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One of the only VPNs to have a server in every U.S. state, perfect for surpassing state restrictions
Affordable monthly price plus unlimited simultaneous connections for all your devices
Fast connection speeds that seamlessly unblocks Netflix and other streaming services
All About Cookies is an independent, advertising-supported website. Some of the offers that appear on this site are from third-party advertisers from which All About Cookies receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear).
All About Cookies does not include all financial or credit offers that might be available to consumers nor do we include all companies or all available products. Information is accurate as of the publishing date and has not been provided or endorsed by the advertiser.
The All About Cookies editorial team strives to provide accurate, in-depth information and reviews to help you, our reader, make online privacy decisions with confidence. Here's what you can expect from us:
Private Internet Access is our top VPN recommendation for sports streaming and betting, but it has several strengths that could benefit any casual VPN user. It has servers in all 50 U.S. states, which is handy for avoiding blackout games. Plus, PIA successfully unblocked all the Netflix libraries we tested and prevented all data leaks, as proven by our testing.
But PIA is headquartered in the U.S., which could collect your data as part of the Five Eyes alliance. Our Private Internet Access review can help you determine if this is worth the cost of the subscription.
| Price | $2.03–$11.99/mo |
| Free version | No |
| Max # of connected devices | Unlimited |
| # of server locations | Unlisted in 90 countries and 50 U.S. states |
| VPN protocol | WireGuard, OpenVPN, IPsec |
| No-logs policy | No logs |
| Headquarters | Denver, Colorado, United States |
| Netflix access | Yes |
| Learn more | Get Private Internet Access |
We complete standardized hands-on tests for each VPN we review so we can put their claims to the test. This includes vigorous third-party testing by comparing our internet speed while connected to different servers, checking for DNS leaks, making sure the kill switch actually works, and more. We also make sure we can comfortably access popular streaming sites, like Netflix, and still do our day-to-day work without interruption.
Once we’ve completed the testing, our editorial rating is calculated by taking into account key features you’d expect from a good product. We score each VPN in the following categories and use a weighted average to calculate the final rating out of 5 stars: price, server count, speed, security, and features.
To learn more about how we test, check out our full VPN methodology here.
We last tested Private Internet Access on February 11, 2026.
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One of the only VPNs to have a server in every U.S. state, perfect for surpassing state restrictions
Affordable monthly price plus unlimited simultaneous connections for all your devices
Fast connection speeds that seamlessly unblocks Netflix and other streaming services
Private Internet Access (PIA) was easy to set up. Once we downloaded the VPN on our PC, PIA shared an option for a quick tour. It provided tips on customizing your dashboard, downloading other PIA apps, and more.
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VPN beginners should be able to navigate the interface easily enough. If you keep the app simple, it shows the power button, a recommended server, and your new IP address after the VPN is connected.
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If you want to tinker with the app, there are lots of customization options, such as moving widgets around in the display and setting up your home screen. It could be overwhelming for newer users, but we didn’t have much trouble finding the server list or connecting to different servers.
For features beyond the server list, you'll have to click the three dots in the top-right corner and select Settings.
The Private Internet Access app may be even better suited for mobile devices. It's sleek and includes all the essential features right on the main dashboard page. You can enable the kill switch, change your protocol, and switch server locations all from the main tab.
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Private Internet Access did have much steeper speed drops on mobile, especially compared to our desktop results. With the Windows app, Private Internet Access only averaged a 50% drop on download speeds, but the Android app averaged a 59% drop.
Still, our speeds weren't noticeably impacted. Ultimately, we like Private Internet Access's simplicity and would recommend it for mobile protection.
Private Internet Access is a virtual private network (VPN) service based out of Denver, Colorado, that offers one of the cheapest VPNs on the market. But “cheap VPN” doesn’t necessarily mean lacking in quality.
Our tests show that PIA can offer fast speeds, high levels of privacy and security, and the opportunity to unblock regional streaming content. It’s especially helpful to know that the PIA no-logs policy has been tested multiple times in court without any user information being leaked — primarily because PIA doesn’t keep logs of user activity.
Private Internet Access costs between $2.03–$11.99/mo. All plans offer the same feature. You'll just need to select a subscription term of one month, six months, or two years.
Your overall monthly price will decrease with the longer subscription options. If you want to save money on a VPN, it’s often much cheaper overall to choose a longer subscription length. And with PIA, you can get some dirt cheap prices.
| 1 month | 6 months | Best Value 2 years |
Learn more | |
| Price per month | $11.99/mo | $7.50/mo | $2.03/mo | View plans |
Here’s how PIA's starting price compares to other popular VPNs:
Private Internet Access costs about one dollar less than all the VPNs listed. But remember that price isn’t everything and there are a few competitors that don’t cost much more than PIA.
For example, would it be worth it to pay about an extra $12 per year for NordVPN and its high-quality service and fast speeds? It depends on your situation. Just remember that VPNs are generally inexpensive and you have plenty of options to choose from to meet your needs.
PIA's payment methods include:
PIA makes a point of accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment because cryptocurrencies are more anonymous options.
PIA has loads of servers to choose from, a strict no-logs policy, and an app interface that’s fairly easy to use and navigate.
PIA's key features include:
PIA doesn’t release a list of how many servers it actually has, but it verified with us that you can connect to servers in 90 countries and every U.S. state. That’s a sizable number of server locations and likely more than enough for your average VPN user.
Here’s how PIA compares to other popular VPN providers with its number of countries with servers:
Although Private Internet Access offers servers in fewer countries than most popular VPNs, 90 countries is still a decent number.
Having more server locations provides more ways to use your VPN. For example, it could mean additional opportunities for you to unblock streaming services in different regions.
If you look at the PIA server list, you’ll see servers ordered by latency numbers. In general, latency is one way to measure your internet speed. So servers with lower latencies (depicted by a green color) are typically your fastest connection options based on your location.
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Servers with higher latencies (depicted by an orange color) are typically your slowest connection options based on your location.
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You might also notice some servers have a small globe symbol next to them. This means the server is in a “geo-located region,” which means it isn’t physically located in that country.
Note that connecting to one of these virtual servers still makes it seem like your connection is coming from the applicable country.
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Private Internet Access has a strict no-logs policy and is headquartered in Colorado, United States. It doesn’t collect or store your data, including your internet protocol (IP) address, browsing history, DNS queries, bandwidth consumption, VPN session timestamps, or connection logs.
In general, PIA doesn’t store any data about your VPN usage or what you do while using its VPN. PIA’s no-logs policy has been tested multiple times in court without PIA releasing any relevant information. This is because PIA doesn’t track or store user information and has nothing to give, as outlined in its transparency reports.
PIA also had its no-logs policy independently audited in April 2024 by Deloitte.[1] The report confirmed PIA’s no-logs policy because Deloitte couldn’t find any trace of user activity on PIA’s servers.
PIA uses RAM-only servers, which means data is frequently deleted and difficult to steal. And so far, the U.S. government hasn’t been able to force PIA to violate its no-logs policy. According to PIA, this is due to U.S. consumer protection laws.
Although it hasn’t happened yet, that doesn’t mean PIA can’t eventually be forced to breach its own policies. Private Internet Access is U.S.-based and the U.S. is part of the Five Eyes alliance, which is a global intelligence alliance involved in mass surveillance, including within their own countries.
PIA has done an excellent job so far with its privacy initiatives, and we hope it continues to do an excellent job. But being located in a country that’s part of a global surveillance network might not be the best thing for maintaining user privacy.
Private Internet Access was acquired by Kape Technologies in 2019. Kape Technologies owns other VPNs, including ExpressVPN and CyberGhost VPN. All VPNs under the Kape brand are believed to run independently of each other.
PIA VPN provides a kill switch feature located in the Privacy section of the app settings. A VPN kill switch is designed to prevent data leaks from happening if your secure connection is interrupted.
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You can choose between two different kill switch options:
Split tunneling allows you to bypass the secure VPN connection with specific apps and IP addresses. PIA offers this feature in the app settings on the Split Tunnel tab.
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You might use the split tunneling feature if you don’t want an app to be slowed down by a VPN and you aren’t worried about security or privacy within that app.
For example, you might allow an online video game to bypass the VPN connection so you can maintain fast speeds while gaming. In the meantime, your other online activities remain private and secure.
PIA lets you choose between AES-128-GCM or AES-256-GCM encryption. These are some of the strongest encryption algorithms available and are widely used by organizations worldwide.
You can find the encryption options in the Protocols tab of the app settings within the OpenVPN protocol section.
PIA offers multiple VPN protocols to help ensure your security while maintaining high levels of transparency. This includes the open-source WireGuard and OpenVPN protocols, as well as IKEv2/IPsec.
You can find the available protocols in your app settings in the Protocols tab.
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OpenVPN and WireGuard were the only available protocols we saw on the Windows desktop app. But we did see all three protocols, including IKEv2/IPsec, were available in the iOS app.
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PIA Identity Guard is an in-app feature that can help you check if an email address has been part of a data breach. We found this feature in our online account using a Chrome browser.
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Selecting the Identity Guard tab brings you to a breach monitoring page on the PIA website. Here, you can enter an email address and PIA will check to see whether it’s been exposed.
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Smart DNS is a way to use VPN functionality on devices that don’t typically support VPN apps. For example, your PlayStation, Xbox, Apple TV, or smart TV might not have an app store with the PIA VPN app. But you can still use the Smart DNS feature to set up different devices with PIA functionality.
You can find Smart DNS options in your online account in the Smart DNS tab.
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Smart DNS won’t give your device a secure VPN connection, but it can change your device’s virtual location. For example, you can choose locations in the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., and the Netherlands. This can be helpful for accessing regional streaming content.
You can find Multi-Hop servers within the PIA app settings under the Multi-Hop tab. This security feature routes your VPN connection through an additional server. This is often called “double VPN” on other VPNs.
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Multi-Hop is designed to offer more security with your connection by offering another layer of encryption. You can also hide that you’re using a VPN, which is called obfuscating your connection.
The PIA Multi-Hop feature offers Shadowsocks and SOCKS5 proxies. SOCKS5 proxy servers, which include Shadowsocks, are designed to mask your true IP address by routing you through a server with a different IP address. They aren’t as secure or private as VPNs, but they can offer an additional layer of anonymity.
PIA MACE blocks ads, trackers, and malware. It’s located in the app settings in the Privacy tab.
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We conducted speed tests and leak tests to see how PIA VPN performed with maintaining reasonable internet speeds and overall privacy.
We also tested whether PIA could unblock different Netflix content libraries. These tests were run using the PIA Windows app on a laptop running Windows 11 from a physical location in the U.S.
How a VPN affects your internet speeds is often one of the primary concerns when choosing a VPN. We tested Private Internet Access by connecting to different servers around the world and measuring how it impacted our internet connection.
While it's normal for a VPN to take up some bandwidth and reduce your internet speed, we were looking for unusual, significant dips in speeds.
We began our testing by establishing a baseline and measured our internet speed without PIA turned on. Then, we connected to servers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia to calculate their impact on our baseline speed.
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| Test type | No VPN | US to US | US to CA | US to EU | US to AU |
| Download speed | 527.10 Mbps | 350.05 Mbps | 258.12 Mbps | 181.93 Mbps | 270.84 Mbps |
| Upload speed | 330.54 Mbps | 171.82 Mbps | 84.06 Mbps | 57.28 Mbps | 128.06 Mbps |
| Latency (ping) | 56 ms | 12 ms | 107 ms | 120 ms | 192 ms |
| Download speed % difference | N/A | -33.59% | -51.03% | -65.48% | -48.61% |
| Upload speed % difference | N/A | -48.02% | -74.57% | -82.67% | -61.26% |
| Latency % difference | N/A | -78.57% | +91.07% | +114.28% | +242.86% |
We started by connecting to the recommended smart location. Private Internet Access dropped our download speeds by almost 34%, but it did improve our latency significantly.
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The most significant drop was while connected to the Manchester server. It actually had a noticeable impact on our browsing, so we'd recommend sticking to nearby servers.
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Increased latency is an issue for gamers who need quick response times while playing.. This may not impact you if you plan to only casually use your VPN, but it's worth noting if you plan to use international servers.
Many people use a VPN to watch Netflix, but streaming apps sometimes block VPN usage. We conducted tests with Private Internet Access to see if we could watch Netflix while connected to different servers around the world.
| US to US | US to CA | US to UK | US to AU | |
| Did it work with Netflix? |
PIA has streaming-optimized servers, so we tried them out for our Netflix tests if they were available. We connected to servers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.
After connecting to the server, we opened up Netflix to see if it would connect and then sampled a show to see if there were any lag issues. PIA allowed us to stream shows seamlessly, even while connected to servers on the other side of the world.
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The domain name system (DNS) leak test reveals if a VPN is successfully masking your IP address, internet service provider (ISP), and general location. If it doesn't, your data may be exposed. We used BrowserLeaks to conduct our DNS leak test.
Once we connected to Private Internet Access, we ran the DNS leak test. The VPN was able to hide our information and show the IP address and location of our server instead.
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A WebRTC leak occurs when there's a vulnerability in your internet connection and it doesn't successfully hide your information from third parties. Instead, it exposes your IP address and makes it easy for third parties to identify you.
Once again, we used BrowserLeaks to conduct the WebRTC leak test. Without the VPN on, we could see our real IP address.
Then we connected to Private Internet Access. The leak test showed the VPN server IP address instead of our real IP address, so there were no WebRTC leaks detected.
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A kill switch is an essential feature for security. With a kill switch, your online activities should always be protected because it stops your internet connection if your VPN drops.
We tested the kill switch by starting with a server in Mexico then opening ipleak.net. We swapped to a server in Canada to see if Private Internet Access would leak our true IP address. Fortunately, PIA kept our real location and our ISP a secret.
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You can set up the PIA VPN app on an unlimited number of devices, operating systems, mobile apps, and browser extensions, including:
You can find Private Internet Access download options in your PIA account on a web browser. We were able to find download links for the Private Internet Access Chrome extension and other apps in the Downloads tab.
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We noticed that PIA VPN had loads of excellent reviews and high ratings for both its iOS and Android apps. On the Google Play Store, the PIA app has 4.5 out of 5 stars with more than 105,000 reviews. On the Apple App Store, the PIA app has 4.7 out of 5 stars with over 142,000 ratings.
Private Internet Access offers customer support through its support website, email, live chat, forums, and social media channels. You can also submit error reports through the PIA app (we were able to see this option on the Windows app) and fill out a contact form through the support portal.
The PIA social media channels include Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. PIA also has a YouTube channel, but the last upload was more than a year ago. You can send an email to the PIA support team at support@privateinternetaccess.com.
Private Internet Access offers 24/7 live chat available to anyone on its website. We decided to see what the chat experience was like by asking a PIA representative a few questions. You can find the chat button in the bottom right corner of just about any page on the main PIA website.
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After starting the live chat, we were quickly (within a few seconds) transferred to a live agent to begin our conversation.
Our first question was regarding the issues we had while using the streaming-optimized servers. The representative was thorough about asking us our location, operating system, and how we were accessing Netflix. They provided us with tips to troubleshoot our connection.
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Overall, the customer support agent was polite, friendly, and understandable.
The PIA support portal provides loads of resources for PIA users or anyone who’s interested in learning more about this VPN. This includes guides, announcements, and a knowledge base area with FAQs.
The news section of the support website is especially helpful because it provides updates about relevant events for PIA users. For example, an announcement about maintenance on a specific server gives you a heads-up that you won’t be able to use that server for a certain period of time.
The section with different guides can also be helpful if you need a few tips on how to use PIA in different ways or how to set it up on certain devices. This could include installing PIA VPN on Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS devices.
Private Internet Access has a lot to offer, but it struggled with some speed tests and is based in a Five Eyes alliance country. We've compiled some of our top alternatives that excel in speed, security, and more:
 NordVPN |
 Surfshark |
 Proton VPN |
|
| Award | Best overall VPN | Best value VPN | Best privacy VPN |
| Star rating | |||
| Price | $3.39–$25.29/mo | $1.99–$20.85/mo | $3.59–$9.99/mo |
| Max # of connected devices | 10 | Unlimited | 10 |
| # of servers | 9,000+ servers in 165+ countries | 4,500+ servers in 100 countries | 17,800+ servers in 120+ countries |
| Netflix access | |||
| Learn more | Get NordVPN | Get Surfshark | Get Proton VPN |
Yes, PIA VPN can offer solid internet speeds, but it had much more impact on our speeds during our most recent testing. PIA dropped our speed by over 43% with the U.S. server and 61% to 66% with the international servers.
For the best possible speeds, you should sort the server list by ping and select servers with the lowest ping rates.
NordVPN is likely the better option for overall features, quality, and reliability. It provides opportunities to unblock streaming services while maintaining fast internet speeds, all at an affordable price.
PIA VPN costs less than NordVPN, but the user experience is slightly lacking with its app interface.
Yes, PIA VPN works for unblocking regional Netflix content libraries. PIA unblocked Netflix streaming libraries in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia.
PIA VPN can’t be tracked. It has a strict no-logs policy, which means it doesn’t collect or store any of your data, including your IP address, browsing history, bandwidth consumption, VPN session timestamps, and connection logs.
The PIA VPN no-logs policy has been tested multiple times in court and was successfully reviewed by an independent third party in April 2024.
Yes, Private Internet Access is a good VPN that’s fast, affordable, private, and secure. And you get plenty of server locations with opportunities to unblock regional streaming content. Even better, the PIA no-logs policy has been tested in court and successfully audited by an independent third party.
But PIA's headquarters in the U.S. can be concerning. Nothing has happened yet for PIA to breach its no-logs policy, but the U.S. is a well-known member of a global surveillance group of countries. It also had some mediocre speed test results on our most recent round of testing.
PIA has a lot going for it, including 24/7 customer service. If you're not sold on this service, see how PIA compares with other top VPNs:
One of the only VPNs to have a server in every U.S. state, perfect for surpassing state restrictions
Affordable monthly price plus unlimited simultaneous connections for all your devices
Fast connection speeds that seamlessly unblocks Netflix and other streaming services
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