Golden Frog VyprVPN has spiffed up its app, putting its best foot forward in the world of VPNs. The service offers a healthy portion of servers across the world, and includes the rarely seen split tunneling feature. It also has made great strides in protecting user privacy. However, its high price and lack of features hold it back.
What Is a VPN?
When you switch on a VPN, it creates an encrypted tunnel between your Mac and a server controlled by the VPN company. All your internet traffic travels through this tunnel, keeping it safe from the prying eyes of spies, advertisers, and your ISP. Using a VPN also masks your true IP address, making it harder to track you between websites and obscuring your geographic location.
VPNs are valuable tools for improving your privacy online, but they can't protect against every threat. We strongly recommend that readers use antivirus software, enable two-factor authentication wherever it's available, and make us of a password manager.
Similar Products
Norton Secure VPN (for macOS)
KeepSolid VPN Unlimited (for macOS)
How a VPN Works
Pricing, Features, and Privacy
I closely examine all aspects of Golden Frog VyprVPN in my review of the Windows client. I'll summarize the most important points here, but do see my other article for a more nuanced view—particularly, the efforts individual VPN companies take to protect your privacy.
Most VPN services eschew tiered pricing, but not so with Golden Frog. A VyprVPN subscription costs $9.95 per month, which allows you to connect three devices simultaneously with one account. VyprVPN Premium, which costs $12.95 per month, raises the limit to five simultaneous connections and unlocks access to the Chameleon VPN protocol and VyprVPN Cloud. This is the subscription I tested in this review.
I go into greater detail about the Chameleon protocol and VyprVPN Cloud in my main review. The Chameleon protocol is worth discussing as it is intended to help you circumvent efforts to block VPNs. The macOS app also supports numerous VPN protocols in addition to Chameleon: PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, IKEv2, and OpenVPN. PPTP should be avoided as much as possible. OpenVPN is my favorite, largely because it is open-source and thoroughly examined for potential vulnerabilities. IKEv2 is a modern, secure protocol that's also a good choice.
The average price for a top-rated VPN is $10.80, and the average VPN offers at least five simultaneous connections. This places VyprVPN's entry-level subscription below average on both counts. Norton Secure VPN, on the other hand, offers five simultaneous connections for $7.99 per month.
Increasingly, VPNs are raising the limit on the number of simultaneous connections. Private Internet Access and IPVanish both allow up to 10 simultaneous connections, and Surfshark places no limit on simultaneous connections whatsoever.
Most VPNs offer a discounted price for year-long subscriptions and sometimes deeper discounts for longer periods. VyprVPN's entry-level subscription costs $60 per year, and its Premium subscription costs $80. Private Internet Access offers its annual plan for just $39.95. However, I advise against starting with long-term subscriptions and recommend readers try out a monthly subscription first, so they can test the VPN in their own home.
Nothing is cheaper than free and there are some worthy free VPNs to consider. Foremost among them is ProtonVPN (PCMag Exclusive: $2.49 Per Month (75% Off 2 Years Plan) at Proton VPN) , which is the only free VPN I've reviewed that doesn't place a cap on data for free subscribers.
Golden Frog VyprVPN offers 700 servers, which is among the smallest collections of servers I've seen among macOS VPNs. More servers does not necessarily mean better service, however. Although you will hypothetically have more options to find a working server. CyberGhost leads the pack, with over 5,600 servers available.
More impressive is the fact that VyprVPN has servers in 70 countries. That's not the widest distribution—that honor goes to ExpressVPN, which covers 94 countries—but it's a very strong network.
Some VPNs offer more than just the typical VPN protection. ProtonVPN and NordVPN, but not VyprVPN, provide access to the Tor anonymization network as well as multihop VPN. This last feature routes your web traffic through two VPN servers, for additional security. Golden Frog VyprVPN is notable for offering split tunneling. This rarely seen feature lets you designate which apps send their web traffic through the VPN tunnel and which apps do not. That's handy if you have some network-intensive apps that you feel comfortable routing outside the VPN connection.
Read my review of VyprVPN for more information about its privacy practices. I'll summarize here. Golden Frog operates under Swiss legal jurisdiction. The service passed a public, third-party audit of its logging practices (PDF), which showed Golden Frog does not retain logs of user activity. Importantly, the service does not store IP addresses. Golden Frog only generates revenue from the sale of VPN subscriptions and does not monetize its users.
Hands On With Golden Frog VyprVPN
I tested VyprVPN on a 2019 Retina-5K 27-inch iMac running macOS Catalina (version 10.15). This particular machine sports 16GB of RAM, and a 3.6GHz eight-core Intel i9 processor.
Golden Frog deserves praise for its efforts to update the look and feel of VyprVPN. Gone is the sleepy grey and blue color scheme of the old app. The new version is vibrant, electric blue when connected. Its design is small and slim, likely echoing a mobile app's design. A simple interface across the bottom moves you through the app and a big, obvious button gets you online fast. It's a straightforward design that I like quite a bit. TunnelBear ($120 for Three-Year Plan at TunnelBear) , with its brilliant yellows and numerous bears, still has an edge on friendliness, however.
Despite its simplicity, VyprVPN has a lot of settings for you to fiddle with. This is a bit deceptive, however. For example, the app has settings for using VyprVPN's secure DNS or blocking malicious sites, while other services just bake in these options. Despite the plethora of options, you won't find settings for things like ports or proxies. That level of control can be found in the likes of TorGuard.
I do like that VyprVPN lets me drill down to the specific VPN servers. That's handy, especially if you find that VPN activity is often blocked. The app will also let you measure the latency for each server, and then sort the list from lowest to highest ping time. The app automatically selects what it thinks is the fastest option, if that level of customization is not your cup of tea.
One nice feature of VyprVPN is that moving the app into the Trash Can launches a for-real uninstaller. Of the 14 macOS VPNs I reviewed, this was the only one that took the time to clean up after itself, and I have to say I appreciate it.
A VPN that leaks information is a bad VPN. I used the DNS Leak Test tool to confirm that Golden Frog VyprVPN changed my IP address and hid my DNS information. Other servers, however, may not be correctly configured.
Netflix is notorious for blocking VPNs, but that wasn't an issue for VyprVPN. I had no trouble streaming TV shows while connected to a US-based server.
Speed Test Results
Using a VPN will almost always increase your internet connection's latency and decrease its speed. To get a sense of the impact each VPN makes, I find a percent change between internet speeds with the VPN on and off. Read more about my speed tests and their limitations in the quite aptly named How We Test VPNs.
I organize my test results by download speeds, from best to worst. In this configuration, Golden Frog VyprVPN came in dead last. It decreased download speed test results by 85.5 percent, and decreased upload speed test results by 94.5 percent. My tests also showed that VyprVPN increased latency by 100 percent. You can see how GoldenFrog VyprVPN compares in the chart below with the top 10 performers among the 14 macOS VPN apps I tested.
(Editors' Note: Ookla Speedtest, IPVanish, and Encrypt.me are owned by j2 Global, the parent company of PCMag's publisher, Ziff Davis.)
The overall results in my macOS VPN speed testing were mixed, with no decisive winner across all three categories. KeepSolid VPN Unlimited had by far the best download speed results but CyberGhost VPN had the most balanced results, staying well below the average results in all categories. Notably, Encrypt.me was the fastest VPN among 34 services tested using Windows 10.
An Improved Experience
Golden Frog has clearly worked to improve the VyprVPN experience, and it deserves credit for producing a clean, easy-to-use app. I also like that VyprVPN provides split tunneling, a rarely seen, but very useful feature. I am less impressed by its pricing tiers, which are expensive and don't offer as much as the competition. You won't go wrong with VyprVPN, but our Editors' Choice winners for macOS VPN remain ProtonVPN and TunnelBear VPN for their excellent service and user experience.
A fresh interface goes a long way toward making Golden Frog VyprVPN a worthy competitor, as does its support for split tunneling. Its high price, however, remains a hindrance.
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