A VPN is a fantastic tool to have in your arsenal. It offers excellent protection from bad actors, especially when you’re on public Wi-Fi. On top of that, it can unblock location-locked content for you, letting you stream your favorite shows wherever you are!

Sometimes, a VPN can have a minor impact on your internet speed. However, if you’re using a quality VPN, it’s typically such a slight difference that you won’t even notice! Here, let’s talk about how a VPN works and its impact on your online time.

How does a VPN work?

A VPN assigns an extra server to you and your internet traffic. Any pages or content you request will still be downloaded to your device for viewing as normal, but they will pass through that extra server first.

Because there’s an extra step between the content you want and your devices, the myth has spread rapidly that a VPN could really slow down your internet speed. A simple VPN speed test would reveal that this isn’t the case! To do that test, you would temporarily turn off your VPN before doing an internet speed test. Then, you would switch the VPN back on and carry out another speed test. While you may notice a slight decrease in speed, it’s extremely unlikely that it will be very different from your usual speeds. Let’s break it down.

How a VPN can slow down your internet speed

A VPN might slow down your internet speed in a couple of main ways. 

Proximity

In the modern world, we don’t consider the proximity of servers much: our internet speed is so fast that it doesn’t matter! However, it’s worth noting that any data you request will be physically transferred along cables from its source to you.

Therefore, if there’s a great distance and a lot of cable between you and the data you want, you may notice that the data takes a little longer to get to you than more locally stored data.

If you select a VPN that’s far from you, for example, a VPN in Australia while you’re in France, then the data has to travel a very long way from its source to Australia and then onward to you.

Selecting a VPN near you can often almost entirely resolve this problem.

Overload

If a particular VPN server has many users accessing it all at once, it’s quite likely that the server will become overloaded. This is most commonly seen with free VPNs, with the enormous demand for a free VPN being answered by too few servers.

If you’re using a paid, premium VPN, it’s very unlikely that you would ever experience this latency. The reason is that the fee you pay typically pays for access to servers, so the more people that pay, the more servers there are. As such, overload never becomes an issue.

How a VPN can boost your internet

While it’s true that a VPN can sometimes slow your connection down, you also get a host of benefits in return! Let’s talk about two important ones here.

Faster access

In some cases, a VPN can actually increase your internet speed!

If your ISP throttles your speeds on certain types of content or at certain times of day, a VPN can help you get around that. By channeling your activity through a VPN, you bypass any content- or user-specific speed limitations. In effect, you’re speeding up your internet connection!

Privacy

A VPN can increase your privacy online by encrypting your data and masking your IP address from any bad actors who may be watching. Instead of revealing your true IP address, a VPN will only reveal the IP of the VPN server itself, which adds a layer of protection between you and any potential hackers.

A VPN will also hide your usage data from your ISP. Considering that most ISPs profit from selling your online activity to third parties, you’ll experience greater privacy while using a VPN.

Myth or fact?

While a VPN can slow down your internet speed in some situations, any decrease in speed will be very minor, and you’ll undoubtedly experience other benefits that make up for that decrease. As long as you’re using a reputable VPN, it’s unlikely that your internet speed will change much, if at all.