The Best VPNs for Canada

NordVPN has 259 servers in Canada, which is one of the largest Canadian server networks on the market.

You can get IP addresses from Montreal (Québec), Toronto (Ontario), and Vancouver (British Columbia).

This is particularly useful if you live in Québec and come across geo-blocked websites.

We’ve never felt we needed any more servers than this, but if you do want an even more then PIA has the largest Canadian server network.

We tested NordVPN with the most popular Canadian streaming services, and here are the results:

As you can see, NordVPN delivered flawless results. It unblocked every geo-restricted streaming website.

Videos, both live and on-demand, loaded quickly and streamed without buffering thanks to NordVPN’s excellent speeds connecting into Canada.

For example, from New York to Vancouver, our speeds dropped a mere 3% compared to our standard internet connection.

If you’re in Canada and are concerned about your online privacy and security, then NordVPN is a great option to consider for your protection.

With its non-intrusive logging policy and excellent record in keeping your IP address concealed, NordVPN will shield you from government overreach and ISP data collection.

To be clear, the VPN service does retain a small amount of data in relation to the time you connect to a VPN, but this information is not enough to compromise your privacy.

NordVPN is also very secure and meets our strict security standards. It uses the ChaCha20 cipher to further encrypt your internet connections, and it regularly commissions and passes third-party security audits.

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned user, NordVPN’s apps are a pleasure to use on smartphones, tablets and computers.

If you want to stream geo-blocked content on large-screen devices, you can also use NordVPN on Fire TV Stick, Apple TV, and Android TV thanks to its dedicated apps.

The consistent interface across all of NordVPN’s apps made it really easy to use the service no matter which device we were testing it on.

Plus, NordVPN lets you use your account on 10 different devices simultaneously.

The one downside is NordVPN’s Smart DNS feature, which cannot be used to unblock Canadian websites. This meant we weren’t able to bypass sports blackouts on devices that don’t support VPN apps, like our TCL Smart TV.

PIA VPN counts 3,000 servers across 3 cities, including Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. This is more than every other VPN we tested.

There is a separate server for the Ontario region broadly, but Montreal and Vancouver covers Quebec and British Columbia provinces.

With a server network this large, we never ran into server congestion and our average download speed dropped by only 6% connecting to Canada from abroad. Slightly worse than NordVPN, but impressive nonetheless.

We tested PIA with a number of Canadian streaming sites. These are the results:

Despite having a server specifically for Canadian streaming, PIA failed to work with most Canadian streaming platforms.

We only had success accessing CBC Gem, CTV, and Télé-Québec outside of Canada. All other attempts were detected and blocked by the streaming services.

That said, PIA is a lot better for unblocking non-Canadian streaming platforms, including American Netflix, Max, and BBC iPlayer.

PIA is the best choice for protecting your online privacy in virtue of its proven no-logs policy, which has been verified in multiple court cases.

Its secure ChaCha20 encryption will ensure your data transfers are undecipherable, and protect you when using public WiFi networks across Canada.

Since many Canadian companies store user data in the US, where privacy laws are less protective, PIA keeps your data secure by encrypting it and preventing unauthorized access.

PIA’s no-logs policy, fast connections speeds, and wide range of security settings are exactly what torrenting enthusiasts need from a VPN.

The VPN also includes PIA MACE, a reliable ad blocker that effectively prevents websites and social media companies from tracking your online activity.

PIA is one of the best value VPNs available. It only costs $2.03/mo over 28 months on its best price deal, which is a lot cheaper than NordVPN’s $2.99/mo over 27 months.

However, this comes at the cost of limited streaming capabilities. If accessing region-locked Canadian streaming services is your main priority, NordVPN is the better choice.

You can also use PIA for free for seven days by signing up to its free trial via the App Store or Play Store. Once the trial ends your subscription will start, but the company’s 30-day refund policy will also kick in, for even longer free use.

Windscribe Free has the largest free VPN server network in Canada, with servers located in Montreal (Quebec), Toronto (Ontario), and Vancouver (British Columbia).

Rarely for a free service, Windscribe has servers in Canada.

While Windscribe covers just as many cities as NordVPN and PIA, the number of servers is vastly inferior so the probability of server overloads is undoubtedly higher.

To clarify, we didn’t incur any server congestion while using Windscribe’s Canada servers in all our tests. Quite the opposite in fact, and the speed metrics connecting into Canada were impressive for a free VPN.

We recorded stable download speeds of 87Mbps across Windsribe’s international server park, and specifically connecting into Canada from New York, a very low speed loss of 6%.

We tested the free version of Windscribe with five Canadian streaming services. Here are our results:

Windscribe unblocked almost all Canadian streaming services and we can safely say it’s by far the best free VPN for DAZN Canada and Fubo.

The only negative result was its inability to access Canada’s Netflix region, which is disappointing when it’s one of the most comprehensive libraries available.

Keep in mind that the VPN’s 10GB free data allowance will provide roughly four hours of HD streaming time each month.

Windscribe’s free service is our preferred cost-free recommendation to anonymize and further secure your internet connections in Canada.

The VPN does log more data than NordVPN and PIA, including your bandwidth usage, but we’re still comfortable recommending it because none of the internet data it collects is personally identifiable.

And since Windscribe doesn’t retain this information, it has never shared it (or been able to) government agencies or ISPs.

From a security standpoint, Windscribe uses best-in-class encryption and the industry’s VPN protocol of choice, WireGuard.

We’ve repeatedly tested Windscribe’s encryption (using Wireshark) and our data transfers have always been properly encrypted.

The VPN’s free applications are the same as the paid version, and are available for Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Fire TV Stick, and Linux.

All the apps are very easy to install and use. You can also use the VPN’s Chrome and Firefox extensions, which are really handy since they also include an ad and tracker blocker. Remember, though, these plugins only protect your web browser traffic.

One useful feature unavailable to Windscribe’s users (free or paid) is the company’s Control D Smart DNS solution.

It’s a very good Smart DNS service, and it works with streaming services on devices that don’t support VPN software, but it’s sadly not included in any Windscribe subscription plan.

PrivadoVPN is free to download and comes with servers in Montreal, allowing you to quickly get a free Canadian IP address from anywhere.

It has to be said that a single server location in Canada is very limiting, especially for users in Quebec who won’t be able to bypass website blocks caused by Bill 101.

Below are our streaming results while connected to PrivadoVPN’s free Canadian IP address:

It’s a mixed bag, clearly. PrivadoVPN performed well accessing free-to-air services like CBC Gem, Citytv, and TVA+, but struggled with subscription services like Netflix, DAZN, and Fubo.

This is due to the VPN service not refreshing its free Canadian IP addresses regularly enough, in order to evade the more sophisticated VPN IP blocking measures of paid streaming platforms.

At least the content we accessed streamed in full high-definition, thanks to the outstanding speeds of the free Montreal server.

In addition to its fast connection speeds, PrivadoVPN further secures your web traffic through the use of AES-256 encryption.

Combine that with its privacy-friendly logging policy, and in PrivadoVPN you have one of the most reliable free VPNs for torrenting in Canada.

In saying that, a few things need improving from our point of view, primarily that the VPN still uses IKEv2 by default (rather than WireGuard) and there is still no kill switch on the iOS app.