Mozilla VPN Review

While it’s fairly common for bigger tech brands to rent servers from or use the infrastructure of dedicated VPN services, they usually have fairly straightforward logging policies. Mozilla VPN’s is a little confusing, by comparison.

As Mozilla is its own entity, but uses Mullvad’s server network and technologies for its VPN, it has a logging policy which is a combination of both companies’.

We reached out to Mozilla for clarification and it was happy to explain to us how data collection and logging works for Mozilla VPN users. We’ve summarized this information in the table below:

Our main concern was that Mozilla’s standard privacy policy would apply to users of its VPN. However, while that data is collected at the creation of your Mozilla account (which is required to use the VPN) it is not associated with your Mozilla VPN account usage.

The only personal data logged by Mozilla VPN which is actually tied to your usage is information about your device, such as model and operating system.

All Mozilla VPN usage data is handled and processed by Mullvad. As we said in our review of Mullvad VPN, it’s an exceptional no-logs policy.

You can 100% trust Mullvad to treat your privacy with complete respect, with next to nothing being logged on its global server network.

US & Swedish jurisdictions are poor choices

Our only real complaints with the two logging policies at play here are the jurisdictions of the two companies involved.

Firefox is incorporated in the US, while Mullvad is based in Sweden. The US is one of the worst countries on Earth for online privacy and is a part of the intrusive Five Eyes Alliance.

Sweden isn’t as bad as the US, but is still an EU member and as such is part of various international data-sharing agreements.

The good news here is that, with so little data logged, it’s unlikely you’ll need to worry about these jurisdictions. They are still a factor though, if a minor one.

Mozilla VPN’s ability to unblock streaming libraries is unfortunately tied to Mullvad’s ability to do so, as it operates using Mullvad’s infrastructure. Despite being a great VPN, Mullvad is terrible for streaming – and therefore Mozilla VPN is too.

The good news is that we were able to unblock HBO Max, an excellent US streaming service with lots of unique content – we just connected to Mozilla VPN’s US – Raleigh server and it let us stream straight away.

HBO Max is one of the few services Mozilla VPN works to unblock.

We were also able to watch UK-based streaming service All 4 by using the United Kingdom – Manchester server.

Those two services are the limit of Mozilla VPN’s streaming abilities. Every other popular service we attempted to access blocked us immediately or, in some cases, wouldn’t even let us log in.

A good streaming VPN should be able to unlock plenty of services, as well as multiple Netflix libraries from around the world to give you access to as much content as possible. ExpressVPN is the best VPN for streaming – it unblocks 10 Netflix libraries, BBC iPlayer, and more.

We connected to Mozilla VPN servers in nine cities spread across six different continents. We test using a 100Mbps internet connection, similar to the baseline speed of your home internet connection.

Here’s a table showing Mozilla VPN’s speed test results:

When connected to a nearby server in New York, US, Mozilla VPN suffers just an 4% download speed loss – this is very good. You’ll barely notice any difference to your internet speeds with Mozilla VPN connected to a server near you.

It also performed very well in a selection of extremely distant locations like the US West Coast and Germany, and when connected to a server in neighboring Canada downloads slowed by an indistinguishable 1%

When Mozilla VPN is running at its absolute maximum it comes close to the fastest VPNs on the market. While conducting multiple tests over a longer period of time we did notice some fluctuations, but not enough to seriously concern us.

Mozilla VPN records very impressive numbers for both upload and download speeds, wherever you are in the world. This is partly down to its total commitment to WireGuard, one of the fastest VPN protocols available.

We also want to give special credit to Mozilla VPN for being so quick to connect. Establishing a connection to a server takes no longer than a split second after you click the ‘connect’ button – it’s one of the consistently fastest we’ve ever tested.

We can’t fault Mozilla VPN for its security. It passed every leak test we put it through, using the excellent WireGuard protocol as standard.

We used our leak test tool to assess Mozilla VPN’s leak protection.

What’s less conventional, though, is that WireGuard is the only protocol available across all of its apps. Ordinarily VPNs will let you choose from a selection, but not Mozilla VPN. While it’s unusual, though, it doesn’t bother us much as WireGuard is one of the best VPN protocols currently available – it’s super fast and super safe.

Nowhere in the Mozilla VPN app or on the Mozilla website does it clarify what encryption cipher is used. We reached out to Mozilla support which stated that all apps use ChaCha20 encryption. This is standard encryption for WireGuard and, while it varies slightly to the more conventional AES-256, is just as secure.

We then used Wireshark to confirm that Mozilla VPN properly encrypts web traffic – and it does.

If someone were to intercept your data while using Mozilla VPN, this is all that they would see. Mozilla VPN properly encrypts all your traffic.

Sharing Mullvad’s server network means that Mozilla VPN enjoys all the same strengths and suffers the exact same weakness as Mullvad.

The main drawback is that Mozilla VPN’s server network completely ignores Central America, the Middle East, and large parts of South Asia and Africa. Leaving billions of potential users with no option but to use servers thousands of miles away is extremely disappointing.

The rest of the world sees good coverage, though. Mozilla VPN has city-level server coverage in seven countries:

There’s also servers in 13 different US cities from coast-to-coast, so if that’s where you’re based you should get optimal speeds no matter what.

One Fifth of Mozilla VPN’s Servers Are Owned by Mullvad

Most VPNs rent their server network from third party providers. Mullvad is a little different in that it owns almost 20% of its server network itself. All of those privately owned servers are in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

While there’s nothing wrong with renting servers, knowing that your VPN provider owns its own provides that little extra bit of security. While these servers are owned by Mullvad and not Mozilla itself, the principle still stands – Mullvad is an extremely secure and trustworthy VPN.

When it comes to VPN apps, simpler is better — even if you’re an experienced user. Mozilla VPN is as simple as can be, and that makes using it a pleasure.

Mozilla VPN looks exactly the same on almost every platform, with only a feature changing here or there between them.

You can see what Mozilla VPN looks like on every platform below, as well as what’s different about each one.

Windows & macOS Apps

While Windows is often the main focus for VPN developers, Mozilla VPN is unusual in that its Windows app is actually the only one missing one big feature.

‘Tunnel VPN through port 53/DNS’ is a feature used to help beat web censorship, but you can’t access it on Windows.

Everything else is present. The simple home screen lets you connect or disconnect, select a server, and also see how many devices you’re currently logged into your Mozilla VPN account on.

You can then access a handful of advanced features, like custom DNS and LAN access, through the settings cog. You can also find split tunneling here, but Mozilla VPN calls it ‘App permissions’. Turn off the toggle labeled ‘Protect all apps with VPN’ to choose which apps to split tunnel.

The macOS app is exactly the same as the Windows app, except for a couple of features.

It has the port 53 feature which was missing on Windows, mentioned above, but is missing split tunneling. While this isn’t ideal, it’s also unfortunately common among VPNs due to restrictions in Apple’s operating system.

Linux Client

Mozilla VPN has an excellent Linux app.

Not only does it have a full GUI, something a huge majority of even the best VPNs neglect, it also has the full range of features.

You get split tunneling, port 53, double VPN, and custom DNS – it’s the only desktop platform with no compromises.

Android & iOS Apps

The iOS app is identical to the macOS app, which is always nice to see. It has the same simple, bright design and all of the same features as its Apple desktop counterpart (including no port 53 mode and no split tunneling – again, down to iOS limitations).

The only thing which might put you off here if you’re an iPhone user is that there’s no night mode, and Mozilla VPN uses white backdrops throughout.

Just like Linux, Android gets Mozilla VPN’s most complete app. All features are available here, wrapped up in a package that looks identical to its desktop counterparts.

You can torrent on all 674 Mozilla VPN servers without any data limits or throttling. We’ve verified through testing that the kill switch works properly (even if there’s no way to toggle it on or off in the app) so you don’t need to worry about your IP address being revealed if your connection drops.

The only real problem when torrenting with Mozilla VPN is that we found its speeds to be extremely inconsistent. Our test torrent file downloads at 10.0MiB/s without a VPN. One set of four tests with Mozilla VPN turned on logged an average download bitrate of almost 9.5MiB/s – that would make it one of the fastest torrenting VPNs we’ve tested.

However, a further set of tests measured Mozilla VPN at a much slower average download bitrate of 5.1MiB/s. We tried everything to recapture those initial blazing-fast speeds, but nothing worked.

You might be fortunate and consistently experience the first set of speeds, but we consider them to be a fluke rather than the standard.

Mozilla VPN’s only other flaw for torrenting is a lack of port forwarding, which is not available on any platform. If you want a technical VPN with plenty of features (plus excellent speeds), our AirVPN review found it to be an excellent choice.

You can only install Mozilla VPN on the five most popular mobile and desktop platforms.

This is disappointing, but it wouldn’t be so bad if Mozilla VPN could be installed on Linux – however, it can’t. That means that there’s no easy way to protect any of your devices which can’t have a Mozilla VPN app installed directly on them, like games consoles.

There’s also no apps for streaming devices, like Amazon Fire TV. Even if there was one, though, Mozilla VPN is so poor for unblocking streaming services that you probably wouldn’t want to use it anyway.

There’s also no Smart DNS service to help you bypass streaming blocks, and there’s no browser extensions either – not even one for Firefox, a browser made by Mozilla itself.

Mozilla VPN is still relatively new, so we can excuse its poor range of apps for now. We really want to see it broaden its scope in the near future, though.

Mozilla VPN Can Only Be Installed on Five Devices at Once

Perhaps the most annoying drawback, though, is Mozilla VPN’s five-device limit. Ordinarily a VPN will limit your number of simultaneous connections, but will let you install it on as many devices as you like. With Mozilla VPN, you can only be signed in on five devices at once, regardless of how many are actually being used at the same time.

Mozilla VPN at least shows you the devices currently linked to your account within the app, so you can quickly remove the ones you don’t need.

Double VPN (or multi-hop as Mozilla VPN calls it in its app) is a technology which routes your device’s web traffic through two servers instead of one.

The multi-hop exit location you choose will decide the IP address you’re assigned.

This can make your traffic harder to track and thus increase your privacy online. This comes at the cost of speed, though, as your data has to move through an additional location before its final destination.

Mozilla VPN’s multi-hop is impressive because it doesn’t limit you to a handful of entry or exit nodes – almost the entire server network is available for you to select at both stages.

If you’re curious as to how it works and why you might want to use it, we have a whole guide dedicated to explaining Double VPN (or multi-hop as Mozilla VPN calls it in its app) is a technology which routes your device’s web traffic through two servers instead of one.

One of Mozilla’s few extra features is custom DNS, which allows you to pick from ad blocking servers, tracker blocking servers, both at once, or a custom DNS of your own choosing (such as Google or Cloudflare’s).

Mozilla VPN puts up a very respectable ad blocking score. It mostly struggled with social media trackers.

The ad and tracker blockers work well, but they don’t catch everything they should. However, almost every VPN in-built ad blocker struggles, as we discovered in our in-depth testing on whether or not VPNs actually block ads.

MozillaVPN also offers split tunneling, but only on Windows and Android. It’s not labeled exactly like that in the app, though. To access it you have to head to Settings > App permissions then toggle Protect all apps with VPN to the Off position.

Now you can choose which apps will travel outside of the encrypted VPN tunnel.