No. A VPN adds encryption and a detour through its server, so your connection usually gets a little slower, unless your internet provider slows down a particular service.
What solves it instead
- Test your speed without a VPN first, on a network cable if you can: if it is slow there too, the cause is your subscription, your Wi-Fi or your router.
- Slow Wi-Fi: move closer to the router or use a network cable.
- You already use a VPN and it feels slow: choose a server closer to you, or switch to the WireGuard protocol in the app settings.
The facts
| About | Word for word from the source | Source, checked on |
|---|---|---|
| What a VPN does to your speed | Every VPN will slow down your internet to some degree. | windscribe.com, |
| Why: encryption | Modern devices handle encryption without breaking a sweat, but it still uses resources and adds a little delay. | windscribe.com, |
| Why: busy servers | VPN servers have finite bandwidth and processing power, so if everyone uses them at the same time, they get overloaded and congested, and start to slow down. | windscribe.com, |
| The exception | Ironically, there are cases where a VPN actually improves your speed, especially if your ISP throttles certain sites or services. | windscribe.com, |
| What EU law requires of internet providers | Read the literal textProviders of internet access services shall treat all traffic equally, when providing internet access services, without discrimination, restriction or interference, and irrespective of the sender and receiver, the content accessed or distributed, the applications or services used or provided, or the terminal equipment used. | eur-lex.europa.eu, |
What we measured ourselves
Our own measurements show what the detour via a VPN server costs: the connection time with the VPN next to the time without it (in brackets), and the download speed per server.
We measure NordVPN ourselves: 100 valid runs on 25 days, from October 8, 2026 to November 1, 2026, each next to a run without VPN.
| Server | Download (median) | Slowest run | Runs ≥ 1 Gbit/s | Connection time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium | ≥ 1,000 Mbit/s | 376 Mbit/s | 30 of 50 | 8.1 ms (without VPN 5.4 ms) |
| Netherlands | 748 Mbit/s | 407 Mbit/s | 24 of 50 | 5.6 ms (without VPN 5.4 ms) |
In 100 of 100 runs the exit address was in the chosen country, and in 100 of 100 the DNS answers came from the provider's own network. The tunnel offered no IPv6.
Measured twice a day from a Google Cloud data centre in Belgium with the provider's standard WireGuard configuration: this tests the network, not the app, and not a home connection. Download is the median over three test servers; connection time is the time to open a connection to three public DNS services. Our setup does not reliably go above about 1,000 Mbit/s, so faster runs count as ‘≥ 1 Gbit/s’. How we work · Raw data (CSV)
What a VPN does change
A VPN encrypts your traffic and sends it through its own server. That gives you privacy towards the network you are on and shows sites the address of that server, and it costs some speed. Only when your internet provider deliberately slows down a certain service can the detour be faster, because the provider then no longer sees which service you use. In the EU, the law requires providers to treat all traffic equally, with exceptions such as reasonable traffic management and congestion. Check when a VPN is worth paying for
Without a VPN
- You
- Your networkinternet provider, or the Wi-Fi of work, school or a café
Sees: which sites you visit and when. With HTTPS, not what you do there.
- The website
Sees: your IP address, and with it roughly where you are and who your internet provider is.
With a VPN
- You
- Your networkinternet provider, or the Wi-Fi of work, school or a caféEncrypted tunnel
Sees: only that you are connected to a VPN server, and how much data you send.
- VPN serverrun by the VPN provider
Sees: which sites you visit, as your internet provider did before.
- The website
Sees: the IP address of the VPN server. It still recognises you by your login and cookies.
What we did not check
3
- How much speed a VPN costs on your home connection: our measurement above runs from a data centre, not from a home line; Windscribe gives percentages in the same article, which we do not repeat here.
- Whether your internet provider slows down certain services: we have not measured that for any provider.
- The quotes about VPNs come from the help pages of one VPN provider; other providers word it differently. The EU text does not mention VPNs.
Next step
- Test your speed without a VPN first, on a network cable if you can: if it is slow there too, the cause is your subscription, your Wi-Fi or your router.