VPNs and gamingWhat helps, what hurts, and by how much

Gaming is the use case where a VPN most often makes things worse, and the sites recommending one for "lower ping" rarely explain why it would. Adding a server between you and the game cannot shorten the path unless your provider's route happens to be better than your ISP's — which is occasional rather than typical.

There are real reasons to use one, and they are about access rather than speed: reaching servers in another region, buying or playing something that released there first, and playing with people who are not in your country.

• A VPN adds latency by default — the hop is real
• It helps with region-locked servers and staggered releases, not with ping
• Distance to the exit is what dominates: pick the nearest useful location
• We measured throughput, not latency: 40% to 90% of the line survived
• Some publishers treat region-shifting as a terms breach

Why "a VPN lowers your ping" is usually wrong

Latency is dominated by distance and by the number of hops. Routing through a VPN server adds at least one hop and usually some distance. In the ordinary case, that makes latency worse rather than better.

The exception people generalise from is real but narrow: if your ISP routes badly to a particular destination — a long detour through another country, or a congested peering point — then a VPN whose route is more direct can beat it. That is a property of your specific ISP and the specific game server, not of VPNs, and the only way to know is to measure both.

We measure throughput rather than latency, so we are not going to publish a ping claim we have not tested. What our figures do tell you is the cost on the throughput side: 40% to 90% of the raw line survived across 14 cities, with the route mattering far more than the provider.

Where it genuinely helps

Region-locked servers. Some games separate players by region and will not let you join a server outside yours. An address in that region is the whole solution.

Staggered releases. Games and updates frequently release earlier in one region. A store account in that region plus an address there is how people play early — with the caveat that the account's country is a billing record a VPN does not change.

Playing with people elsewhere. Matchmaking often uses your address to pick a region. Connecting to a friend's country puts you in the same pool.

Networks that block games. University and workplace networks frequently block game traffic outright. Here a VPN is not adding latency to a working connection — it is the difference between playing and not.

Choosing a location, which matters more than choosing a provider

The rule is short: connect to the nearest location that satisfies whatever restriction you are working around. If you need a Japanese address, take the Japanese city closest to you rather than whichever one the app selected. Of the seven providers we track, four publish two or more Japanese cities, which is exactly the flexibility this needs.

The corollary is that a provider with a large country count and one city per country is worse for this than a provider with fewer countries and several cities in the ones you use.

Consoles, and why the router is the usual answer

Consoles do not run VPN clients. The two approaches are configuring the VPN on your router, so everything on the network goes through it, or sharing a connection from a computer that is running one.

The router approach covers the console, the TV and everything else without further work, and it is also the blunter instrument: everything goes through the tunnel, including things that would be better off not. Providers vary in how well they document router setup, and this is worth checking before you buy rather than after.

What can go wrong with the account rather than the connection

Some publishers treat buying in a cheaper region as a terms breach, and enforcement ranges from ignoring it to locking the purchase to that region permanently. Region changes on store accounts are often limited to a small number per year, and a wallet balance usually cannot cross regions.

Those are account rules rather than network rules, and none of them are affected by which address you connect from. This is the part that costs people money, and it is worth reading the store's own terms before the first purchase rather than after the third.

How much speed actually survives the tunnel

Every VPN site says a tunnel costs you speed. Almost none of them say how much. We measured it by hand rather than repeating a claim: 14 cities, 46 paired runs, comparing NordVPN and Surfshark against the same raw line in the same session. In the 11 cities where we also measured the bare line, the share that survived the tunnel ranged from 40% to 90%.

Measured by VPN LIFE. Raw-line figures are rounded to the nearest 10 Mbps. Percentages are the share of the raw line that survived.

• 14 cities, 46 paired runs, measured by hand
• 11 of those cities also have the bare line measured
• 40% to 90% of the raw line survived
• We only name a winner in 4 cities — the rest have too few runs

The spread between cities is larger than the spread between providers. In London roughly nine tenths of the line survived on both services; in Tokyo it was closer to half. That is worth knowing before you blame the provider: "this VPN is slow" is usually "this route is slow".

We only call a winner in a city when we have five or more paired runs there and the gap is at least 10%. That threshold is met in 4 of the 14 cities — Tokyo and Los Angeles, where NordVPN averaged ahead, and London and New York, where the two were level. In the remaining ten cities we publish the numbers and say the sample is too small, rather than ranking on one run.

The apps behind our measurements

The providers we track

We rank on what we can check. Each of the five below publishes a location in this use; the tables are our own counts and the providers' own published terms, not a summary of their marketing.

ExpressVPN: the widest spread of cities

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN publishes more multi-city countries than anyone else in our set — 11 countries where you can pick between two or more locations, including 56 in the United States, 7 in the United Kingdom, 6 in Australia and 4 in Japan. If your problem is a blocked address rather than a missing country, that spread is the thing that gets you out of it. It is the most expensive option here, and it is the one we would pick for streaming.

Go to ExpressVPN

NordVPN: the largest country list, and the one we measured

NordVPN

NordVPN covers more countries than anything else we track. It is also one of the two services we measured ourselves, so the retention figures above are its actual numbers rather than a claim. It operates from Panama, has been audited by Deloitte, allows 10 simultaneous connections, and lists obfuscated servers and a kill switch among its features — the two things that matter where VPN traffic is filtered.

Go to NordVPN

Surfshark: unlimited devices, and level with NordVPN in half our tests

Surfshark

Surfshark is the other service in our own measurements. In London and New York it was level with NordVPN; in Tokyo and Los Angeles it trailed by 11% and 17%. It places no limit on simultaneous connections, which makes it the sensible choice for a household rather than a person. Audited by Deloitte, operating from the Netherlands, with Camouflage Mode for networks that filter VPN traffic.

Go to Surfshark

CyberGhost: the longest money-back window, with a catch

CyberGhost

CyberGhost's 45-day money-back guarantee is the longest here, and it is the reason it appears on most lists. Read the condition: 45 days applies to the six-month and two-year plans, and the monthly plan gets 14 days. It publishes 10 multi-city countries, with 11 locations in the United States, but only a single city in Japan — so it is a weaker choice if Japanese services are your target.

Go to CyberGhost

Private Internet Access: unlimited connections, US jurisdiction

Private Internet Access

PIA places no limit on devices and publishes an Advanced Kill Switch, obfuscation, multi-hop and port forwarding. Its no-logs claim has been audited by Deloitte Audit Romania. The trade-off is jurisdiction: it operates from the United States, which some readers will rule out on principle. We list it because the rest of the record is strong and because it is one of only four providers with two or more cities in Japan.

Go to Private Internet Access

Frequently asked questions

Will a VPN reduce lag?

Usually not. It adds a hop. The exception is a badly routed ISP path to a specific destination, where a provider's route can be shorter — that is worth testing on your own connection rather than assuming.

Can I get banned for using one?

Being banned for the VPN itself is rare. Being penalised for what it enabled — buying in a cheaper region, playing on a region-locked server — is a matter for the publisher's terms, and those vary a great deal.

Will it slow my connection down?

Yes, and we have measured how much: across 14 cities and 46 paired runs, between 40% and 90% of the raw line survived the tunnel. The variation between cities is wider than the variation between providers — London kept about 90% on both services we tested, Tokyo about half. If a VPN feels slow, the route is a more likely explanation than the provider.

Can I use a free VPN for this?

Usually not, and the reason is measurable rather than moral. Even on paid services we measured, between 10% and 60% of the raw line disappears into the tunnel — in Tokyo a 780 Mbps line came out at roughly half. Free tiers add a data cap and a much smaller server list on top of that. They also have to earn money somewhere, and where the product is free the revenue usually comes from the traffic itself.

Conclusion

Use one for access, not for speed. Pick the nearest location that solves the restriction, and check the store's regional rules before buying anything.

Our measurements cover throughput rather than latency, and we say so rather than publishing a ping figure we did not test.

Every figure on this page comes from our own daily collection or our own measurements. The files are published as open data under CC BY 4.0, and the method — including what the numbers do not prove — is on how we test.