Readers' Choice Awards 2020: VPN Services

You need a virtual private network (VPN) to keep your internet traffic to yourself. However, not all VPN services are created equal. We always offer a rundown of our top VPN picks, but in this story, we turn to you, the readers, to share your favorite (or least favorite) VPNs. Your top choices remain consistent.

VPN Services 2020

Many VPNs offer a basic free tier and then ask you to pay for advanced features, but there's no free tier with Private Internet Access. That doesn't stop PCMag readers from appreciating the service, though. In fact, Private Internet Access's overall satisfaction score of 8.9 (out of a possible 10) put it in the top spot. It also rates well on almost every score, usually beating or at least tying the competition. Click through the results charts here or check the full table of results below for comparison.

You can see that Private Internet Access wins, but not by much. That overall satisfaction score of 8.9—same as it earned last year—has two close competitors in ProtonVPN and Surfshark. Call those two some surprise competition, because this is the first appearance for both in our Readers' Choice survey results. Neither met the required cut-off of responses in the past. But 2020 is a year of change.

ProtonVPN, known for an excellent free version with no data-usage limit, beats Private Internet Access for setup (9.3), ease of use (9.2), performance (8.9), and perhaps most tellingly, for trustworthiness (9.1) and the likelihood to be recommended (9.0). That's why ProtonVPN also earns a Readers' Choice award this year.

The only reason we're not giving a third Readers' Choice award to Surfshark—which crushed it on many scores, especially cost rated at 9.2, and tying with Private Internet Access for internet speed at 8.6—is because it dipped quite a bit for trustworthiness at 8.7. It's a near miss that Surfshark should be able to make up for next year.

There are a few other standout scores among the lower echelon VPNs here (anyone with an overall satisfaction of 8.5 or lower): ExpressVPN has an excellent setup score of 9.2, Avast manages an ease of use of 9.1, Keepsolid's VPN Unlimited earned a 9.1 for cost.

Maybe most surprising is that NordVPN, which certainly has the most users among PCMag readers, doesn't have high satisfaction except for a setup score of 9.1. Last year, NordVPN was in third place with an 8.7 overall; it dropped half a point to 8.2 this year, landing in seventh place.

Again at the bottom: Norton Secure VPN. Last year it only got a 7.8 for overall satisfaction, this year that went to 7.5. A lot of people probably use it because of the name. It was the second most used VPN among our survey takers. But no one seems to love it.

For more, read The Best VPN Services of 2020.

Full Results

Readers' Choice 2020 VPN Services -- Full table results

The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for was in the field from August 31, 2020, to September 202020. For more information on how our surveys are conducted, read the survey methodology.

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About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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