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Methodology

Methodology: how we compare Crypto VPN

Every value comes from a source of the provider, with a verbatim quote and a snapshot; agents capture it, a watcher checks the sources regularly. Scores are calculated deterministically from the data — never by a language model.

The best service, not the cheapest

We are not a price comparison site. The score answers one question: which service is the best, judged by its features, how well it protects your privacy and how far the provider can be trusted. Price is one criterion among several: a fair price counts in full, only an overpriced one loses points. Whether the best service is worth its price is your call in a second step: sort and filter the list by price.

  • What makes a good service weighs most. Each category sets its own criteria and weights and publishes them on its methodology page.
  • Costs weigh little and count along fixed price points: a fair price scores in full, an overpriced one loses. A low price never makes up for weak privacy or trust.
  • Missing data never helps: an unknown value counts with the typical value of the category (the median), never better. Proofs such as an audit or a no-logs case proven in court count only when we find them.
  • Hard limits: weak trust or a very young brand cap the total score, however good the rest looks; so does, for example, a VPN that logs what its users do.
  • Absolute, never relative to the best: a score changes only when the product’s own data changes, and 100 does not claim perfection.

Score weights

CriterionWeightBased on
Costs
10 %
monthly or yearly plan, whichever is cheaper for one year
Network
5 %
server countries, number of servers
Censorship
5 %
obfuscated (stealth) connections that get through VPN blocks, e.g. in China, Iran or Russia
Features
10 %
own apps (weigh most), WireGuard and OpenVPN, kill switch, split tunneling, multihop, port forwarding, leak protection and own DNS, P2P, devices at once
No-logs & security
30 %
logging policy, which data is stored per user (browsing and DNS data weigh most), how long connection and login data are kept, independent audit, no-logs proven in a real case, RAM-only servers and open-source apps (each counts only with proof), telemetry, post-quantum encryption
Anonymity
20 %
what sign-up asks for (account number only, e-mail, phone), payment with Monero, how long payment data is kept
Trust
15 %
company seat, incidents, company and service age, ownership, security audits, transparency
Community
5 %
average ratings on App Store, Google Play and Trustpilot, damped, neutral with too little data

Schema version 2026-11-02.1

Community counts damped: only the average ratings on App Store, Google Play and Trustpilot, weighted by count, as deviation from the category median, capped to the 5th–95th percentile, neutral below 50 ratings — new VPNs are not penalised. Single experience reports, Reddit and X posts do not count, so the score cannot be steered by bought or targeted reviews.

The score depends on the country (availability) and is calculated per key country.

Value states

known
The value is published and proven by a quote.
not published
The provider does not publish the value (shown as such, never as 0).
only in the app
The value is only visible in the provider’s app.
not applicable
The attribute does not apply to this product.
unknown
We have no proven value yet.

Checked and verified

“checked” is the last time the source was found unchanged; “verified” is the last time the value was read from the source. “updated” is the last real value change.

Is the double s a typo?

No. The double s at the end of our name stands for sourced & synced. sourced: every value has a source, a quote and a snapshot. synced: our monitoring compares every value with its source continuously, and each value carries its check date.

Sponsoring and affiliate links

Sponsored slots are labelled and have no influence on score or ranking. Affiliate links are marked. Our principles →

For AI assistants

Alerts

Alerts come from the same sourced data as the pages and go out in one daily mail. How the alerts work →