A standalone VPN app encrypts all the traffic from your machine and lets you use all the features and privacy tools that are part of your subscription. Without question, the desktop app provided by a VPN provides better protection with more features and options than a browser extension. While the CyberGhost VPN Chrome extension might be a good choice for anyone who doesn't want to pay or create an account in order to protect their browser traffic, the hands-on experience was far poorer than the others we tested. In our testing, we found the CyberGhost VPN Chrome extension to be very slow, with some websites (including Netflix) timing out entirely. All Chrome extension users, paying and not, are limited to just eight servers, and the extension provides no other options.
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When we went to test the CyberGhost VPN extension, we discovered that it is strictly a free offering with no option to log in to your CyberGhost VPN account. Did We Ghost CyberGhost?Ĭareful readers will notice that although CyberGhost VPN is on our list of the best VPN services and does offer a Chrome extension, it's not on this list.
While we acknowledge that audits are imperfect tools, we think they offer the best way to get insight into how these services operate under the hood. Several VPN services commission third-party audits that examine their infrastructure and ability to stick to their privacy policies. We also check whether the companies issue transparency reports about their interactions with law enforcements. When we review VPN services, we look through the privacy policies issued by the VPN companies for any potential risks. All your browser traffic will flow through the VPN service's servers, so it's important that you trust the service you settle on. Chrome VPN extensions (again, they're probably encrypted proxies) grant the extension and the service behind them remarkable insight into your traffic.
Can You Trust Chrome VPN Extensions?īy default, Chrome extensions have access to more or less of your browser data. Fortunately, all the extensions we tested secured IP and DNS data.
We also used the DNS Leak Test tool to determine if the extension had hidden our IP address (a good thing) and if it was leaking DNS information (a bad thing). We installed and tested all these VPNs in the latest version of the Chrome browser running on a 2020 MacBook Pro.įor each service, we explored its features and tried to access Netflix. That leaves NordVPN, Surfshark VPN, Private Internet Access VPN, CyberGhost VPN, TunnelBear VPN, and ExpressVPN. Keep in mind that all these services offer desktop apps and mobile apps in addition to these extensions. Editors' Choice winner Mullvad VPN offers a Firefox plug-in, not a Chrome extension. Less surprisingly, perhaps, there’s also no Chrome VPN from Mozilla-the company does, after all, focus most of its efforts on the Firefox browser. Surprisingly, two of our Editor’s Choice winners, IVPN and ProtonVPN, do not offer any browser options. From these, we looked at which offer a Chrome extension and which don't. To compile this list, we started with our roundup of the best VPN services. If you want actual VPN protection for your machine controlled by your browser, ExpressVPN is your best option. Conveniently, you don't need the ExpressVPN desktop app open in order to use the Chrome extension. This is a real VPN connection that affects not just your browser traffic, but also all the web traffic from your device. Once you do that, you can use either the desktop app or the Chrome extension to control your VPN connection.
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To use the ExpressVPN Chrome extension, you first need to download and log in to the ExpressVPN desktop app. ExpressVPN describes its Chrome extension as a "remote control" for your VPN and that seems pretty accurate. ExpressVPN's Chrome extension isn't a proxy, but it also isn't a VPN app either. Granted this distinction is confusing, but VPN services should do a better job of explaining exactly what these tools do. Most do note that their products will protect your browser traffic, but not all of them say that it will only protect your browser traffic. Irritatingly, most VPNs do not make it clear that their Chrome extensions are anything other than a full-fledged VPN. We've reached out to the individual vendors to confirm that their Chrome extensions function as proxies. We confirmed that all the services listed here (with one exception) only encrypt browser traffic. For more on the topic, you can read our explainer, VPNs vs.
But it's not a VPN and shouldn't be mistaken for one. If you're only concerned about unblocking online content or adding additional privacy to your web browsing, a proxy is fine.
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