The Best VPNs for the Netherlands

1. NordVPN - Best VPN in the Netherlands Overall

Editors Rating:

9.7 /10

View Plans

How We Review

NordVPN’s more than 200 servers in the Netherlands are more than secure. With double VPN, a.k.a multi-hop, our data was encrypted multiple times for more protection. Plus, the servers allowed for P2P connections, commonly known as torrenting, so you can watch your favorite old movies on the road. And with dedicated IP addresses available, you can rest assured that you’ll be able to bypass websites’ blocks against shared addresses.

Non-Member to Five Eyes

Although NordVPN has a strong presence in the Netherlands, the company itself is based in Panama, a country that’s not involved in the Five Eyes surveillance alliance. For us, that meant that they would never be forced to give the government our customer data. But even if they were a Five Eyes member, NordVPN didn’t log our websites visited or IP addresses, so they’d have very little data to give in the first place.

Torrenting and Netflix

When we’re traveling and sleeping in hotel rooms, watching familiar shows and movies can help us drift off to sleep. That’s why we appreciated the fact that we could torrent and watch Netflix with NordVPN without any blocks (it’s actually one of the best VPNs for Netflix in general). And when we had exhausted Netflix’s catalogue, we moved onto Prime Video, Disney +, and Hulu, all while connected to one of NordVPN’s servers in Amsterdam.

Good for Macs

Waiting for a flight in the Lelystad Airport in Flevoland, we got out our laptop to get some work done while we waited for the gate to be open (yes, we’re the kind of people to get to the airport three hours early for even short flights). Of course, we didn’t want the Lelystad Wi-Fi’s ISP to see what we were doing, so we connected to NordVPN. Unlike many others that we tested, NordVPN didn’t slow us down too much, with only 10 percent more lag with the VPN connected. In no time, our web activity was encrypted and we were back to Outlook. Hallelujah!

2. Surfshark - Best VPN in the Netherlands with Multi-hop

Editors Rating:

9.5 /10

View Plans

How We Review

Based in the Netherlands itself, Surfshark has over 3,200 servers globally, but the exact number of servers it has in the Netherlands is not specified. What we do know is that it’s the best VPN in the Netherlands if you want to be extra secure, and that’s because it has servers that support multi-hop. Curious as to what multi-hop is? Find out more below.

Multi-Hop

Multi-hop is a VPN feature that provides extra privacy and security, designed mostly for journalists, whistleblowers, and others who might be targeted by government overreach. Basically, multi-hop connects you to two servers, both of which are encrypted. Double the encryption, double the security and privacy. Surfshark has two multi-hop servers in the Netherlands, one connects through a U.S. server and the other through a Singapore server. If you want to browse the internet with extra security while making it appear as though you’re still in the Netherlands, Surfshark’s multi-hop servers can help.

Top-Notch Security

What good is a VPN that offers flimsy protection? Well, with Surfshark, you can be sure that your data is encrypted using the best encryption protocol there is. Surfshark uses 256-bit AES encryption, the current gold-standard, so you can be sure your data is safe. On top of that, it offers two of the most well-received VPN protocols in OpenVPN and WireGuard. Both VPN protocols combine a good balance of security and speed, which is why they’re both crowd favorites.

Strong Privacy Policy

In our privacy guide, we gave Surfshark an 8.5 out of 10 rating, one of the highest we’ve ever given to a VPN. That’s because of its strict logging policy, the encryption method it uses, how often it pushes security updates, and the availability of two-factor authentication in its apps. All those things point to the fact that Surfshark is serious about protecting its customers’ privacy.

3. Private Internet Access VPN - Best VPN in the Netherlands With The Most Servers

Editors Rating:

9.4 /10

View Plans

How We Review

With over 950 servers in Holland, Private Internet Access ensures fast speeds, no matter where in the Netherlands you find yourself. Now, we’re not exactly sure why PIA has such a large presence there, with about a third of its 3,194 servers in Holland. But hey, we’re not complaining!

No Traffic Logging

We’ll let you in on a little secret. While nearly every VPN we’ve tested says that they have a “no-logging policy”, this is usually not the case, which is why we get into the nitty gritty of privacy policies. Fortunately, PIA did not keep any of our web activity, how long we were connected to their VPN, or our IP address. Rather, it changed our IP address randomly, with a new one each time we connected. In other words, PIA definitely lives up to its name.

Customizable Encryption

Very few VPNs let us choose our encryption methods, but PIA stands out from the pack. Depending on what we were doing, we could decide which encryption method suited our needs. For example, when we were using Google Maps to find out exactly how to get to the Rijksmuseum, we hid our location with AES-256 encryption and an RSA-4096 handshake for the most protection. But when we wanted fast speeds to stream Journaal Extra, one of the most popular shows in the Netherlands, we turned off encryption and simply went with an ECC-256k1 handshake.

Fast Connections

No matter what we’re doing on our devices, we need speeds to be fast. Sure, patience is a virtue, but we’re focusing on other virtues right now. With PIA connected on our Mac and Windows laptops, we saw no latency increase on Mac, a huge aberration from other VPNs. On Windows, latency did increase by about a third, but our download and upload speeds only decreased by 15 and five percent, respectively. If you need a VPN for gaming in the Netherlands, PIA is a solid option.

4. IPVanish - Best VPN in the Netherlands for Windows

Editors Rating:

9.3 /10

View Plans

How We Review

We used IPVanish all over the Netherlands, and everytime we connected, we got a brand new IP address. For any ISPs or hackers looking to track us online, these dynamic IP addresses made that process extremely difficult if not impossible. And with over 40,000 IP addresses total, we had no fear of running out.

Good for Mac and Windows

Mac-users and Windows-users may seem like irreconcilable groups, but when we test out VPNs, we want to provide information useful to everybody. IPVanish performed remarkably well on both our Macbook Pro and our Windows Vivobook. In terms of latency, for example, we only saw a 14 percent increase on Mac and a seven percent increase on Windows, much lower than the average latency increase of over 30 percent. Truthfully, whether you need a VPN for Mac or a VPN for Windows in Holland, IPVanish is a safe pick.

Connect To Router

Under normal circumstances, we could connect up to 10 devices to IPVanish at the same time. That’s probably more than enough for most people traveling to Holland, but if you live in the Netherlands, you can increase this device limit by connecting IPVanish to your router. That means that all of the devices on your network will have their web activity and IP addresses encrypted. Aside from routers, IPVanish also works on:

• Windows
• macOS
• iOS
• Android
• Chromebook
• Windows phones.

With all that device compatibility, people can rest assured that they won’t fall into the 45 percent of frustrated travelers who can’t access their travel data on a smart device2 when we’re using IPVanish.

Sports Streaming

Did you know that the most popular sport in the Netherlands is soccer (or as they call it, football), with over 40 percent of people following it?3 Of course, that’s not the case in the U.S, where football reigns supreme as the most-watched sport4 (and yes, we’re talking about the one with the touchdowns). If you’re in the Netherlands and need to catch up on your favorite foreign sports, IPVanish has got your back with access to:

• ESPN
• MLB TV
• NBC Sports
• WWE Network.

In sum? Just because you’re not at home doesn’t mean you can’t stay on top of your favorite sports, and privately, for that matter.

5. CyberGhost - Best VPN in the Netherlands for Mac

Editors Rating:

8.9 /10

View Plans

How We Review

If you want fast speeds, then having a server near you is a must. Well, CyberGhost has a decent presence in Holland with 160 servers, ensuring that we had fast speeds (on our Macbook Pro in particular). We only saw our lag increase by 14 percent, while our download and upload speeds only decreased by three and eight percent, respectively. That’s way below the average, and trust us, we’ve tested out a ton of VPNs.

Kill Switch

After buying some danishes at an adorable Amsterdam bakery, we sat down and pulled out our phones to catch up on the day’s latest news from across the pond. Of course, we connected to CyberGhost before we opened up Chrome as to avoid the bakery’s public Wi-Fi network. But when, a few minutes later, we lost connection to CyberGhost, we found that our Chrome browsers shut down, as well. This prevented anyone from seeing our web activity, the purpose of a VPN in the first place. So even though we weren’t happy to lose connection, at least CyberGhost had a viable back up plan in place in the form of a kill switch.

AES-256

We’ll admit that we’re not thrilled with the fact that CyberGhost logged our devices’ IP addresses, along with where and when we were connected to the VPN. But at the very least, all of this information was encrypted with the industry standard of AES-256. Not to mention that CyberGhost’s Romania headquarters means that they can’t be forced to give governments our data, so despite their less than stellar logging policy, we felt safe connecting to Cyberghost in the Netherlands.

Split Tunneling

Let’s go back to that bakery. We’re all about multi-tasking, which was why, when we were catching up on the news, we also decided to get ahead on some Black Friday deals. While we’re fine with our ISP seeing our browsing on e-commerce sites, we want to keep the news outlets we frequent on the down-low. With CyberGhost, we were able to route our New York Times window through the VPN, but keep our shopping tabs on the bakery’s public network, lowering our bandwidth and increasing our speeds. This process is called split tunneling, by the way. See? You learn something new every day!

6. PureVPN - Best Netherlands VPN with Weekly Plans

Editors Rating:

8.9 /10

View Plans

How We Review

Sure, PureVPN has over 300 servers in Amsterdam alone. But what really impressed us was the fact that the company is based in Hong Kong, a non-member to Five Eyes. So the government couldn’t mandate that they deliver any customer information, although PureVPN only logged our name, email address, payment information and bandwidth. And with 6,500 servers in more than 180 locations, even if we were in Amsterdam, we could hop onto different country’s servers to see what Netflix looks like in nearly every country on earth.

10 Simultaneous Connections

It seems like everytime we return to the Netherlands, we do so with more and more devices. First, it started off with just our phones, but it eventually expanded to tablets, laptops, and even gaming consoles. Fortunately, PureVPN had us covered; we could use their VPN on up to 10 devices at the same time, which was more than enough for us personally.

Money-Back Guarantee

We don’t expect you to have to use it, but we love the fact that PureVPN gave us 31 days to change our minds if we weren’t in love with their service. It’s always nice to get that extra assurance that we’re not wasting our money. Not to mention, this also applied to DDoS Protection, a $4.99 a month service that’s available in the Netherlands.

Plans From One Week To One Year

We don’t think we’ve seen anyone aside from PureVPN offer weekly plans for only $0.99. While they don’t offer a free trial, per se, this is a very low cost for a week, and it turns into an annual plan if you don’t cancel it when the initial week ends. Learn more about PureVPN’s unique subscription options on the PureVPN pricing page.