The Best VPNs for Australia

ExpressVPN gives you access to IP addresses from 109 countries and five cities in Australia: Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.

These are the same exact cities available with NordVPN, although ExpressVPN gives you the ability to manually select different Sydney locations, including one in the Wooloomooloo district.

What really caught our eye, though, was how quickly the apps connected to a server compared to other VPN services. This was really noticeable on smartphones and tablets.

In just under three seconds, the VPN changed our IP address to an Australian one (or an international one) no matter our distance from that server.

From a security standpoint, ExpressVPN’s entire network runs purely on RAM, meaning no data is ever written permanently to disk.

This is especially important given Australia’s mandatory two-year data retention laws.

And with its ShuffleIP technology running in the background, our IP address regularly rotated without modifying our online location.

ExpressVPN’s streaming performance never disappoints us, thanks to its exceptional reliability in Australia, and around the world.

We tested ExpressVPN with every major Australian streaming platform and the results were fantastic, as the table below shows:

Table showing ExpressVPN’s access to Australian streaming services.

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
7plus	Yes
9Now	Yes
ABC iView	Yes
Binge	Yes
Kayo Sports	Yes
Netflix Australia	Yes
SBS On Demand	Yes
Stan	Yes

ExpressVPN successfully bypassed all Australian streaming geo-blocks, streaming quickly at maximum picture quality and no buffering.

The great news is that the VPN has consistently unblocked Kayo Sports for many months, putting its past issues with the platform in the rear view mirror.

Same thing watching the NRL, the Australian Open, international cricket, and many other sports from abroad.

If you’re based in Australia and want to access international content, ExpressVPN is equally impressive.

We connected out from Sydney to its US, UK, and Canadian servers and unblocked platforms like US Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Sky Go, Disney+, and HBO Max without a single hiccup.

ExpressVPN is also an excellent VPN for India, particularly for watching the IPL for free on JioHotstar.

This makes ExpressVPN a true two-way VPN for Australia: it gets you into Australian platforms from overseas, and gives you access to international content libraries from the comfort of your living room.

Long-distance speeds to and from Australia have always been a tough cookie to crack for many VPN services, but not for ExpressVPN.

We connected to all of the service’s Australian locations from overseas and recorded just 17% loss in our download speed.

And connecting abroad from Australia, we averaged a very low 15% slowdown on servers all over the world, including Canada, South Africa, the UK, and the US.

These speed results are truly impressive considering some of the distances were over 10,000 miles!

Yes, NordVPN is still marginally faster, but honestly you won’t notice any difference.

ExpressVPN makes getting an Australian IP address a piece of cake, thanks to its intuitive and well-designed apps.

It’s the most widely compatible VPN on the market, with apps for every major platform, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.

There are also dedicated apps for Apple TV, Fire TV Stick, and Android TV, so you can stream Australian shows and sports on your smart TV.

Plus, ExpressVPN is the only VPN with a dedicated router app across the entire VPN industry.

Since its Smart DNS proxy isn’t designed to unblock Australian streaming services, setting up the VPN on your home router is a great way to use ExpressVPN on your game console.

ExpressVPN’s cheapest plan costs $3.49/mo over 28 months, which isn’t as cheap as Surfshark but it’s certainly more affordable than NordVPN.

We feel the price is completely justified in light of the exceptional performance.

You can also try ExpressVPN for free by signing up to its 7-day free trial (via iOS or Android). You can then use your free account details on all the other apps.

Surfshark’s free trial is arguably better, since you avoid the app store workaround, but the fact there’s a 7-day free trial in the first place is a definite plus.

The 30-day money-back guarantee on all pricing plans is also useful to extend free use to a maximum of 37 days.

NordVPN has one of the largest Australian server networks, with 190 servers spread across 5 Australian cities: Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.

While NordVPN’s Australian server fleet isn’t as large as ExpressVPN’s, it offers access to a greater number of country IPs: 127 compared to ExpressVPN’s 109.

Connecting to each server location took a handful of seconds at every attempt, with no sudden slowdowns, connection issues, or extremely annoying CAPTCHAs.

And if you want a VPN IP address that never changes, NordVPN offers dedicated VPN IPs from the most locations, including Sydney and Melbourne. ExpressVPN’s token-based IPs are much more private, but cover fewer cities.

All of NordVPN’s servers are also diskless, but NordVPN offers something that its main rival doesn’t: Double VPN (or multi-hop).

This special feature tunnels your internet traffic through two different countries for added security. Unfortunately, Australia isn’t currently available as either an entry or exit node.

NordVPN’s unblocking performance in Australia and worldwide is almost as good as ExpressVPN’s.

Here’s how well NordVPN performed with Australian content platforms:

Table showing NordVPN’s access to Australian streaming services.

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
7plus	Yes
9Now	Yes
ABC iView	Yes
Binge	Yes
Kayo Sports	Yes
Netflix Australia	Yes
SBS On Demand	Yes
Stan	Yes

After years of testing, NordVPN continues to easily access every single Australian streaming platform on every Australian server.

If you’re streaming from Australia, NordVPN doesn’t work with quite as many international platforms as ExpressVPN.

To be fair, we’re being a bit harsh since the VPN is still a fantastic choice, especially for watching British TV.

One thing is for sure: when it comes to watching BBC iPlayer from any country, no VPN does it better.

It’s also a reliable VPN for Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, Prime Video, and many more international platforms.

As with most of NordVPN’s connections around the world, we equally experienced excellent speeds on its Australian servers.

After connecting to Australia from cities like New York, Los Angeles, and London our average speed loss was only 16%, a fraction faster than ExpressVPN.

Connecting to servers around the world told a similar story, with international speeds dipping by just 14% and narrowly outperforming ExpressVPN’s global averages yet again.

NordVPN has developed user-friendly apps for macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, and Android TV.

You can also use the service on up to 10 devices simultaneously, which should be perfectly fine for most people.

Although NordVPN is by no means hard to use, we enjoyed using ExpressVPN more.

NordVPN’s apps, especially on PC and Mac, have features like ‘Threat Protection Pro’ and ‘Dark Web Monitor’ prominently displayed on the home screen, which distract from the main use of the software.

Also, the ‘Pause’ function is pretty frustrating. It adds an unnecessary step when you go to disconnect, forcing you to scroll through multiple timing options just to find the off button.

Considering its impressive Australian performance, NordVPN is good value for money at $3.39/mo over 24 months.

However, it’s more expensive than both ExpressVPN and Surfshark, and its subscription price increases enormously on renewal.

NordVPN’s free trial is also underwhelming, with only three days of free use via the Google Play Store.

In all honesty, we expected a more compelling offering from arguably the most popular VPN on the market.

Just like its higher-ranked competitors, Surfshark also offers IP addresses in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.

Strangely, there are only 40 Surfshark servers in Australia. This is really surprising considering all the network investments the company has made in recent years.

Moreover, connecting to these servers took longer than we expected, especially on mobile. While ExpressVPN changed our IP address almost instantly, Surfshark took over five seconds at times.

On a more positive note, Surfshark’s dynamic multi-hop tool is far more flexible than NordVPN’s. You can pick any country from the server list as your entry or exit node, including Australia.

Surfshark’s a good VPN for streaming, although it missed the mark with a few content platforms.

For example, we expected more from its performance with Netflix: failing to access the Australian, Japanese, and Korean libraries was a wake-up call.

That said, Surfshark did pretty well to bypass Australian content geo-restrictions from abroad:

Table showing Surfshark’s access to Australian streaming services.

Streaming Service	Unblocked?
7plus	Yes
9Now	Yes
ABC iView	Yes
Binge	Yes
Kayo Sports	Yes
Netflix Australia	No
SBS On Demand	Yes
Stan	Yes

The only slight nuisance was the very occasional picture degradation during peak traffic.

This is largely due to Surfshark’s slower connection speeds but, in all fairness, it only happened a handful of times across hundreds of streaming tests.

We did get very excited about one specific and very rare feature, though: Surfshark’s ‘Override GPS location’ setting in its Android app.

It allowed us to spoof our GPS location (verified using Google Maps) and bypass location-based app restrictions on Android apps like Kayo and ESPN+.

Setup wasn’t that complicated, either, but we still recommend you watch Surfshark’s helpful explainer video.

Surfshark’s long-distance internet speeds really need to improve if it wants to give ExpressVPN and NordVPN a run for their money.

Its average speed drop-off of 21% connecting into Australia isn’t bad, but it’s noticeably worse than its higher-ranked rivals.

The same thing happened connecting internationally from Syndey and Perth, with our internet speeds slowing down by 17% compared to our baseline.

At least connections remained mostly stable, although during peak hours we did notice a wobble here and there (which explains the slight blurriness we mentioned above).

All of Surfshark’s apps are user-friendly and relatively straightforward to navigate, particularly the mobile ones.

The desktop apps do take a little too much screen space, and you can’t resize them either, which is annoying. They also feel slightly cluttered, with all those extra settings crammed into the home screen.

Just like our VPN picks above, you’ll find apps for Fire Stick and Apple TV, as well as web browser extensions for quick IP changes straight from the browser.

All the apps work almost identically to each other, so you can easily switch from one device to another.

There is no dedicated router app, though, so streaming with Surfshark on your PS5, Xbox or Roku Stick is going to be more challenging and time-consuming than using ExpressVPN.

Surfshark provides excellent value at only $1.99/mo over 27 months. This is even cheaper than ExpressVPN.

If you don’t want to commit to a paid subscription just yet, you can also get a 7-day Surfshark free trial via desktop or mobile.

It’s one of our favorite VPN free trials because, unlike ExpressVPN and NordVPN, you don’t have to use the mobile app store workaround in order to test drive the VPN on your PC or Mac.

The VPN service will also honor its 30-day money-back guarantee on all pricing plans, with a full refund deposited in your account within a few days.

You can use Proton VPN’s free version on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Apple TV, and Fire TV.

The apps are simple to use and don’t require you to register an email address. You’ll be initially prompted to, but if you close the app and re-open it, the registration prompt disappears.

All apps use AES-256 or ChaCha20 encryption with OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols, and include a dependable kill switch to stop unexpected IP exposures.

On Android and iOS, there’s also an ‘Always-on VPN’ feature, which keeps the connection active in the background. This is rare among free VPN services.

Moreover, Proton VPN doesn’t monitor or collect any activity data that can identify you. Being based in Switzerland helps too, since the country’s privacy laws sit outside the EU’s reach.

Sadly, you can’t use all that unlimited data for bypassing most streaming geo-restrictions.

Since the VPN only lets you connect to the nearest free server location, you won’t be able to unblock popular content from around the world.

Plus, Proton VPN’s free servers aren’t equipped to bypass streaming blocks anyway. In our tests, they failed to access platforms like Disney+, HBO Max, and Prime Video.

These free servers also actively block P2P connections, so torrenting is off the table.

Another major limitation of Proton VPN is that it has no free servers in Australia.

In other words, it won’t give you an Australian IP address, and therefore can’t access Australian content platforms from overseas.

The app automatically connects you to the fastest server from 10 countries: Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States.

If you’re in Australia, you’ll mostly be connected to a VPN server in Japan, Singapore, or the United States.

Windscribe’s free servers span 10 countries: Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.

It’s one of the broader free server networks available and it allows you to access international content on BBC iPlayer, HBO Max, Hulu, DAZN, Sky Go, and even {{netflix_libraries_free-windscribe}} international Netflix libraries.

The Android app also comes with a free built-in GPS spoofer, which lets you modify your location data on your smartphone and tablet. This is very handy to bypass GPS restrictions on apps like ESPN.

There are also free browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox that work just as well to access region-locked content in-browser.

Every Windscribe app uses AES-256 and ChaCha20 encryption, with a choice of OpenVPN, WireGuard, and IKEv2 protocols.

The ‘Windscribe Firewall’ setting prevents your real IP and DNS data from leaking if the connection drops.

Windscribe has never leaked IP or DNS data in our tests, and it doesn’t store any logs that could compromise your identity.

Unlike Proton VPN, you can take advantage of these privacy and security benefits to torrent safely on Windscribe’s free servers, which is rare for a no-cost service.

Windscribe’s biggest limitation compared to Proton VPN is the 10GB monthly bandwidth cap. At HD streaming quality, that runs out in roughly four hours of video.

This data allowance is fine if you plan to use the VPN sporadically, or for quick bursts here and there. Otherwise, you’ll have to either switch to Proton VPN, or upgrade to one of our top-rated VPNs.