channels eliminating the need for a split tunneling feature. SOCKS5 is widely used with torrenting software due to its convenience. Once installed on uTorrent, for instance, it sends only torrenting traffic through secure servers, leaving the rest unencrypted.
So whether it’s torrenting, secure internet browsing to avoid global surveillance or simply HD video streaming, PIA covers it all.
| USA: | [1600 servers] California, East US, Midwest US, Texas, Florida, Seattle, Western US, Silicon Valley, New York | ||
| Americas: | Canada, Brazil, Mexico | ||
| Europe: | United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey | ||
| Middle East & Africa: | Israel | ||
| Asia/Pacific: | Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore | ||
| Desktop OS | Mac | Windows | Linux |
| Mobile OS | iOS | Android | |
| Routers | Yes | ||
| Available apps | Mac, Windows | iOS, Android | |
| OpenVPN | Yes | ||
| PPTP | Yes | ||
| SSTP | No | ||
| L2TP/IPsec | Yes | ||
| IPsec/IKEv2 | No | ||
| Encryption: | 256-bit | ||
| IP type: | Dedicated IP, Shared Dynamic | ||
| Number of Countries | 49 | ||
| Number of Servers | 3,400 | ||
| Simultaneous Logins | 10 | ||
| Logs | No | ||
| Torrents Allowed | Yes | ||
| Legal Jurisdiction | USA | ||
| Proxy | Yes | ||
| Firewall | Yes | ||
| Kill Switch | Yes | ||
| Data Limits | No | ||
| Free services | No | ||
| 24/7 support | Yes | ||
| Payment Options: | PayPal, Credit Card, American Express (AMEX), Bitcoin | ||
| More Payment Options: | Yes | ||
| Money back | 30 day guarantee | ||
This review really helped me because I couldn’t find all the information on PIA website, thank you!
PIA is my favorite VPN. Cheap, no logs, good speed, good apps. I torrent a lot so I use their dns leak protection and port forwarding when I’m at school.
I’ve been using PIA for a few years and I always liked it, but it’s getting slower especially with torrents. I will probably renew again anyway since it’s very cheap comparing to other providers and it’s good, but still disappointing to see that the speeds are not as fast as they used to be. Yet I think PIA is the most popular VPN provider now.