Best for: people who want the most anonymous sign-up and payment process available and don’t mind an app that stays out of the way — not for anyone chasing the cheapest long-term deal or reliable Netflix access.

Pros

Eleven independent security audits from three different firms (Cure53, Assured, X41 D-Sec) since 2018, all published in full
No email required to sign up — accounts are just a 16-digit number, generated client-side
Accepts cash by mail and privacy-coins (Monero, Bitcoin) at a 10% discount over card/PayPal
Flat €5/month regardless of term — no fake “70% off” pricing games
Kill switch is always on and can’t be disabled; optional Lockdown mode blocks traffic even when disconnected
Independent 2026 WireGuard benchmarks are strong — Tom’s Guide clocked it at an average 2,140 Mbps, and other testers place it around 650 Mbps on nearby servers with 0.1% packet loss over 14 days

Cons

No long-term discount — a 1-year plan costs exactly the same per month as a 1-month plan
Streaming unblock results are inconsistent across third-party tests; not a service to buy for Netflix
Port forwarding was removed in 2023 after abuse complaints, cutting into advanced P2P/self-hosting use cases
No obfuscation protocol — just WireGuard and OpenVPN, with nothing built for networks that actively detect and block VPN traffic
Sweden is a Fourteen Eyes member — the loosest of the three intelligence-sharing tiers, but a real jurisdictional factor worth knowing
Support is email-only, no live chat
No affiliate or referral program of any kind — see below

No-Logs Audit

Mullvad’s infrastructure has been through four dedicated Cure53 audits (2018, 2020, 2022, 2024) plus additional app and payment-system audits by Assured, X41 D-Sec, and NCC Group. The most recent infrastructure audit (June 2024) tested a live OpenVPN server, a WireGuard server, and the Ansible code used to deploy them. Cure53 found one low- and one medium-severity issue — neither related to logging or user data — and explicitly found no way to compromise traffic anonymity.

Beyond the commissioned audits, the no-logs claim also got an adversarial real-world test: on April 18, 2023, at least six Swedish National Operations Department police officers arrived at Mullvad’s Gothenburg office with a search warrant, seeking customer data as part of an international request tied to a German investigation. After Mullvad demonstrated that no such data existed to retrieve, the officers left without taking anything — the company’s first search-warrant visit in over 14 years of operation.

Pricing & Payment

Mullvad charges €5/month flat, whether you pay for one month or ten years — there’s no discounted long-term tier to hunt for, but also no bait-and-switch renewal price. Accepted payment methods include credit card, PayPal, bank wire, and several regional options, plus cash sent by mail and cryptocurrency (Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, Bitcoin Lightning) at a 10% discount. Signing up requires no email address — just an auto-generated account number.

Security & Protocols

The app supports WireGuard and OpenVPN, with an always-on kill switch that can’t be turned off from the settings — traffic simply stops if the tunnel drops. Split tunneling (excluding specific apps from the VPN) is available on Windows, Linux, Android, and macOS 13+, but not on iOS. Port forwarding, previously available for self-hosting and P2P use cases, was discontinued in mid-2023.

Servers & Torrenting

Mullvad runs 582 servers across 50 countries. Torrenting isn’t singled out for restriction anywhere in the Terms of Service — the only prohibited use case is reselling the VPN service itself — and it’s allowed on the full server fleet rather than a dedicated P2P subset.

Jurisdiction

Mullvad VPN AB is a Swedish company (parent entity Amagicom AB), founded in 2009. Sweden is a member of the Fourteen Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance (the broadest of the Five/Nine/Fourteen Eyes tiers, alongside Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Spain) — a real jurisdictional factor, though a looser sharing arrangement than the core Five Eyes. Sweden is also an EU member state subject to EU-level data retention debates.

Beyond the VPN

Mullvad also co-develops the Mullvad Browser with the Tor Project — a free, open-source browser that ports Tor Browser’s anti-fingerprinting defenses to run alongside a VPN instead of the Tor network. A VPN hides your IP address, but it does nothing about browser fingerprinting; the two tools address different layers of the same problem.

Our Rating

Category	Score	Notes
No-Logs Audit & Trust	9/10	Eleven audits since 2018 across three firms, all fully public, no login required — offset slightly by Sweden’s Fourteen Eyes membership
Security Features	7.5/10	Always-on kill switch, solid split tunneling, but no obfuscation protocol for censorship-heavy networks
Speed & Reliability	8.5/10	Independent 2026 tests: Tom’s Guide measured 2,140 Mbps average; others ~650 Mbps nearby with 0.1% packet loss
Price & Value	9/10	Flat €5/mo (~$5.72) regardless of term — no discount to chase and no renewal-price jump, among the cheapest and most transparent pricing structures reviewed
Support & Usability	7.5/10	Email-only, no live chat; third-party response times range 10 min to a few hours
Overall	8.4/10	Weighted: No-Logs 30% · Security 20% · Speed 20% · Price 15% · Support 15%

Affiliate Disclosure

Mullvad has a written policy stating it does not run an affiliate program and does not pay for reviews, influencer mentions, or backlinks of any kind. That means this review carries no tracked referral link and earns PrivacyPick.com nothing if you sign up — it’s here because it’s a legitimate, heavily audited option, not because of a commission.

Rating: 8.4/10