Disclaimer: This article summarizes the findings of an independent, third-party comparative test. It is intended for informational purposes and reflects the results of a single testing round.
About the test
Artifact Security is an independent testing firm based in London that measures the real-world performance of consumer security and privacy products. By Artifact Security’s own description, the test, published in June 2026, is “round 1” of the firm’s ongoing testing program, where the goal is to show an average buyer how a VPN really performs around the world.
Every tested VPN provider (NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Mullvad, ProtonVPN, and Surfshark) was scored on a tiered ranking system and received one overall score. This was calculated by weighting throughput, stability, latency, and time to connect across every tested route, then averaging the result into a single grade.
Artifact Security’s testing design is consistent with the VPN Testing Guidelines published by AMTSO — the cybersecurity industry’s standard-setting body for how security products should be tested and compared. All of the firm’s tests, including this one, are run in isolated, repeatable environments, and VPN products are acquired commercially. Artifact Security plans to expand the program later this year to cover more platforms (operating systems).
How did each VPN score in the test?
NordVPN edged out the rival VPN providers and finished with a score of 91, taking the test’s only Platinum rating. ExpressVPN, ProtonVPN, and Surfshark each landed on Gold, with scores of 84, 83, and 81 respectively. Mullvad closed out the table with a Silver rating and a score of 70.
Artifact Security ran its tests across 55 routes, each connecting one of five origin regions — Germany (Frankfurt), the United Kingdom (London), Singapore, US East (New York), and US West (San Francisco) — to a fixed destination server. NordVPN won three of those five regions outright: London, New York, and San Francisco. Surfshark won the remaining two, Frankfurt and Singapore.
How fast is NordVPN on Windows?
Tested on Windows, NordVPN posted the highest average download speed of any tested provider, at 271.9 Mbps, and the highest median download speed, at 568.4 Mbps. The next-highest median speeds came from Surfshark at 508.9 Mbps and ExpressVPN at 462.4 Mbps.
NordVPN’s fastest single run reached 908 Mbps download and 920 Mbps upload, both the highest peaks recorded across all five providers and every tested route. Worth a caveat here: Those peaks reflect a best-case run and not what a user should expect on an average connection — the median figures above are the more representative numbers of everyday performance.
How fast is NordVPN on Android?
Android testing was run from London, with results reflecting the median of each provider’s per-highway medians. NordVPN posted the highest download speed at 526.6 Mbps and the highest upload speed at 223.3 Mbps — both the best of the five tested providers.
ExpressVPN was the only provider to come close in either metric. It recorded a median download of 494.8 Mbps and a median upload of 148.9 Mbps.
NordVPN connects in under two seconds, faster than every rival tested
Artifact Security measured how long each provider takes to connect, or more technically, the firm measured the time to connect (TTC), which is described as the time between starting a connection and having a usable tunnel. The metric was captured at the network level and not on the app’s on-screen timer for greater precision, because some apps may show a “Connected” label before internet traffic is actually routing through the tunnel.
NordVPN connected in 1.8 seconds on average — again, the fastest of the five tested providers, and just inside Artifact Security’s “negligible” delay threshold of two seconds or under. Mullvad finished second at 2.5 seconds, with Surfshark and ProtonVPN tying at 2.9 seconds.
Alongside speed, Artifact Security measured how reliable each connection was. Any connection attempt that failed to establish within 30 seconds counted as a failure. NordVPN succeeded on 98% of its wire-verified connection attempts.
Every VPN provider passed the core leak tests
Artifact Security performed a full round of leak testing on Windows, checking whether any provider’s traffic slipped outside the encrypted tunnel. The tests covered IP leaks, DNS leaks, IPv6 leaks, WebRTC leaks, and what happens during a live server switch, plus more advanced cases like split-tunnel isolation and how each app responds in the moment its connection drops.
Every single test case for every provider came back with no leak detected. NordVPN’s Kill Switch held up under a forced drop — traffic stopped the instant the tunnel disconnected, closing off any window where it could have leaked.
Artifact Security also put the claims around some of each provider’s marketed security features to the test. Auto-connect on launch, launch on boot, split tunneling, and the kill switch’s ability to both block traffic and reconnect cleanly were all tested through a scripted session under continuous packet capture. NordVPN passed every scenario — and so did every other provider tested.
NordVPN causes little to no friction on everyday browsing
Another area of testing was website accessibility. This measured whether connecting through a VPN triggers CAPTCHAs or block pages during everyday browsing, using the SimilarWeb Top-100 list of websites. Artifact Security walked through each site step by step — homepage, then login or authentication, then sub-pages — while connected through a London (UK) exit on Windows.
No provider triggered a single hard block across the entire test. NordVPN and ExpressVPN each triggered two CAPTCHAs on two challenged sites. Surfshark also triggered two CAPTCHAs but on a single site. Mullvad triggered the fewest, just one CAPTCHA on one site, while ProtonVPN triggered the most, with four CAPTCHAs across four sites. Out of 250 total vendor-site walks, 98% came back clean — 246 in total.
Where NordVPN didn’t lead
NordVPN took home most of the test’s categories — but not all of them. ProtonVPN recorded the lowest average jitter of any tested provider, at 5.93 ms, which measures how stable a connection stays under load. NordVPN trailed in this category.
ProtonVPN also posted the single fastest latency recorded across the entire test, reaching 183 ms on its best route. Average latency across all tested Windows highways stayed within about 11 ms of each other across the top three providers — ExpressVPN led at 227.5 ms, ProtonVPN at 231.4 ms, and NordVPN at 238.8 ms.
And if you want to check out the full results or are just curious how a specific route or run played out in full, it’s all there to check. Artifact Security has published every raw result behind these figures on its transparency portal opens in a new tab, including the full per-run data for each vendor and highway.
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