Best VPN for School Wi-Fi in 2024

Surfshark is an excellent choice if you’re on a budget and want a VPN that’s easy to use, offers some really neat features and delivers top-notch privacy. Streaming enthusiasts will be pleased to know that Surfshark is one of the best VPNs for streaming. During my tests, I found Surfshark to be especially adept at unblocking Netflix content, allowing me to access content from dozens of countries’ Netflix libraries. Additionally, Surfshark’s Camouflage mode (obfuscation) can disguise your VPN traffic as regular internet traffic, helping you bypass firewalls because your school’s network administrators won’t know you’re using a VPN in the first place. To use Surfshark’s Camouflage mode, simply select the OpenVPN protocol and the obfuscation functionality will be engaged by default.

If you have a lot of devices or want to share a VPN subscription with your roommates, Surfshark is a good way to go because it offers unlimited simultaneous connections -- still a relative rarity for a VPN service. Apps are available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS/iPadOS, Android and Fire TV. Surfshark also has some unique privacy features that can help give your privacy a serious boost. Though other VPNs like NordVPN offer a handful of preset multihop connections, Surfshark takes the double VPN concept to the next level by allowing you to connect through any combination of two server locations. Mutlihop connections give you an additional layer of privacy by encrypting your connection twice, making it even more difficult for anyone to determine your actual IP address and track your activity. It’s great for critical privacy needs, and Surfshark’s implementation allows you to optimize your speeds by connecting through any two servers of your choosing. You can also use Surfshark’s IP Rotator feature to automatically change your IP address every few minutes without disconnecting from the server.

Surfshark’s monthly subscription plan is more expensive than most other VPNs’ monthly plans, but if you opt for the annual or two-year plan, you’ll get a ton of value at a significantly cheaper price than most other top VPNs. The monthly plan costs $15.45 a month and the annual plan is priced at $48 for the first year (then $60 annually). A two-year plan is available for $54 for the first two years combined (then $60 annually) -- though we don’t recommend signing with a single VPN provider for more than a year at a time, given how quickly things tend to shift in the VPN industry.  

NordVPN is a popular VPN provider based out of privacy-friendly Panama, which is an excellent choice for students who work collaboratively on projects. Students can leverage NordVPN’s Meshnet feature to securely share files and remotely access other devices to work on joint projects in real time. And when you’re not studying, you can even use Meshnet to host remote LAN parties with your friends in other dorms or other parts of the world. No other VPN in this list offers a feature like Meshnet, so if you do a lot of group projects at school, NordVPN is a solid choice.

In addition to being excellent for collaboration, NordVPN is easy to use, great for streaming, offers superb privacy protections and is currently the fastest VPN based on our testing. NordVPN’s proprietary WireGuard-based NordLynx VPN protocol is lightning-fast and secure, but if you’re having trouble getting around your school’s firewall, you can try connecting through NordVPN’s obfuscated servers using the OpenVPN protocol -- which I recommend for optimal privacy and firewall evasion. OpenVPN has long been the industry standard for privacy and has been thoroughly battle-tested in the wild. Additional privacy features include industry standard protections like a kill switch, DNS leak protection and a no-logs policy, along with a few extras like Onion over VPN and Double VPN. NordVPN’s Threat Protection feature helps block ads, web trackers and malware.

ExpressVPN is CNET’s Editors’ Choice selection for the best VPN overall. It’s one of the more expensive VPNs, but it delivers the most polished and user-friendly VPN experience in the industry. ExpressVPN also offers top-notch privacy and is the best VPN for streaming.

One of the things I like most about ExpressVPN is that it’s consistently pushing the boundaries of what a VPN is capable of and setting standards for the industry. For example, ExpressVPN recently rolled out post-quantum protection, which helps protect against future threats from quantum computers. The feature is enabled by default, and ExpressVPN is one of the only VPNs thus far to offer such protections. Also, I like how ExpressVPN’s obfuscation is automatically enabled when you connect through its proprietary Lightway protocol, so you don’t need to go searching around the app to find obfuscated servers to get around your school’s firewall, as long as you’re using Lightway.

ExpressVPN is fast enough for just about anything you’d want to do online, even if its connections aren’t always quite as quick as NordVPN’s or Surfshark’s. In our most recent testing, we measured an overall internet download speed loss of 25% with ExpressVPN, 11% with NordVPN and 17% with Surfshark. However, ExpressVPN’s Lightway protocol proved lightning-fast, registering a mere 8% speed loss on average. If you’re using Lightway, you shouldn’t have any issues streaming content with ExpressVPN. I was able to easily stream content on various devices through several different streaming services, including Netlfix, Disney Plus, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video with ExpressVPN during my testing. I also like how streamlined the app is across platforms -- it’s a simple, no-nonsense app that beginners and advanced VPN users alike will have no problems using. ExpressVPN costs $13 a month, $60 every six months or $100 a year, and includes a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans.

If you find that you’re spending most of your cash on books or in the dining hall, you may not want to spend any more money on a VPN subscription. The good thing is that you can still protect your privacy online and get past school firewalls without paying a dime with ProtonVPN’s free plan. 

With Proton VPN’s free plan, you get access to five server locations (US, Romania, Poland, Netherlands or Japan), but you aren’t able to select a specific server -- clicking the Connect button randomly selects a server location for you. This is an intentional move by Proton VPN to evenly distribute free users across its free servers to avoid overloading a single server, thereby theoretically optimizing speeds. Other than those limitations and slightly fewer features than its premium plans, Proton VPN’s free tier doesn’t impose any restrictions on speeds or usage. The free tier also offers the same encryption standards and basic privacy features as its premium tier. Most free VPNs impose strict limitations on usage and bandwidth, making them mostly useless. Many free VPNs are even dangerous to use because they’ll sell your data to third parties and may even be loaded with malware. Proton VPN’s free tier is safe to use, fast and useful for privacy while browsing, evading firewalls and other activities like streaming. The benefits you can get from Proton VPN’s effectively unlimited free tier easily outweigh the minor constraints the company imposes on free users, making it an excellent choice for students on a limited budget.

If you’re looking for the cheapest VPN on this list, you’ll find it in Private Internet Access. PIA costs just $12 a month, $40 a year or $79 every three years and delivers much of the same performance and functionality as its more expensive competitors. PIA is a fully open-source VPN that offers apps for all devices that include features like a kill switch, DNS leak protection, split tunneling, multihop connections and obfuscation. You’ll also get unlimited simultaneous connections, which makes it an even greater value if you’re sharing the VPN with your roommates.

I like how customizable PIA’s apps are -- you can make the app dashboard as clean or as information-dense as you want by toggling and ordering various elements within the app. You can also fine-tune the encryption strength, depending on whether you want to optimize for speed or privacy. In our latest speed tests, we calculated an average speed loss of 49%, which is considerably slower than other top VPNs. That said, PIA is still a decent option for streaming -- we were able to stream content on various streaming services, including Netflix and Disney Plus, but encountered issues trying to stream Amazon Prime Video on Windows. While PIA doesn’t offer a free option, you can give it a test and get a refund within 30 days of purchase if you’re not satisfied.