The Best VPN for Gaming for 2026

Looking for a competitive edge while gaming? A VPN might be just what you need to keep your ping low, especially if your ISP is interfering with your gaming traffic.

We’ve tested a bunch of the top VPNs to bring you our list of the very best gaming VPNs. Heading up the list is NordVPN, thanks to a truly stellar worldwide server network that promises low ping wherever you are in the world. In second place, we have Surfshark with comparable speeds and unlimited simultaneous device connections so you can protect your gaming session no matter if you’re on your desktop, laptop, or mobile. Taking bronze on our winner’s podium, ExpressVPN also offers extremely low-latency connections in locations all around the world. Next up, Proton VPN also performed extremely well under our gaming stress tests. It’s the ideal choice if you’re concerned about privacy, too. Finally, we have IPVanish, another provider that offers both high-speed, low latency connections, and unlimited simultaneous device connections.

Why Use a Gaming VPN?

Using a VPN for gaming might seem counterintuitive at first, however there are actually plenty of good reasons why you’d want to use one during a gaming session. You might be worried that a VPN will significantly impact your speeds, but our testing has found that when you connect to nearby servers the impact on your ping is negligible. In fact, connecting to a VPN can improve your speeds in some cases, as your VPN provider can choose alternate routing paths from your ISP and may get your packets to the server you’re connected to faster. In our testing, NordVPN kept ping at just 1ms on nearby servers.

In addition, using a VPN keeps the contents of your internet traffic private from your ISP. ISPs tend to carry out a practice known as “traffic shaping”, where they prioritize certain types of traffic over others. So when you’re streaming or gaming, that traffic may not receive as high a priority as browsing traffic. A VPN ensures that all of your traffic is treated with equal priority, so you’ll be able to get the best speeds for gaming even during peak hours.

Using a VPN can also unblock exclusive content unavailable abroad and make it easier to connect to specific game servers by spoofing the location you’re connecting from. A gaming VPN lets you hop between countries and access these perks. We tested 30 VPN providers, and Surfshark consistently worked across 181 countries for different regional game stores.

We’ve saved the most important reason for last. When you connect to a game server, you expose your real IP address to the server operator and even other participants in the game. If you’re playing a game with peer-to-peer matchmaking, this leaves you vulnerable to DDoS attacks, where an attacker overwhelms your connection with traffic until you’re knocked offline, a risk that feels more serious when 129,000+ DDoS attacks hit Cloudflare’s network every day in 2025. A VPN hides your real IP address, making these attacks much harder to pull off. VPN providers use high-quality networks that are well-equipped to handle even the most taxing DDoS attacks. If you are knocked offline, you can simply connect to another VPN server and you’ll be back online within seconds, ensuring you don’t lose those vital final moments of the match to hackers.

We’ll discuss the results of our testing below, but before we get into it your should remember to check your game’s terms of service before using a VPN for regional access.

Best VPNs for Gaming Compared

I’ve tested dozens of VPNs for gaming performance. These five consistently deliver low ping and minimal speed drops when you’re gaming across regions or need to bypass geo-blocks.

To bring you a list of the best VPNs for gaming, we conducted exhaustive tests on each VPN in our review list, comparing them for ping, jitter, and packet loss. We’ll define this terms so you understand how to read our results.

• Ping is how long it takes for a packet to make a round trip to the server you’re contacting and back.
• Jitter is the variation from the average ping, which can cause stuttering, lag, and buffering.
• Packet loss is when your packets are lost at some point on the route before they reach their final destination, which can cause dropped inputs and lag.

We’ve also included our baseline results on our testing rig so you have an idea of how each VPN impacted our connection. We’re using Cloudflare’s speedtesting site for a rough idea of how each VPN performs before getting into a game, plus ingame results from Valve’s PvP third-person shooter Deadlock.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s our top five list.

• NordVPN – my top pick with minimal US speed drop and 1ms added ping
• Surfshark – unlimited devices for $1.99/month, low speed drop
• ExpressVPN – consistent performance across 105 countries
• Proton VPN – port forwarding support with 20,000 servers
• IPVanish – US-owned, low domestic drop, connects everything you own

Visit NordVPN.com

1. NordVPN

NordVPN actually reduced our latency down slightly below our baseline results at 28.2ms. That’s pretty impressive, and speaks to the quality of NordVPN’s fantastic server network. At $3.09/month, NordVPN is definitely worth the month if you’re serious about gaming. You’ll get access to 9,000 servers across 181 locations, making it pretty likely you’ll have access to at least one physical server near your location.

While we saw that jitter was slightly above our baseline results at 22.5ms, our in-game tests showed that the actual jitter is comparable, if not lower than what you’ll get without NordVPN. We played around for a few minutes and it felt like playing without a VPN on.

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Read our full NordVPN review

2. Surfshark

Surfshark didn’t perform as well as NordVPN with 40.3ms latency, but there’s a significant point in Surfshark’s favor. One subscription covers all of your devices, whether you have 10 or 100. That means you can cover all of your gaming devices, routers, mobile phones, and smart TVs without spending another penny above your initial monthly payment. That’s all for the low price of $1.99/month on the a two year plan.

As for our in-game results, they’re a lot better than the Cloudflare stats would suggest. Only 8ms ping and decent jitter results meant that while we were gaming, there was no noticeable issues with lag.

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Read our full Surfshark review

3. ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN also performed well in our latency tests, with comparable results to Surfshark and slightly less jitter. Costing $2.49/month if you buy a two-year plan, ExpressVPN isn’t quite as expensive as it used to be. Its 1000s servers span 105 locations, including hard-to-find regions that budget providers often skip.

Taking ExpressVPN ingame, we found that the lower jitter was also reflective in our gameplay. A difference of 2ms compared to Surfshark is basically unnoticeable when you’re actually playing.

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Read our full ExpressVPN review

4. Proton VPN

Proton VPN isn’t just a fantastic privacy-first VPN, it’s also a great VPN for gaming. With 20,000 servers covering 127 locations, you’ll be able to pick low-latency servers wherever you are on the planet.

Proton VPN is also flexible if you don’t want to lock in to a long-term plan. The monthly plan costs just $9.99, which is around the average for the VPN industry. Not exactly cheap, but not hugely expensive either.

As for our results, ProtonVPN performed pretty well. 32.1ms is just slightly higher than our baseline results, but not by a particularly wide margin.

While our Cloudflare results suggested that Proton VPN has the second lowest jitter on our list, our ingame results showed that Proton VPN is a little more inconsistent than we’d expect. Essentially, we saw some very minor lag spikes that could affect your gameplay and a generally higher ping, but this wasn’t noticeable during gameplay. Still, you may want to consider one of our top three instead.

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Read our full Proton VPN review

5. IPVanish

IPVanish performed rather well, but the issue with it isn’t its network performance. The reason IPVanish sits below the other recommendations on our list is because it’s overall a less impressive VPN than our top four. That said, it’s pretty cheap at only $2.19/month.

IPVanish has 74 locations to pick from, which doesn’t quite compare to the other VPNs on our list. Great if you’re in Europe or the US, but not as impressive as NordVPN if you’re gaming from more obscure locations.

That said, the results speak for themselves. Lower latency than our baseline tests and exceptionally low jitter, so if you’re close to one of IPVanish’s servers it’s a fantastic gaming VPN.

Visit IPVanish.com

Read our full IPVanish review

How to Set Up a Gaming VPN on PC and Consoles

Setting up a gaming VPN on a PC is straightforward. All you need to do is download one of the VPNs we’ve recommended, log in, and connect. Once you’re connected, every app on your PC is covered by the same VPN tunnel. If you want to use a VPN for only specific apps, each of the providers we recommend also comes with split tunneling.

Setting up a VPN on a console is a little trickier. Gaming consoles don’t have native support for VPN clients in the same way that smart TVs do, so you’ll need to route your console through another device that is connected to a VPN. The simplest way to do this is to load a VPN onto your router through the admin panel (usually at 192.168.0.1). ExpressVPN offers Aircove routers which come pre-loaded with your VPN details, but the other providers we’ve recommended all have support articles detailing how to put a VPN on your router.

You can also bridge the connection through your PC. You can do so by running your main internet connection through Wi-Fi and then share your PC’s VPN connection by running an ethernet cable (right-click your VPN adapter, hit Properties, then Sharing, and check “Allow other network users to connect”).

Once you’ve got your VPN running, connect to a nearby server and run a speed test to see whether you’re getting an acceptable ping. Nearer servers will be lower latency, but it’s better to double-check before you get into a game. Plus, some games may detect VPN traffic and block you so you may need to jump between a few servers until you get the right one.  NordVPN and Surfshark make this easy with one-click gaming servers that automatically grab the fastest location near you.

If you’re gaming from your mobile phone, it couldn’t be simpler. Just download a VPN app from your app store, connect to a nearby server, and you’re good to go.

Key Factors When Choosing a Gaming VPN

Not all VPNs are ideal for gaming. Even if a particular VPN provider might be great for streaming or web browsing, there’s a few specific things you’ll need to look out for:

• Latency: Ping matters more than raw speed. You can get by in most games with just a couple of Mbps upload and download, but if your VPN significantly adds to your latency you’ll end up being much worse off than just playing without one. ideally under 10ms in most cases. In our testing, NordVPN and Surfshark both added just 1ms of ping overhead. IPVanish added 78ms, which is enough to noticeably impact competitive play. 
• Server distribution: This plays into what we’re talking about with latency. The closer you are to the VPN server you’re connecting to, the lower your ping will be. So, if your VPN provider doesn’t provide servers in your country, it’s time to switch to one that does. Make sure you’re choosing one that offers mainly physical servers over geolocated virtual ones. Some locations are practically impossible to offer real servers in (Russia and China especially), but for the most part there’s no excuse for not offering physical servers. NordVPN leads here with 9,000 servers in 181 locations.
• Protocols: You need a VPN protocol with low overhead. That means WireGuard. OpenVPN is more CPU intensive and chews up more of your bandwidth. All of our recommended providers connect with WireGuard by default, although there’s one or two that offer proprietary protocols like ExpressVPN’s Lightway protocol and NordVPN’s NordLynx protocol. For fairness, we’ve compared all providers on WireGuard but you might get better peformance using these custom protocols instead. We’d recommend avoiding older protocols like IKEv2 or PPTP.
• Features: Look out for port forwarding if you want to host your own game servers. Split tunneling lets you route only your game traffic through the VPN. A reliable kill switch ensures your connection won’t drop mid-match.
• Router support: PlayStation and Xbox don’t support VPN apps natively, so you’ll need to set up a VPN at the router level. All of the providers listed above have extensive guides on how to set up routers, or pre-configured router options.
• Simultaneous connections: Surfshark and IPVanish both offer unlimited simultaneous connections, which is ideal if you’re gaming across multiple devices. Most other VPNs cap you at around 10 devices which is enough to cover a PC, mobile, and router installation, but it’s still worth checking before you commit.

VPN vs GPN: Which Is Better for Gaming?

Gaming Performance Networks (GPNs) like ExitLag, Haste, and WTFast promise lower ping and reduced packet loss specifically for gaming. That’s great, but if you’re already looking for a VPN there isn’t a lot that a GPN will offer that a VPN can’t do too.

GPNs route your gaming traffic through optimized paths to game servers which can potentially reduce your latency. VPNs do the same thing, but aren’t strictly optimized for gaming. GPNs don’t offer much more beyond that, but a VPN also encrypts all of your traffic to keep your ISP from downgrading your internet speeds. A GPN won’t do this.

VPNs don’t just do this for your gaming traffic either. They’re a complete privacy solution for all of your network traffic. Modern gaming VPNs like NordVPN and Surfshark deliver excellent gaming performance while also unblocking geo-restricted content, protecting you on sketchy WiFi, and keeping your ISP out of your business.

Frequently Asked Questions