How Do You Use a VPN on an iPhone?

So you’ve gone and got yourself a shiny new iPhone handset, maybe purchased outright or possibly as part of an iPhone plan. That’s step one out of the way. Step two is pairing it with the best mobile phone plan. Step three is to download a whole lot of apps to add extra versatility to your iPhone, and one of those apps should absolutely be a virtual private network (VPN) service.

A VPN service for an iPhone is the same as a VPN service for any other device. A VPN service lets you create a secure internet connection between your iPhone (or other devices) and the internet. This is handy for protecting your privacy, particularly when connecting to public or unknown WiFi networks, but it can also be used to make it appear as though your device is in another city or country.

The best VPN service for iPhone really boils down to personal preference, but we do advise avoiding free VPN services (unless it’s a free trial for a premium VPN) because they tend to be slower and less reliable than premium ones. All of the best VPN services include support for iPhones and other iOS devices, which means you have your pick of NordVPN, Hotspot Shield, ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and PureVPN: the top five VPN services by our appraisal.

If you want to pick a VPN based on how many devices it supports, so you can use the same VPN account on an iPhone and a number of other devices, here’s how those five VPN services look in terms of device limits:

• NordVPN: 6 devices
• Hotspot Shield: 5 devices
• ExpressVPN: 5 devices
• CyberGhost: 7 devices
• PureVPN: 10 devices

If you don’t know what VPN service you want to use on your iPhone, head to the App Store and search for ‘vpn’. This will give you an idea of the best-rated and most popular VPN apps for iOS, but be warned there are a lot of choices, which is why we recommend sticking to one of the five options listed above.

For one of those, you can search for the name of the VPN service you like the look of on the App Store and start downloading.

Once downloaded, open the VPN app by tapping on the icon. If you’re not prompted to do so, you’ll either need to sign up or use existing login details to connect to an existing VPN account. When you’re connecting to a VPN service for the first time, you’ll likely see a pop-up asking you to allow the service to add VPN configurations to filter network traffic. Tap ‘Allow’ for the VPN service to work.

To make life easier, VPNs tend to let you tap a ‘Connect’ button to connect to a nearby server or the server you last connected to. You’ll have to bring up a server list from the menu to connect to a VPN server in another city or country, and this will depend on which VPN servers are active and which country your VPN provider offers servers in.

VPN services are designed to run in the background, but only after you’ve manually connected to a VPN Server. Because this connection is manually activated, it also must be manually disconnected. Swipe up from the bottom of your iPhone screen to see open apps, then scroll to your VPN service. Tap the same button you tapped to connect to disconnect and turn off the VPN on your iPhone.