Today I am in Canada and I’m going to test the Netflix streaming speeds of the top 3 VPNs for US Netflix to find out which VPN can give me the fastest streaming speed.
Netflix Streaming Speeds – ExpressVPN vs VyprVPN vs StrongVPN
The following test was done using a 100 Mbps internet connection in Canada. To measure Netflix streaming speeds, I used two methods.
Method 1 – fast.com speed test powered by Netflix
This will test download speed from Netflix’s servers. The tool is provided by Netflix for the purpose of checking if your ISP is throttling Netflix traffic. If your ISP is throttling Netflix traffic then you will get a slower speed on fast.com compared to speedtest.net or other speed tests.
I find this tool is also very useful for testing Netflix streaming speeds with different VPNs, although this obviously is not the purpose intended by Netflix for providing this tool.
Here are the results from the fast.com speed test.
No VPN: 89 Mbps
ExpressVPN: 51 Mbps
VyprVPN (Chameleon): 8.9 Mbps
VyprVPN (OpenVPN): 46 Mbps
StrongVPN: 0 Mbps (The fast.com speed test doesn’t work with StrongVPN)
StrongVPN (speedtest.net): 2.48 Mbps
Method 2 – Actual Network Speed While Streaming Netflix
Using this method, I am checking the bandwidth graph in GlassWire software while actually playing a Netflix title.
Netflix streaming speed without VPN (Canadian Netflix) – 11 MB/S (88 Mbps) peak:
Netflix streaming speed with ExpressVPN OpenVPN (US Netflix) – 11 MB/s (88 Mbps) peak:
Netflix streaming speed with VyprVPN Chameleon (US Netflix) – 3 MB/s (24 Mbps) peak:
Netflix streaming speed with VyprVPN OpenVPN (US Netflix) – 15 MB/s (120 Mbps) peak:
Netflix streaming speed with StrongVPN OpenVPN (US Netflix) – 0.8 MB/s (6.4 Mbps) peak:
Conclusions
When streaming from a high speed internet connection without a VPN, Netflix will download the stream with high speed in the beginning until a healthy buffer is built up then it will slow down. The behavior with ExpressVPN OpenVPN and VyprVPN OpenVPN is the same as when not using a VPN.
With VyprVPN Chameleon, the speed is much slower due to the higher encryption. Unfortunately, it’s more difficult to get a working Netflix server when using OpenVPN with VyprVPN.
StrongVPN, on the other hand, is not as fast for Netflix streaming. It’s fast enough to stream but not really high performance like ExpressVPN and VyprVPN.
Your results may vary from mine, the test results are for reference only.
What are your Netflix streaming speeds?
If you do a test on fast.com or measure the speed in another way, please leave a comment below and me know what speeds you get. Don’t forget to mention what VPN you are using and what country you are in.