IPVanish

Best for: people who specifically want unmetered device connections and don’t mind a US-jurisdiction provider — not for anyone who treats a clean non-Five-Eyes jurisdiction or a spotless no-logs history as a hard requirement.

Pros

• Unmetered device connections on every plan — protect every device on one subscription, with no five- or ten-device cap to work around
• Broadest split-tunneling platform coverage of any VPN reviewed here, including domain-based split tunneling on visionOS and app-based split tunneling on Fire TV
• Double Hop lets you pick your own entry and exit servers from 150+ locations, rather than routing through fixed pairs
• OpenVPN Scramble obfuscation and a “High-Speed Mode” (DCO) give real flexibility for both censorship-heavy networks and raw throughput
• A quarterly transparency report with real, specific figures (government requests, National Security Letters, DMCA notices) — more granular disclosure than most VPNs in this category publish
• Threat Protection Pro bundles a genuine VIPRE-powered antivirus engine (AV-Comparatives Advanced+ certified) at no extra cost on the Advanced plan
• Cheap long-term rate: $2.19/month on the 2-year Essential term

Cons

• Incorporated in the United States, a founding Five Eyes intelligence-sharing member — the only US-jurisdiction VPN reviewed on this site so far
• In a 2016 Homeland Security investigation, IPVanish’s then-owner handed over a user’s connection logs despite the company’s no-logs marketing at the time — under prior ownership and years before either of its current audits, but a real historical contradiction worth knowing
• Both independent audits (Leviathan 2022, Schellman 2025) have full reports gated behind an account login or a media request, not freely downloadable
• No port forwarding at all — a real gap for torrent users, though P2P traffic itself is allowed fleet-wide
• RAM-only server migration is still in progress (roughly 35% of the network as of its September 2025 rollout, targeting full conversion by 2027) — most of the fleet still runs on encrypted disk, not RAM
• Independent speed results vary noticeably by test round and server location — a recent test showed real improvement over an earlier one, but the swing itself signals inconsistency
• Renewal pricing jumps hard: the $2.19/mo intro rate renews at $7.50/mo (~242% increase), and Threat Protection Pro is Advanced-plan and Windows/macOS only

No-Logs Audit & History

IPVanish has been independently audited twice: Leviathan Security Group reviewed its no-traffic-logs policy compliance in April 2022, and Schellman Compliance, LLC reviewed no-logs policy compliance in April 2025. Neither full report is freely public — IPVanish states customers can retrieve it from the account portal, and journalists can request it by email, a gate comparable to some of the other providers reviewed here. Separately, IPVanish publishes a genuinely detailed quarterly transparency report: in the most recent quarter on record (Q2 2026), it received 13 government/law-enforcement/civil requests and 0 National Security Letters, providing data in zero cases; DMCA notices (7,725) and abuse flags (9,487) are logged separately as a different category of request.

The company’s history isn’t spotless, though, and it’s worth stating plainly: in May 2016, a Homeland Security investigation into child-exploitation material traced a suspect through what was then IPVanish’s parent company, Highwinds Network Group. IPVanish reportedly told investigators it held no data, then — after a follow-up request — turned over the user’s source IP address and connection timestamps, directly contradicting the no-logs claim it was marketing at the time. That happened under a different owner, years before Highwinds sold to StackPath (2017) and years before IPVanish landed at its current owner, Ziff Davis (2019), or either of its two independent audits. It doesn’t reflect the infrastructure Schellman examined in 2025 — but a no-logs claim that has actually failed once, however long ago, is a different category of history than a provider whose claim has simply gone unaudited or under-audited.

Pricing

IPVanish’s Essential plan costs $12.99/month with no discount, dropping to $3.33/month on a 1-year term ($39.99 for the first year) or $2.19/month on a 2-year term ($52.56 for the first 2 years). Both discounted terms renew at the same yearly rate afterward — $89.99/year, or about $7.50/month — a roughly 242% jump from the cheapest intro rate. The pricier Advanced plan (which adds Threat Protection Pro, Secure Browser, 1TB of Livedrive cloud storage, and phone support) follows the same shape at $14.99/$4.49/$3.29 per month, renewing at $109.99/year. The 30-day money-back guarantee only applies to yearly and 2-year purchases, not the monthly plan.

Security & Protocols

IPVanish supports WireGuard, OpenVPN (over both TCP and UDP, with an optional “High-Speed Mode” using kernel-level DCO for extra throughput), and IKEv2. OpenVPN’s “Scramble” mode disguises VPN traffic as ordinary HTTPS, aimed at restrictive or censored networks. The kill switch operates at the system level — not just per-app — across Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, plus a dedicated Fire TV companion app. Split tunneling comes in two flavors: domain-based (choose sites to exclude), available on Windows, macOS, iOS, and even visionOS; and app-based (choose apps to exclude), available on Windows, Android, and Fire TV — a wider platform spread than any other VPN reviewed here. Double Hop routes traffic through two IPVanish servers of your choosing (not a fixed pair) for a second layer of encryption and IP masking. DNS queries run through IPVanish’s own encrypted DNS servers rather than the ISP’s, with IPv6 leak handling that varies sensibly by platform and protocol.

Threat Protection, a basic ad/tracker/malicious-domain blocker, ships free on every plan across most supported devices. Threat Protection Pro goes further with a real antivirus and anti-malware engine — licensed from VIPRE, a sibling brand under the same Ziff Davis-owned NetProtect umbrella — that has picked up AV-Comparatives’ Advanced+ certification in both real-world and malware protection testing. It’s limited to the Advanced plan and to Windows/macOS.

Servers, Speed & Torrenting

IPVanish operates 3,400+ servers across 150+ locations in 113 countries, with 56,000+ available IP addresses. A RAM-only migration is underway — announced September 2025, covering roughly 35% of the network (about 1,000 servers in 25 locations) as of that announcement, with full conversion targeted for 2027. Until then, the remaining servers run on encrypted disk rather than RAM.

Independent speed results are genuinely mixed: Cloudwards’ latest 2026 test measured only a 13.5% download-speed decrease on WireGuard, a marked improvement over a 62% decrease the same publication recorded in an earlier round — a swing worth flagging rather than smoothing over. CyberInsider’s separate testing found a wide range depending on server, from 262 Mbps on a Los Angeles connection up to 829 Mbps on a Seattle one. P2P and torrenting traffic is allowed across the server fleet, but IPVanish runs a NAT firewall that blocks port forwarding entirely — a real limitation for torrent users chasing better seed ratios, though a SOCKS5 proxy and custom OpenVPN ports are available as partial workarounds.

Jurisdiction & Ownership

IPVanish was founded in 2012 as Mudhook Media Inc., a subsidiary of Highwinds Network Group in Orlando, Florida. Highwinds sold to StackPath in 2017, and IPVanish itself was acquired by J2 Global — renamed Ziff Davis in 2021 — in 2019, where it now sits inside Ziff Davis’s NetProtect/VIPRE Security Group consumer cybersecurity unit. The company is incorporated in the United States, which has no federal mandatory data-retention law for VPN providers, but is a founding member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance — the only jurisdiction in that category among the VPNs reviewed on this site so far.

Our Rating

Rating: 6.9/10