Torrenting is a great way to download large files, including movies, TV shows, music albums and video games. However, this practice is not popular among parties interested in copyright protection. As a result, you may even get into trouble if you are caught downloading pirated material. Unless you use the best VPN for seed downloading to hide your IP address and online activity from prying eyes.
Therefore, we have listed the best VPNs for seed downloading and these tools will reliably protect your privacy whenever you launch your torrent client.
ExpressVPN
Simply put, ExpressVPN is the top VPN available – in part because it’s perfect for keeping you safe while downloading seeds.
A quality VPN for seed downloads should have plenty of security features to keep you safe, and that’s exactly what ExpressVPN offers. Not only does it offer full seed download support on every server, but it also offers WebRTC leak protection, a private DNS server and Perfect Forward Secrecy, which uses a unique key every time you connect and every 60 minutes thereafter.
In addition to excellent privacy, ExpressVPN offers good connection speeds – essential for any torrent VPN. Connections to servers in your country will remain fast and its extensive network of servers means you will be able to choose from a large number of overseas connections to ensure you connect close to home.
With termination switches and split tunnels, combined with a strict, independently audited no activity or connection logging policy, Express offers the most complete torrent VPN package we’ve had the pleasure of testing.
However, as with any VPN, users may encounter problems – and if you do, Express provides you with 24/7 live chat support. The helpful team will have you downloading torrents in minutes, not hours, and they’re also great for recommending the best servers when streaming global content on sites like Netflix.
While ExpressVPN costs slightly more than some of its competitors, it’s not worth saving money on a torrent VPN because there’s usually a lot of risk – and a 30-day money-back guarantee if it turns out it’s not for you.
NordVPN
NordVPN is one of the best VPNs for torrents. It offers P2P support on its dedicated servers and offers some of the best connection speeds of any provider on this list.
This VPN provider has a strict no-logging policy, so you can download seeds anonymously without any risk. NordVPN’s servers do not have mechanical hard drives and run on RAM only. In addition, their privacy policy was audited twice by PricewaterhouseCoopers (one of the largest accounting firms).
With over 5500 servers in 59 countries, you will have a large number of countries to choose from. In addition, NordVPN supports P2P on its dedicated servers.
NordVPN works with the next generation NordLynx tunneling protocol. In our tests, it was one of the fastest, with download speeds of up to 29MB/s, perfect for torrenting. For those who don’t care about encryption and prefer faster speeds, there is also a SOCKS5 proxy.
This provider has a termination switch that will turn off your Internet connection to prevent unwanted IP leaks. In addition, the split tunnel feature will allow you to add your torrenting clients to the tunnel list and only your P2P traffic will be encrypted, making this provider a compelling torrenting VPN.
All of this makes NordVPN a great choice for seed downloads. You can get it for $2.99 per month for up to 6 simultaneous connections, and for added appeal, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. So, even when downloading seeds, you can enjoy strong data encryption and great speed.
Surfshark
If Surfshark is already on your VPN shortlist, it’s probably because of its price – or because it tops our list of the fastest VPNs. Thanks to the lowest cost of its multi-year plan, it consistently features prominently in our guide to cheap VPNs. Quite frankly, absolutely cheap.
Especially if you think Surfshark does have the goods to support that status. For torrent enthusiasts, most servers support P2P (although it would be nice if they were more explicit about which servers have it), zero-knowledge DNS servers, bitcoin support, split tunnels, and even URL and ad blocking. If you are struggling to get Surfshark to work with your torrent client, there is also very convenient 24/7 support via email and live chat.
Back to value for money, one subscription covers an unlimited number of devices. So you can have VPN running on your PC, Mac, cell phone, TV streaming device, game console, router and all other compatible devices – and maybe some of your friends and family!
It includes termination switches on Windows, Mac, Android, and iPhone. That’s fine, but during our testing it had some minor issues on Windows, and we felt we didn’t get a clear enough warning when the connection was disconnected. Not a disaster in the real world, but any vulnerability immediately made us stop and consider other issues that might be going on behind the scenes.
But again, Surfshark is an excellent, secure service for financially savvy seed downloaders who also want to get more out of their VPNs.
AirVPN
AirVPN is either an excellent privacy VPN or the ultimate honeypot for attracting online troublemakers such as freeware and open source software seed downloaders. We say this because the team at AirVPN is largely anonymous, so it’s not clear who’s running the show. That said, the Italy-based VPN does have a good reputation, and its speed puts it in our top 10. It has a very simple desktop interface, but it is available. It’s not a huge network, but it’s very economical and works well.
CyberGhost
CyberGhost, located in Romania, allows seed downloads on any of its P2P optimized servers. You can easily find these in the torrenting section of the application’s server list.
CyberGhost adheres to a strict no-logging policy, uses 256-bit AES encryption with perfect forward secrecy, and has an abort switch on its desktop clients. An application-specific termination switch is hidden in the settings, called “Application Protection”, which only cuts off the Internet for specific programs, such as a torrent client. CyberGhost scored high in our speed tests and even unlocked US Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Apps are available for Windows, MacOS, iOS, Linux, and Android.