Explainer · 6 min read

Why VPN speed tests disagree.

One review crowns NordVPN. The next says Surfshark. A third quotes numbers five times higher than both. They're mostly not lying — here's what's actually going on.

The same VPN, five different answers

For the exact same provider, one review reports an average download around 270 Mbps; another quotes well over 1,200 Mbps. If they measured the same thing, the numbers would line up. They don't — and the reason usually isn't fraud.

A speed figure is the output of one test, under one set of conditions, on one day. Change almost any input and the ranking can flip. The number is real. The word “fastest” bolted onto it is what's overselling.

“Fastest” is a conditional result dressed up as a fact.

Try it · our live data

Change one input. Watch “fastest” flip.

Fastest download in London NordVPN

Surfshark

1,454.8 Mbps

NordVPN

1,517.2 Mbps

Across these 7 cities × 3 metrics, Surfshark wins 7 and NordVPN wins 14. Any single “winner” depends on which cell you pick.

There is no single “fastest VPN”

Asking which VPN is fastest is like asking which car is fastest without naming the track, the weather or the driver. The honest answer is always fastest under these conditions — and almost nobody prints the conditions next to the headline.

The six variables that decide who “wins”

01Server endpoint & distance“Fastest” usually means fastest to the server the tester happened to pick. A provider can win London and lose São Paulo.

02ProtocolWireGuard, NordLynx and Lightway beat OpenVPN/IKEv2 by wide margins — often more than the brand does.

03Time of day & loadThe same server at 8pm and 3am is effectively two different servers.

04The tester's own lineA 100 Mbps home line caps every VPN at 100. A datacentre exposes the tunnel's true ceiling — hence huge numbers.

05Measurement toolOokla, a raw file download and iperf give different numbers — sometimes a different order — on the same connection.

06Sample sizeOne test is noise. Only an average over many tests means anything — and most reviews quote a single shot.

The part affiliate sites can't tell you

Most VPN reviews are funded by affiliate commissions, and payouts differ sharply between providers — some exceed $100 per signup. When the highest-paying VPN is also crowned “fastest”, it's worth asking which came first. The tells:

The same VPN is #1 for streaming, gaming, torrenting and every country.
No raw data, no test dates, no conditions — just a confident ranking.
“Fastest” is asserted, never shown.

We take affiliate commissions too — it's how this site is funded, and we say so plainly. The difference: our speeds are collected by an automated system that doesn't know who pays more. The code measures; it doesn't negotiate.

Checklist

Five questions for any “fastest VPN” claim.

Tick what the page you're reading actually answers.

0 / 5Treat it as an opinion.

How we sidestep the whole mess

We can't tell you what you'll get at home. What we can do is remove every variable except the VPN: same hardware, same protocol, same automated process, continuously — over 222,615 tests across 142 locations and counting.

That doesn't produce a mythical “fastest VPN”. It produces something more useful: if one provider is faster in the city you connect to, you can see it — and trust that nothing else was different.

See the live head-to-head → How we test

Questions

Is NordVPN faster than Surfshark?

It depends on the conditions — which is exactly why reviews disagree. Both run WireGuard-based protocols and both are among the fastest available, so the winner changes with the city, the time and the tester's line. We test both identically and show results per location.

Why is my VPN slower than the reviews say?

High headline numbers are usually measured from a datacentre with a multi-gigabit uplink. Your speed is capped by your broadband, Wi-Fi, distance and congestion. The review isn't wrong — it's measuring something different from your living room.

Which VPN speed test should I trust?

Ones that show their work: stated conditions, averages not single shots, recent dates, one method for every provider, and visible data. Be wary when one VPN is best at everything for everyone.

Does the protocol affect speed?

Significantly. WireGuard, NordLynx and Lightway are much faster than OpenVPN and IKEv2 — often a bigger gap than between two providers. We test WireGuard throughout so the comparison stays consistent.