NordVPN Just Aced Its Latest Independent Review

Virtual private networks (VPNs) rely upon trust and transparency. What use is a service that promises privacy from the digital snoops and data thieves if nobody knows what its inner workings look like?

Any VPN worth using regularly opens up its inner workings to independent analysis companies to perform audits, which vet the security and privacy promises of VPNs and share the results publicly.

That’s one major reason why I named NordVPN as my overall favorite VPN. It freely submits to regular independent audits, and the latest one by West Coast Labs confirms NordVPN makes good on its promises of privacy and usability. Check out the results here, if you like, and read about why you should be using a VPN.

why you should care about audits

Independent audits are what allows people not connected with the company to see that the company is being truthful in its claims and advertising.

Without a stake in the company’s financial health, there’s more credibility that the one doing the auditing isn’t going to fudge the numbers just to move more products and boost the financial bottom line.

West Coast Labs has been validating and testing software for over 30 years. As they put it, they carry out testing activities “in a secure, real-world test environment and within a framework of confidentiality that ensures integrity of information and test data.”

In their latest report, released on March 24, 2025, West Coast Labs gives NordVPN a pass on all the categories it tested in this round of audits, including launch on boot, auto connect, internet kill switch, split tunneling, time to connect, connection success, website accessibility, connection latency, download speed, upload speed, and IP leaks.

As I wrote in my guide to the best VPNs, NordVPN’s servers have been plenty fast for me all over the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia. If there’s a slow, overloaded server, it’s a cinch and a second to reconnect to a faster one. I’ve no complaints when watching movies in 4K or downloading large files.

Though founded in Lithuania, NordVPN is based in Panama, which is not a member country of the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes international surveillance alliances. NordVPN also has a no-logs policy that says it doesn’t log user information. If a government agency or court were to try to compel them to turn over user data, they couldn’t because they don’t collect it.

All this goes to demonstrate that NordVPN is still the privacy powerhouse it’s always been.