The 3 best VPNs of 2026 will make you feel like a ghost

ExpressVPN is my top choice for anyone who needs a VPN while they’re traveling. It’s a well-established provider that offers city-level access to servers throughout the entire U.S. Plus, some of its plans come bundled with useful bonus tools — including an eSIM with several days’ worth of unlimited data.

ExpressVPN launched a separate free VPN service called EventVPN in September 2025. I haven’t tested the free version yet, but it seems promising: Users get access to servers in over 35 countries with zero data limits. (Proton Free restricts you to servers in 10 randomly selected countries, while TunnelBear’s free tier caps you at 2GB of data per month.) The only catch is that EventVPN makes you watch ads before every session. I’ll update this guide with my thoughts once I’ve tried it.

Read Mashable’s full review of ExpressVPN.

ProtonVPN may have the bigger global server network, but ExpressVPN has a few advantages over its competitor when it comes to travel. For one thing, it’s the rare VPN provider with servers in all 50 U.S. states. (ProtonVPN and other premium VPNs stick to major U.S. cities.) Anyone working or living abroad won’t have trouble accessing content back home. Additionally, ExpressVPN Pro and Advanced subscribers get access to a holiday.com eSim with a couple of days of unlimited data, among other extra privacy features that make its plans a decent value. An eSim will let your phone connect to a cellular network outside of your home country without a physical SIM card.

ExpressVPN’s heavy U.S. presence also makes it great for unblocking local content — say, regional sports games or adult sites. (For legal reasons, I’m not telling anyone to break laws or violate streaming services’ terms of use.) VPN servers that are close to your actual, physical location will be faster and more reliable than those further away.

Going broader, ExpressVPN has over 3,000 servers in 105 countries worldwide. That’s a pretty small network overall, but there’s still a good amount of global geographic diversity. ProtonVPN’s network is bigger and more spread out, while TunnelBear has more servers but a vastly less extensive reach.

ExpressVPN’s privacy and transparency practices are top-notch. Its privacy policy is thorough and clear on the kind of data it does and doesn’t collect. Most importantly, it never logs users’ browsing history and other sensitive data. This policy has been vetted in independent audits along with ExpressVPN’s apps, server technology, browser extension, and more. (The company started doing these audits in 2018, and since 2022, it’s undergone nearly 20 of them.) It’s only been issuing biannual transparency reports since 2024, but its no-logs claim held up in court way before then. Like ProtonVPN, it offers a bug bounty program.

In my testing, browsing while connected to ExpressVPN servers felt no different than browsing unprotected. It didn’t have a noticeable impact on my connection speed. It was also able to unblock streaming services in the UK, no problem. You get 10 to 14 simultaneous connections, depending on your subscription tier. All plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee and include 24/7 live chat support.

The ExpressVPN app has a clean Corporate Memphis look, and it’s super easy to navigate. As far as features go, you can turn on a kill switch and a split tunneling tool that lets you choose which apps and websites get sent through your VPN tunnel. ExpressVPN lacks common advanced VPN tools like multi-hop and Tor over VPN, which offer extra layers of protection. However, there is a neat built-in “ShuffleIP” feature that swaps your IP address every time you visit a new website, making you tough to track.

As a final note, I think it’s important to mention that ExpressVPN’s parent company doesn’t have the best reputation in the cybersecurity space. My take is that the severity of its issues hinges on your use case. Privacy sticklers and users with critical VPN needs will probably use them as reasons to rule out ExpressVPN entirely, but more casual users might be inclined to brush them off. For more details, read my ExpressVPN review in full.