Mullvad
The honesty benchmark: €5 a month since 2009, no discounts, no renewal games, no email address needed, cash accepted, RAM-only servers, a police raid that found nothing, and public audits every year, but five devices, no fixed IP, no team plan, email-only support and WireGuard only.
How we testMullvad (Mullvad VPN AB, Gothenburg; parent Amagicom AB, 100% owned by founders Fredrik Strömberg and Daniel Berntsson; launched March 2009) is the provider every other privacy VPN is measured against, and the pricing is the first reason: €5 a month whether you buy one month, one year or one decade, "the same rate as when we launched in 2009", no sales ever, a 10% discount for crypto the only variation. A UK visitor sees EUR with a £4.29 equivalent and pays VAT-inclusive. There is no account in the usual sense: you generate a 16-digit number and pay by card, PayPal, bank transfer, crypto or cash in an envelope. The engineering matches: WireGuard only since 15 January 2026, all servers RAM-only since September 2023, multihop between any pair of servers, DAITA traffic-analysis defence built with Karlstad University, quantum-resistant tunnels, DNS content blocking, open-source apps, a Linux CLI. Mullvad does not commission an ISAE-style "no-logs" attestation; instead it publishes a steady stream of infrastructure and app audits (Cure53's fourth infrastructure audit in June 2024, X41 on the account and payment API in October 2025, Assured on the web app, NCC Group and Leviathan on the Android app), all as public reports. On 18 April 2023 Swedish police arrived at the Gothenburg office with a warrant to seize customer data and left with nothing, because none existed. Mozilla VPN and Tailscale's exit nodes both run on Mullvad's network.
The trade-offs are exactly what a small business would notice. Five devices per account and no team plan: "team" use means one account number each, or Tailscale with the Mullvad add-on. No fixed IP, on principle ("not aligned with privacy"). Port forwarding was removed in 2023 because of abuse. Support is email only, Swedish weekday office hours, no chat or phone. UK servers are London only. The refund window is 14 days and excludes cash and crypto. Trustpilot is 3.4 on just 186 unprompted reviews on an unclaimed profile (too small to mean much), and the one-stars are about streaming and the DNS blocker, not billing, which fits a prepaid product that never auto-renews. Mullvad runs no affiliate programme and says it pays nobody to write about it; this placement earns Saaskly nothing.
Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, documentation and third-party reviews.
Pros
- +One flat price since 2009: no intro deal, no renewal, no auto-renew
- +Account-number signup, cash accepted, RAM-only servers, public audits every year, a 2023 police raid that found no data
- +WireGuard multihop, DAITA, open-source apps and a Linux CLI
Cons
- −Five devices, no fixed IP, no team plan or admin console
- −Email-only support in Swedish office hours; London is the only UK location
- −Port forwarding removed in 2023; WireGuard only since January 2026
Pricing
Minimum commitment: €5 (€5/mo × 1 seat × 1 months). The least you can spend before walking away; excludes numbers, minutes and add-ons.
Mullvad VPN
€5/mo · no commitment
Same price on any term
- ✓Flat €5 per month for any term, inc VAT, no discounts (10% off for crypto); EUR shown to a UK visitor (£4.29 equivalent); 5 devices; prepaid, never auto-renews; 14-day refund excl. cash/crypto.
Specifications
| Rating | 4.1 |
| Month-to-month | €5/mo |
| Longest plan, per month | €5.00/mo |
| Renewal, per month | €5.00/mo |
| Renewal premium* | 0% |
| Pricing pattern | Flat |
| Type | Privacy VPN |
| Jurisdiction | Sweden |
| Owner | Independent |
| No-logs audit | Cure53 / X41 / Assured, 2025 |
| Devices | 5 |
| Fixed IP | Not offered |
| Device-to-device network | Not offered |
| WireGuard | ✓ |
| Port forwarding | No |
| UK servers | ✓ |
| Business plan | No |
| SSO | No |
| Linux client | ✓ |
| Open-source apps | ✓ |
| API | No |
| MCP server | No |
| Trustpilot (reviews)† | 3.4 (186) |
| Countries | 50 |
| RAM-only servers | ✓ |
| Kill switch | ✓ |
| Split tunnelling | ✓ |
| Multi-hop | ✓ |
| Ad / tracker blocking | ✓ |
| Free tier | None |
| Money-back (days) | 14 |
| 24/7 live chat | No |
| Support channels | Email (weekday office hours, CET) |
*Renewal premium: how much more the longest plan costs per month after its introductory term than during it, as a percentage of the intro rate. VPNs advertise the intro rate; you pay the renewal every term after. 0% means the advertised price is the real price. Prices are per month, effective (plan total ÷ months), as shown to a UK visitor on the research date, in the currency the vendor bills UK customers in; see each profile for the VAT basis.
†Trustpilot: uk.trustpilot.com TrustScore and review count on the research date. Three cells are weak signals and are shown for completeness: Cloudflare (1.4) is mostly non-customers blocked by CAPTCHAs on other companies' websites and no review mentions WARP; Tailscale (23 reviews) and Mullvad (186) are tiny unprompted samples. NordLayer has no Trustpilot profile, so its cell is blank.
Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. How we use AI
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