Best open source VPN services for photographers

Mullvad VPN

A flat 5 euro a month whatever term you pick, with no discounts to chase and no annual lock-in. The account is a randomly generated number rather than an email address, and Mullvad will take cash in an envelope or Monero, so the subscription need not point back at you at all. The desktop and mobile apps are published under the GPL and the company is Swedish. The austerity cuts both ways: there is no free tier, and Mullvad dropped port forwarding in 2023, so it suits a photographer who wants a clean tunnel on hotel Wi-Fi more than one who needs to reach a drive at home.

Proton VPN

The widest network in this comparison by a distance, which is the practical argument for it: shooting abroad, you are more likely to find an exit server near the client gallery or cloud backup you are uploading to. One subscription covers ten devices, port forwarding is available, and Proton runs the only genuinely usable free plan of the group, capped to one device but not to data. The apps are GPLv3 on GitHub and the company is Swiss. Signing up ties the account to an email address, so it is not anonymous the way Mullvad or IVPN are.

IVPN

The cheapest paid plan here, from a small Gibraltar company that refuses to take an email address at signup and has closed its affiliate program, which is why it rarely shows up in sponsored VPN roundups. The apps are GPLv3, the gateways are dedicated bare metal rather than rented virtual servers, and payment can be cash or Monero. IVPN says plainly that it does not offer port forwarding, so if the point of your VPN is reaching a home archive from a shoot, this is the wrong one. The Standard plan covers five devices; a pricier tier doubles that.

Windscribe

The one option here with no ceiling on simultaneous connections, which is the honest answer for a photographer running a laptop, a phone, a tablet and a desktop at the same time. You can create an account without giving a name or an email, and port forwarding is built to let you reach your own computer or home network while connected, so a card dump can go straight to the drive at the studio. The desktop client is published under GPL version 2 and the company is registered in Ontario. There is a free plan with a monthly data allowance if you want to try the network before paying.

Private Internet Access

The priciest month to month plan in this table, and also the broadest coverage after Proton, with servers in 91 countries and no cap on how many devices one account protects. PIA has published its app source code for years, so the same inspectability argument that people make for Mullvad applies here at a mainstream price. Port forwarding works on selected servers. The catch for a privacy minded chooser is the rest of the paperwork: the company is American and signup needs an email address plus payment, so the account is tied to you even though the code is open.

Mozilla VPN

Firefox's own subscription VPN: ten dollars a month, five devices, and the smallest network in this comparison at roughly 500 servers across 30 or so countries. The client is published under the Mozilla Public License, so it is as inspectable as the others, but a Mozilla account is required, which means the subscription is attached to an email address. Nothing on Mozilla's pages documents port forwarding. The reason to pick it is a name you already trust and a subscription that sits beside the rest of your Mozilla account, rather than any privacy feature the others lack.