Private Internet Access VPN Review – Is This a Good VPN?

I recently switched the VPN that I use, to Private Internet Access.

With over 10 years of VPN expertise, a strict no logs policy that has been audited and proven in court multiple times, and impressive worldwide coverage, Private Internet Access appears to be in the very top tier of VPN providers.

But is PIA really a good VPN provider that will give you the privacy you need, reliably unblock streaming websites, and maintain fast connection speeds?

In this honest and thorough review of Private Internet Access, I’ll try to cover all aspects of this VPN, from its security features and server network to its performance in real-world scenarios.

By the end, you’ll know whether PIA is the right VPN for your needs, and how it stacks up against other leading VPN services. Read on to find out more!

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What is Private Internet Access?

Private Internet Access is a virtual private network provider that has been around since 2010. Surprisingly, I had never heard about them until I was looking up my IP address and found recommendations for them alongside some other big names.

It was interesting to learn that they not only had a bulletproof no logs policy but that policy was also proven in court multiple times. They were also audited by a firm called Deloitte to verify that they did indeed fully comply with their no logs policy.

Here’s what you need to know about Private Internet Access, in a nutshell.

After trying Private Internet Access for an entire month, mainly for unblocking streaming services and working on geo-restricted websites so that I create content for Trial Bear, I was very happy with the service.

They did not offer a free trial themselves but they did have a lot more server options that the VPN I used before them. And they also unblocked a lot more services including most Netflix regions, Peacock, and Max.

PIA is currently offering a deal on their 2-year subscription where you can get 82% off their regular price + 2 months free.

Pros & Cons of Private Internet Access VPN

There’s a lot to love about Private Internet Access VPN.

However, it isn’t perfect – no VPN is. For example, the VPN I was using before couldn’t unblock Peacock or Max. Now I can stream content from both services with PIA, but I can’t stream on The Roku Channel and Amazon Prime Video is detecting that I’m using a VPN.

Here’s a side-by-side of what I liked about PIA and what I didn’t like.

I use a VPN more for unblocking streaming than for any other reason and also because I have to access geo-blocked websites for the purpose of creating content on this website.

So I was happy that Private Internet Access allowed me to unblock all the websites that I needed to unblock. In particular, I was happy to have access to Netflix in multiple regions, as well as Peacock, and Max (all of which did not work with my previous VPN).

Unfortunately, some services, although I can unblock the geo-restrictions, they either detected that I was using a VPN and didn’t allow me to stream content or they would not even let me register. These include Amazon Prime Video and The Roku Channel, two services that I use all the time to test free trials.

I was mostly happy with everything else about Private Internet Access including the number of servers they had compared to my experience with other VPNs. Connection speed also didn’t drop that much either which was a plus. Obviously though, the further away you go from your location, you’ll have to deal with higher latency. The speeds when connecting to Australian servers were a bit slower but still good enough to stream in HD with no problems.

Finally, PIA doesn’t offer a free trial but their pricing is very inexpensive compared to other top VPNs. On top of the 82% discount + 2 free months offered on their 3-year plan, you can try the service risk-free, backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Private Internet Access Review – Key Takeaways

Security & Privacy Features

Most people who use a VPN are looking to browse the internet securely and with increased privacy. Private Internet Access offer a number of security and privacy features that will allow users to do just that.

No Leaks

Any good VPN is not going to leak your private data. I tested Private Internet Access for leaks and the service registered passes for the three leak tests that I did.

There were no IP address leaks. When connected to a VPN server, PIA protected my IP address and location from external prying eyes.

I also checked for DNS and WebRTC leaks. PIA passed both tests with no leaks found for either one.

Kill Switch

Like most reputable VPNs, Private Internet Access also has a kill switch feature. When enabled it protects your data from being accidentally exposed if your VPN connection unexpectedly drops. Kill switch will instantly cut off your internet connection, preventing any data from leaking outside the VPN tunnel.

Without a kill switch, a VPN disconnect could expose your real IP address and online activities. This feature prevents any such accidental exposure. It’s especially useful for those who need constant protection, like journalists or people in countries with strict internet laws.

PIA’s kill switch is easy to set up. In fact, it’s enabled by default when you first connect to the VPN. Flexible settings allow you to block internet traffic when an unexpected disconnect occurs or even blocking all internet traffic when the VPN is turned off.

Data Encryption

Private Internet Access uses strong encryption to protect your data. This means they scramble your information so others can’t read it. They offer two main encryption options:

1. AES-128: This is a fast, secure method. It’s good for most everyday tasks like browsing or streaming.
2. AES-256: This is even stronger. It’s ideal if you need top-level security, like for sensitive work or in high-risk areas.

You can also choose between different VPN protocols:

• OpenVPN: A trusted, all-around good choice.
• WireGuard: Newer and often faster, but still very secure.

By default, PIA has OpenVPN enabled so I kept this option enabled. PIA lets you pick whichever settings works best for you. This balance of security and speed helps keep your data safe without slowing you down too much.

By using these strong encryption methods, PIA helps shield your online activities from prying eyes. Whether you’re sending emails, shopping, or just browsing, your data stays private.

Dedicate IP Addresses

For an additional $5/month on top of your Private Internet Access subscription, you can get a dedicated IP address. This dedicated IP address is different from the shared VPN IP addresses because it belongs to you only and since it’s token-based, it cannot be traced back to you.

Having a dedicated IP address allows you to avoid block lists and access IP-sensitive websites (like your online banking website) without any problems.

And because some services block known VPN IP addresses or ban IP addresses due to abuse by some VPN users, you’ll be able to avoid these scenarios with a dedicated IP address.

You can choose a dedicated IP address from a wide range of countries around the world including: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Belgium or Switzerland. You will still be able to connect to other VPN addresses around the world.

No Logs

Another important privacy concern for VPN users is whether or not the VPN service keeps logs. If a VPN kept logs, your private data could possibly end up in the hands of others, including hackers, the government or even the VPN company itself.

Private Internet Access takes user privacy very serious and has a very strict no logs policy. They do not keep any records of what you do online while you’re using their service.

Having disk-less servers mean that they can’t store any user data. They do not log any of the following:

Their no logs policy has been proven in court twice, most notably in 2016 when the FBI requested user data in a court case. Private Internet Access had no files to give to them because they didn’t keep logs.

And people might not like that PIA is based in the United States but there is no requirement to keep logs in the US. They may be asked to hand over logs but this would be impossible if there are no logs in the first place.

PIA has also been audited to verify that they in full compliance with their no logs policy and the firm Deloitte confirmed that they didn’t store any logs or user data.

What About Speed and Performance?

Typically, when you use a VPN, you are going to encounter some sort of speed loss. This is because the VPN has to encrypt your connection. Other factors include server location, encryption protocols, your original connection speed, and the VPN you’re using.

Private Internet Access performs well for me. I typically don’t do anything other than streaming movies that relies too much on speed (like gaming). Streaming speeds are good enough or me and I usually don’t notice a difference between speeds when I’m connected to PIA and when I’m not connected.

I did some speed tests to see what kind of speed loss you can expect when connected to Private Internet Access VPN servers.

Important factors to note for the speed tests I ran:

Here’s a screenshot of my speed when I’m not connected to a VPN server.

The next thing I did was to connect to a VPN server with the lowest latency to try to get the highest possible speed. This happened to be Florida in the United States.

170 Mbps seemed like quite a reduction but it’s still not that bad. In fact, I thought it was great that it was still above 150 Mbps. If you’re in the US, you’d probably get a lot less speed reduction connecting to the nearest server to your location which makes Private Internet Access a great high speed VPN with minimal speed loss.

Of course, the further away you go, you’re going to get an even greater reduction in speed. I then decided to test a UK server to see how it fared.

I got 127 Mbps speeds connecting to the London server which to me isn’t too bad considering the distance.

Finally, I decided to try a server that was on the other side of the world in Australia. I didn’t have any great expectations for these speeds as the PIA dashboard showed high latency and I connected to the server before to stream Netflix. It’s slow. I can still stream but it’s still not the best.

As expected, this connection speed is bad but since it’s so far from my location, I’m not surprised. However, you can still stream with this type of speed. I probably just wouldn’t be connecting to an Australian server to watch Netflix even though they have content not available on closer regions.

Private Internet Access Server Network & Coverage

One thing that impressed me about Private Internet Server was it’s server network. The company boasts 35,000 servers in 91 countries including servers in every state of the United States.

This means that you can connect to a server in nearly every major country in the world with it’s vast network of VPN connections. When you open PIA app, you’ll see a lot of options to connect – every US state, multiple connections in countries like Canada, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Japan, and Australia, plus any other big country you can think of.

With such wide options, it means that you’ll be able to find a server near you, which can help with maintaining the connection speed you’re accustomed to. It also means that servers aren’t overloaded with users which again helps with speed.

Besides the available servers to connect to, you can also get a dedicated IP address that will not be available to anyone else but you. This will help you to connect securely so you can avoid block-lists and connect to IP-sensitive sensitive websites without any hitches.

The quality of Private Internet Access servers is just as important as the numbers. They own all of the servers which means your privacy is better protected. The servers are also RAM-only so they cannot store user-data.

Other important features of Private Internet Access that might interest you are:

I like that Private Internet Access has so many options to connect and so many countries. When I want to find a specific title on Netflix, I just look for which country has the title available, connect to a server in that country and watch the title.

Speaking of Netflix and streaming, not all of the connections unblock Netflix. For some countries, there are optimized servers with the right settings to unblock Netflix and other streaming services. These servers are marked as “streaming optimized” so you can easily find and connect to them if you’re going to use a connection for that purpose.

Is Private Internet Access Easy to Use?

Private Internet Access is very easy to use. All you need to do is download the app onto your device, use your login credentials to login and then connect to a server.

The settings you need are already configured to what works best but if you need to tinker with them, you can easily access the settings dashboard and change whichever settings you need to change.

Usually, I have the PIA app pinned to my taskbar so all I have to do is click on it and click the connect button. Or I would just click on the VPN server list to find a server to connect to. There’s not much else you need to do besides that. It’s simple and easy to use.

Supported Devices

Private Internet Access has apps for the following devices:

I downloaded PIA on my laptop which runs Windows 10 and on my Android device because I have Netflix installed. The mobile app looks slightly different but still very easy to use.

How Does Streaming Work?

According to Forbes, 46% of VPN users use a VPN when access streaming services. Because of issues with licensing, many streaming services are only available in some countries or have different content libraries for difference geographical locations.

To unblock content only available in certain locations, you can use a VPN to connect to a server in the country where the content is available. For me, this is one of the main reasons why I use a VPN. And also because a lot of the streaming service free trials I talk about on this website are only available in the US.

One common problem with using a VPN to unblock streaming services is that some VPNs are subject to IP bans and some streaming services employ various VPN detection methods that end up rendering their services unusable to VPN users.

I tested Private Internet Access with some of the most popular services that I use or have tried to use in the past to see if PIA would successfully unblock them and let me stream their content.

PIA for streaming did not perform as well as I expected although it unblocked most of the streaming services I tried and some that I couldn’t unblock with my previous VPN.

One good thing about Private Internet Access VPN though is that sometimes, a location can be blocked when trying to stream but the service has special streaming optimized servers that you can connect to that will unblock the content and let you stream. Super convenient and works well.

Here’s how some of the streaming services I tried worked with Private Internet Access.

Netflix

Some VPNs I’ve tried before only managed to unblock access to foreign Netflix libraries (let you see the titles), but not let you stream the actual content. I had few problems unblocking streaming with Private Internet Access. US ip addresses unblocked Netflix without any problems as did many of the other servers around the world.

I did encounter some cases where you would get only Netflix original titles which meant that the service was geo-blocked but in these cases PIA’s streaming optimized servers saved the day. In rare cases, I was able to see the titles and not be able to stream.

So, in the case of Netflix, Private Internet Access worked well to unblock the streaming service. This is important because Netflix is the most popular streaming service on the planet and many people are looking to unblock their content in different regions so they could have more stuff to watch.

Amazon Prime Video

This one was surprising and a bit disappointing because I’ve always been able to unblock streaming on Amazon Prime Video. I tried on my phone and on my laptop but had no luck on either device.

Even when using streaming optimized servers, I get the message:

Your device is connected to the Internet using a VPN or proxy service. Please disable it and try again. For more help, go to amazon.com/pv-vpn.

Since Amazon Prime Video has the largest content library of all the streaming services, this feels like a let down. Luckily, I can still get to see what content is available and what’s on the channels. I’m just not able to stream the content.

Disney+

Disney+ isn’t too much of a problem for me when it comes to accessing their content. Nearly everything they own, I’m able to access – all the Marvel stuff, all the Star Wars stuff and more.

However, I did have trouble accessing Disney+ when I connected to PIA. The solution? Just connect to one of the streaming optimized servers and you’re good.

Max

I’m finally able to unblock streaming on Max, after not being able to do so with my previous VPN. I had no problem at all accessing Max and streaming content.

Peacock

Peacock is another streaming service that I had trouble connecting to with a VPN in the past. I’m pleasantly surprised that PIA allowed me to access Peacock and now I can finally watch Bel-Air.

The Roku Channel

On Trial Bear, one of the ways I tell people how to get free trials of premium streaming services, is to subscribe via The Roku Channel.

I was able to unblock access to The Roku Channel connecting to a Private Internet Access VPN server. I even took a free trial for a channel. Unfortunately, when it came to streaming the content, I was unable to do so.

Streaming optimized servers didn’t help, neither did changing protocols or DNS settings. Private Internet Access does not work for streaming content on The Roku Channel.

BBC iPlayer

BBC iPlayer notoriously does not play well with VPN. I have only been able to stream content once using SmartDNSProxy, but never with a VPN. You are able to access the website and see what’s available but when you try to stream any content, you’ll get a message saying you can only play content if you’re in the UK.

It also doesn’t matter if you use the streaming optimized server.

Streaming Service	Unblock	Stream Content?
Netflix	Yes	Yes
Prime Video	Yes	No
Disney+	Only using streaming-optimized server	Yes
Max	Yes	Yes
Peacock	Yes	Yes
The Roku Channel	Yes	No
BBC iPlayer	Yes	No

For most other services, you can access them with ease just by changing your location to one where the content is available.

While Private Internet Access works well to protect your privacy and secure your connect, it’s not the best when it comes to streaming access although it does a pretty good job with most of the major streamers.

Private Internet Access Advanced Features

Private Internet Access has some extras that I would say are advanced features. If you’re not really into tech stuff then you’re probably not going to mess with these features. They can be helpful though if you know what you’re doing. .

Ad-Blocking

There’s a feature called PIA MACE that when enabled, allows you to block known domains that are used for serving ads, tracking, and malware.

You can easily turn on this feature by going to the Privacy settings in your app and checking the PIA MACE box.

This is one more feature from Private Internet Access to help you take control of your privacy while browsing online.

Double VPN

If you want to further encrypt your data, Private Internet Access has a handy feature called Multi Hop that reroutes your traffic through a proxy. This feature also adds obfuscation which supposedly hides the fact that you’re using a VPN.

You can use either Shadowsocks or SOCKS5 proxy with this feature. I’m not too familiar with this feature but it’s there to by used by more advanced users who are serious about their privacy.

Split Tunneling

Another advanced feature Private Internet Access has that I’m not familiar with as a casual VPN user is Split Tunneling.

Split tunneling allows you to set up rules so that you can have some apps on your device bypass your VPN and use your ISP traffic while everything else goes through the VPN.

Might sound intimidating to use but it’s actually very easy to set up and exclude device apps from using your VPN connection.

Customer Experience & Support

When you need help with an issue, there are a few ways you can go about getting a problem solved. There is a Help Center with helpful guides and knowledge-base articles that walk you through various aspects of using Private Internet Access VPN.

You can also use the contact link to send an email but more than likely, you’re going to want help much quicker than an email would allow. For that you can use the live chat right inside your account.

I decided to get some help setting up SOCKS5 for multi-hop and reached out to support via live chat.

My experience wasn’t bad. I got the help I needed but the responses were a bit slow. Not sure if it was this particular issue or maybe something else but live chat should feel like you’re having a conversation.

In any case, I got my problem solved and I didn’t have to wait until the next day for an email reply so PIA support isn’t too bad at all.

How Much Does Private Internet Access Cost?

There are several subscription plans to choose from when purchasing Private Internet Access VPN. Unfortunately there is no free trial so you must start with one of the plans.

The good news is that compared to other top VPNs, Private Internet Access is relatively cheaper at $11.99/month if you choose to pay monthly. There is also a 6 month plan for $7.50/month (billed at $45 for the 6 month period).

Your greatest savings would however be on the promotional price where you can get 82% off and 2 months free on their 2-year subscription. This comes in at around $2.17/month. Promotional prices may vary slightly if they’re having a special sale.

While there is no free trial available, Private Internet Access does have a 30-day money-back guarantee so if you’re not satisfied, you can get a refund during this 30-day window. This works a bit like a free trial and is typical of the VPN industry.

PIA accepts credit/debit cards, Amazon Pay, PayPal and cryptocurrencies. The fact that they accept cryptocurrencies is a big plus because many other VPNs do not and this aligns well with their focus on the importance of user privacy.

Is Private Internet Access Safe?

Safety is always a concern for people who are looking for a reliable VPN that will keep their data private and secure. After all, there are VPNs that claim to not keep logs, but do (you’ll know when the authorities come knocking).

There are several things that Private Internet Access does well enough for me to conclude that they are indeed very safe to use.

1. They use RAM-only servers

The pros of a VPN using RAM-only servers is that there is no storage. As soon as you disconnect, your session gets wiped. No storage of data means they can enforce and prove that their strict no logs policy.

Their no-logs policy has been proven in court multiple times which is a great sign that your data is safe.

2. They use open source software

Private Internet Access is open source, which means anyone can look at the code. This level of transparency proves that they’re not hiding anything.

3. Strong encryption

PIA uses AES-128 encryption by default and you can switch to AES-256 encryption, which is very hard to crack. This keeps your data scrambled and unreadable to others.

4. Kill switch cuts off your connection during drops

If your VPN connection drops, the kill switch cuts off internet access. This stops your real IP address and location data from being exposed.

5. DNS leak protection

PIA handles DNS requests itself. This stops your internet provider from seeing what websites you visit.

I’ve tested leaks and PIA did not have any DNS leaks.

Private Internet Access is a safe VPN to use and I think that they’ve proven their ability and commitment to protect your data and secure your connection.

Final Words

Private Internet Access, despite shortcomings in the streaming department, is a very good VPN, with strong privacy and security features. Their claims of not collecting logs have been tested multiple times in court and they’ve also been audited.

With RAM-only servers that are fully owned by the company, plus strong encryption, kill switch and no leaks detected, Private Internet Access is a good choice for anyone who wants to protect their sensitive data.

They’re also a fast VPN that is very easy to install and use, and you can use one PIA subscription to protect an unlimited amount of devices at the same time.

The pricing is relatively cheaper than other top VPNs. Right now, you can get PIA at 82% off + 2 months free on the multi-year plan. That’s a great deal for your peace of mind.