Mullvad vs. NordVPN
A comparison of Mullvad and NordVPN across privacy, usability, performance, transparency, pricing and streaming.
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Best VPN for Privacy in Australia (2026): Mullvad vs Proton vs IVPN vs NordVPN vs ExpressVPN
Published 6 November 2026
Search "best VPN" and you'll mostly find affiliate lists, where the VPN paying the highest commission comes first. This comparison ranks VPNs on what matters for privacy: how much the provider can know about you, whether its no-logging claims have been tested, and who owns it.
Disclosure: Privacy First sells Mullvad VPN vouchers, and we include 6 months of Mullvad with our GrapheneOS phones. We chose to sell Mullvad because of the reasons below, not the other way round. Unlike most "best VPN" lists, nobody paid to be ranked here.
Why Australians use a VPN
Under Australia's mandatory data retention laws, telcos and internet providers must keep metadata about your connections for at least two years. That doesn't include your web browsing history, but your provider can still see where you connect. A VPN stops your provider from seeing which sites and services you connect to, because it only sees an encrypted connection to the VPN. The catch is that the VPN provider can now see that traffic instead. So choosing a VPN means choosing who you trust, and that's what this comparison is about.
Quick ranking
| Rank | VPN | Account needs email? | Pay anonymously | Independent audits | Based in |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mullvad | No, random account number | Cash, crypto, card | ✅ Multiple | Sweden |
| 2 | IVPN | No | Cash, crypto | ✅ | Gibraltar |
| 3 | Proton VPN | Yes (Proton account) | Crypto, cash | ✅ | Switzerland |
| 4 | NordVPN | Yes | Crypto | ✅ | Panama (parent company in the Netherlands) |
| 5 | ExpressVPN | Yes | Crypto | ✅ | British Virgin Islands |
1. Mullvad: the most private choice
- No personal details at all. No email, no name. You get a random account number, and that's your login.
- Pay anonymously, including by posting cash in an envelope, or with cryptocurrency or a voucher.
- One simple price: a flat €5 a month, unchanged since Mullvad launched in 2009, with no "93% off" sales or lock-in plans.
- Tested in the real world: in 2023, Swedish police arrived with a search warrant and left with nothing, because Mullvad had no customer data to hand over.
- Servers run without hard drives (RAM only), so nothing persists if a server is seized.
- Independent security audits of its apps and infrastructure, published openly.
- Privacy-first features such as DAITA (Defense Against AI-guided Traffic Analysis), which pads and disguises your traffic so its patterns are harder to analyse, plus multihop and WireGuard.
- No affiliate programme, so nobody is paid to recommend it.
Downsides: no streaming-unblocking promises, and fewer server locations than the big brands. For privacy, that's the right trade-off.
Buy Mullvad VPN in Australia: 6 months, up to 5 devices.
2. IVPN: a close runner-up
Very similar philosophy to Mullvad: no email needed, anonymous payment options, independent audits and a transparent team. A smaller network, and slightly pricier. A great choice if you prefer an alternative to Mullvad.
3. Proton VPN: strong, but tied to an account
From the Swiss company behind Proton Mail. Open-source apps, audited no-logs, and a genuinely usable free tier. However, you need a Proton account (usually with an email address), so it's linked to more of your identity than Mullvad or IVPN. A good choice if you already use Proton's services.
4. NordVPN: popular, polished, heavily marketed
Fast apps, huge server network and audited no-logs claims. But it requires an email account, relies heavily on paid affiliate marketing (which is why it tops so many "best VPN" lists), and had a server breach in 2018 (disclosed in 2019). Fine for streaming and public Wi-Fi; not our pick for privacy. More detail: Mullvad vs NordVPN.
5. ExpressVPN: good product, ownership concerns
Strong apps and audits. But it's owned by Kape Technologies, which also owns several other VPNs (including Private Internet Access and CyberGhost) and a group of VPN review sites, a conflict of interest privacy-minded users should know about.
Avoid: free VPNs (apart from Proton's)
If you don't pay, the provider still needs to make money, often from your data or ads. Several free VPN apps have been caught logging and selling user data.
What a VPN doesn't do
A VPN hides your traffic from your internet provider and the sites you visit, but it doesn't:
- stop Google, Meta and others tracking you when you're logged in
- protect you from spyware or malicious apps on your phone
- make you anonymous on its own
That's why it works best as one layer of a private setup: see our phone privacy checklist.
Our pick
Mullvad, because it knows the least about you and has proven it under real-world pressure. Get Mullvad VPN, or get it built in: every Privacy First 10a GrapheneOS phone includes 6 months of Mullvad VPN.
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