What are people looking for in a VPN?

The top five factors for users in the UK and US choosing a VPN are

Reliability of connection: 54%

Ease of use: 54%

Speed: 54%

Privacy/logging policy: 43%

Price: 42%

For a full list of factors, see page 9 of the full report.

There is clearly a disconnect between what we see as users' primary motivations for using VPNs (privacy and security) and what they are actually looking for in a service (i.e. performance considerations).

We also found that 72% of UK and US users choose free VPNs.

This is further evidence that VPN users' choices do not match their motivations in practice, as in earlier surveys we found that most free VPNs had security and privacy flaws.

Given that 36% of users in these markets have used a paid VPN service, a small proportion of users use both free and paid services and may use the free service to explore whether VPN software is suitable for them before taking out a paid subscription.

62% of VPN users associate VPNs with the word 'secure', suggesting that VPN users may see all VPNs as equally secure when research proves otherwise.

Only 26% of VPN users associate the tool with the word 'legal', suggesting that widespread misconceptions about the legitimacy of VPN use worldwide continue.