Private Internet Access
The only provider on this list whose no-logs claim has actually been tested in real subpoenas and federal court — though US jurisdiction and Kape ownership are worth weighing.
Where it holds up
- No-logs claim has held up in real subpoenas and a federal hacking trial
- Fully open-source apps since 2018
- Deepest configurability of any provider tested (cipher, handshake, ports)
- Unlimited simultaneous devices with port forwarding support
Private Internet Access is headquartered in Denver, Colorado — a Five Eyes country, and the most direct jurisdictional trade-off on this list — and has been owned by Kape Technologies since 2019. What sets it apart isn’t a lab audit; it’s that PIA’s no-logs claim has actually been tested outside a controlled environment. In a 2016 case, the FBI subpoenaed PIA during a bomb-threat investigation and the company could only confirm the traffic originated from an east-coast IP cluster — no user logs existed to hand over. A second instance surfaced in a 2018 federal hacking trial in San Jose, where PIA again had nothing to link to a specific user. Most providers can show you an audit; PIA can point to real court records.
Audits and configurability
PIA has also been formally audited by Deloitte, most recently completed December 2025 under the ISAE 3000 standard, confirming its servers run in ephemeral, disk-less RAM containers with logging disabled at the container level. Its apps have been open-source since 2018, and it exposes more configuration depth than any other provider here — encryption cipher, handshake, custom ports — aimed squarely at users who want to tune the connection themselves rather than trust a black box.
What holds it back
Speed drops off sharply with distance — independent testing found roughly 14% loss on nearby servers but as much as 49–79% loss on distant ones, the widest spread of any provider we compared. Kape Technologies’ history is also worth knowing: its earlier incarnation, Crossrider, was flagged by Symantec and Malwarebytes as an ad-injection platform before rebranding in 2018. That predates PIA’s acquisition and we found no PIA-specific incidents tied to it, but Kape also owns VPN “review” sites, which is a real conflict-of-interest concern worth naming for the industry generally.
The verdict
Worth it. The real-world, court-tested no-logs record is genuinely more compelling than a paper audit, and the price and configurability are hard to beat. US jurisdiction and inconsistent long-distance speeds are the honest costs of that value.