Summary
Expert rating
Benefits
- Very fast
- Many payment options
- Many servers and countries
- Access to all tested streaming services
Disadvantages
- Not as cheap as the top competitors
- No free or trial version
Opinion
Nord VPN has great speeds, many servers and countries to connect to and provides access to all the streaming services we tested with. The only small minus is their subscription prices, which are slightly higher than those of other top competitors. However, that doesn’t stop Nord VPN from snagging first place.
Read our test of vpn services
Price for year-round subscription: From SEK 47 per month
Price for two-year subscription: From SEK 41 per month
Nord VPN, based in Panama, took the last time we tested it to first place among our tested vpn services. When we now retest the service a year later, it continues to excel and defends its first place.
However, it does not start so positively. The prices, which are basically Nord VPN’s only weakness, have gone up another notch since last time. Not that Nord VPN is an expensive service, at least not for longer subscriptions, but the competitors at the top are a bit cheaper.
With a monthly payment, for example, Nord VPN costs a whopping SEK 149 (SEK 132 at the latest). If you instead choose a year-round subscription, the monthly cost will be SEK 61 (SEK 54 at the latest). To bring the price down further, to SEK 44 per month (SEK 41 at the latest), you can choose a two-year subscription. Not very expensive, but still a price that the competition matches head-to-head when it comes to longer subscriptions.
Unfortunately, there is no free or trial version either. The only thing they offer is (like most of the competition) a 30 day “money back guarantee”. A guarantee that they also honor without any problems.
However, the number of payment options is positive. Here you can find everything from card payment and Paypal to payment with cryptocurrencies.
All streaming services
But once the subscription costs are settled, Nord VPN really shines. They offer access to both many countries (60) and many servers (5,428) to connect to. The number of countries is the same as last time, but the number of servers has increased slightly.
Also in our speed tests, Nord VPN impresses greatly. Against a Swedish server we reach a whopping 182 Mbit/s, against a British one we get 168 Mbit/s and against an American one 149 Mbit/s. All three are the fastest results we’ve gotten in our measurements and an increase since we last tested the service.
This on a 250 Mbit/s connection, which means that Nord VPN reaches up to 73 percent for Swedish servers, 67 percent for British and 60 percent for American. Real top results!
When it comes to access to the most common streaming services, we get the full pot. We can watch SVT Play, TV4 Play, Swedish Disney Plus, Swedish HBO Max, British BBC Iplayer, American Netflix and American HBO Max. Nord VPN is one of the few VPN services we’ve tested that can handle this.
Nord VPN also offers a number of additional services in addition to the pure vpn service. The standard service includes both malware protection and tracker/ad blockers.
In addition, it costs extra to get access to, for example, a dedicated IP address, password manager, data intrusion control and a terabyte of encrypted cloud storage. This costs between SEK 10 and SEK 70 extra per month, depending on which services you want and subscription form.
Overall, Nord VPN shows that they are still number one among our tested vpn services. Until next time, however, we hope for lower subscription costs.
Specifications
Service: North VPN
Tested: February 2023
Country of operation: Panama
Contact: nordvpn.com
Number of servers: 5,428 servers in 60 countries
Site in Swedish: Yes
Program in Swedish: No
Software for PC: Yes
Software for Mac: Yes
Kill switch: Yes
Number of concurrent units: 6
Average speed Swedish server with 250 Mbit/s connection: 182 Mbit/s (73%)
Average speed UK server with 250 Mbit/s connection: 168 Mbit/s (67%)
Average speed American server with 250 Mbit/s connection: 149 Mbit/s (60%)
Access to SVT play: Yes*
Access to TV4 Play: Yes*
Access to Swedish Disney+: Yes*
Access to Swedish HBO Max: Yes*
Access BBC Iplayer: Yes*
Access to US Netflix: Yes*
Access to American HBO Max: Yes*
Price for year-round subscription: From SEK 47 per month
Price for two-year subscription: From SEK 41 per month
* Netflix and other streaming services actively work to block access via vpn services. The fact that a certain streaming service worked at the time of testing is no guarantee that it works today.