What to Look for in a VPN: A Feature Checklist

Why a Feature Checklist Beats a "Best VPN" List

Search for almost any VPN-related question and you'll find no shortage of "best VPN" roundups, each with its own ranked top five and its own reasons for the order. The problem isn't that these lists are useless — it's that "best" is doing a lot of unstated work. Best for what? Best for whom? A VPN that's an excellent fit for someone who wants to unblock a specific streaming catalog on a smart TV might be a mediocre fit for someone whose main concern is anonymous torrenting, and both of those might be the wrong pick entirely for someone whose only requirement is basic protection on airport Wi-Fi a few times a year.

A feature checklist sidesteps that problem by putting you in control of the comparison. Instead of trusting someone else's weighting of speed versus price versus server count versus streaming support, you decide which features are non-negotiable for your situation, which are nice-to-haves, and which you genuinely don't care about. Then you check each provider you're considering against that list, in order, and the decision tends to make itself.

This article walks through the features that show up on nearly every credible VPN comparison, explains in plain language what each one actually does and why it matters, and flags which ones are truly universal must-haves versus which ones depend on your specific use case. By the end, you should be able to build your own short checklist and run it against any VPN you're considering — including the four providers referenced throughout this article, NordVPN, Proton VPN, PureVPN, and FastestVPN.

What Encryption and Protocols Should a VPN Support?

Encryption is the mechanism that actually protects your traffic, so it's worth understanding at a basic level rather than just trusting a checkmark on a features page. A VPN works by wrapping your internet traffic in an encrypted tunnel between your device and the VPN server, using a specific protocol — a set of rules that governs how that tunnel is built and secured.

Two protocols dominate the current landscape, and either is a reasonable baseline to look for:

• WireGuard. A newer, leaner protocol built around modern cryptography, generally praised for being fast to connect, efficient on battery life (relevant on mobile), and simpler to audit because its codebase is smaller than older alternatives. Many providers ship their own branded implementation of WireGuard rather than the vanilla open-source version — NordVPN's is called NordLynx, for example — which typically means the same underlying cryptographic approach with some provider-specific tuning around IP address handling.
• OpenVPN. An older, extensively reviewed protocol that's been a mainstay of the VPN industry for years. It's generally a little heavier than WireGuard and can be slightly slower to establish a connection, but its long track record and open-source transparency still make it a trusted, widely supported option, and some networks that block VPN traffic are easier to get around with OpenVPN's TCP mode than with other protocols.

A smaller number of providers also support IKEv2/IPsec, which tends to handle network switching gracefully (useful on mobile when you move between Wi-Fi and cellular), or proprietary protocols built for a specific use case like obfuscation on restrictive networks.

What actually matters when you're checking a provider's protocol support: does it offer at least one modern, well-regarded protocol (WireGuard or OpenVPN cover the vast majority of legitimate needs), can you actually choose your protocol in the app rather than being locked to one, and does the provider use AES-256 encryption or an equivalent modern cipher as the underlying algorithm. Beyond that, chasing an exotic protocol you've read about in a forum thread is rarely worth the effort — the mainstream options are secure when implemented correctly, and implementation quality matters more than protocol novelty.

Does the VPN Have a Real Kill Switch?

A kill switch is one of the most important features on this entire checklist, and it's also one of the easiest to overlook because it only matters in a specific moment: when your VPN connection unexpectedly drops. Without a kill switch, a dropped VPN connection means your device silently falls back to your normal, unencrypted internet connection — your traffic keeps flowing, but the protection you thought you had is gone, often without any obvious signal that anything changed.

A working kill switch monitors the VPN connection continuously and blocks all internet traffic the instant it detects a drop, until the VPN reconnects or you manually intervene. That might mean losing internet access for a few seconds during a reconnect, which is a reasonable trade-off if privacy or security is the reason you're using a VPN in the first place.

When you're checking this box on your list, look for a few specifics rather than just the word "kill switch" on a features page:

• Is it on by default, or does it need to be manually enabled? Some apps ship with it off, which defeats the purpose if you forget to turn it on.
• Does it work system-wide, or only within the app? A system-wide kill switch blocks all network traffic on the device; a narrower implementation might only affect the VPN app's own connection, leaving other apps unprotected during a drop.
• Is it available on the platforms you actually use? Kill switch implementation and reliability can vary between a provider's Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android apps — check the platform you'll actually be using it on, not just the platform reviewed in an article you read.

All four providers referenced on this site — NordVPN, Proton VPN, PureVPN, and FastestVPN — include a kill switch in their apps, though the exact toggle location, default state, and platform-by-platform behavior are worth confirming directly in each app before you rely on it for anything sensitive.

Does It Protect Against DNS, IPv6, and WebRTC Leaks?

A kill switch protects you when the VPN connection drops entirely. Leak protection is a related but separate concern: it protects you from smaller, quieter failures where the VPN connection stays up, but a specific type of traffic slips outside the encrypted tunnel anyway. A VPN can pass every other item on this checklist and still leave you exposed through one of these narrower gaps, which is why it's worth checking for on its own rather than assuming it's automatically covered by encryption or a kill switch.

• DNS leaks. Every time you visit a website, your device first makes a DNS request to translate that address into an IP address the network can actually route to. A properly configured VPN routes these DNS requests through its own encrypted tunnel and its own DNS servers. A leak happens when those requests instead go out through your regular internet connection's default DNS servers — often your internet provider's — which means whoever operates those servers can see which sites you're visiting even though the rest of your traffic is encrypted. This is a surprisingly common misconfiguration, especially on VPN apps that don't explicitly route DNS through the tunnel by default.
• IPv6 leaks. Many VPN apps were built primarily around IPv4 traffic and don't fully account for IPv6, a newer addressing system that a growing number of networks and devices use alongside or instead of IPv4. If a VPN only tunnels IPv4 traffic and your device or network also sends IPv6 traffic, that IPv6 traffic can bypass the VPN entirely and reveal your real IP address, even while the app shows you as "connected." Look specifically for a provider that states it either blocks IPv6 traffic outright while connected or fully tunnels it — either approach closes the gap, silently allowing it through does not.
• WebRTC leaks. WebRTC is a browser technology used for things like video calls directly in the browser, and it has a known history of being able to reveal a device's real IP address through certain browser API calls, independent of whatever IP address your VPN is presenting to the rest of the internet. This isn't strictly a VPN app problem — it's a browser behavior — but a well-built VPN browser extension, or app-level guidance on disabling the relevant browser setting, can close this specific gap.

Testing for these three leak types takes only a few minutes and doesn't require any technical background: connect to the VPN, then search for a "DNS leak test," an "IPv6 leak test," and a "WebRTC leak test" — each turns up straightforward browser-based tools that check the relevant leak type and tell you plainly whether your real information is exposed. Running these checks once after installing any new VPN app, on each device you actually use it on, is one of the highest-value, lowest-effort steps on this entire checklist, because it verifies the VPN is actually doing its job rather than just trusting that it is.

Is the No-Logs Policy Actually Meaningful?

Nearly every VPN provider's marketing page claims some version of "no-logs" or "we don't track you." The phrase has become so common that it's almost meaningless on its own — the useful question isn't whether a provider claims a no-logs policy, but whether that claim is specific, and whether there's any way to verify it beyond taking the company's word for it.

A few things worth checking rather than taking the marketing claim at face value:

• Does the privacy policy specify exactly what isn't logged? A meaningful no-logs policy names specific categories: browsing history, DNS queries, connection timestamps, IP addresses, and bandwidth usage tied to an identifiable session. A vague blanket statement without specifics is weaker evidence than a detailed one.
• Does it also specify what is collected? Even privacy-focused providers typically collect some account-level data for billing and support purposes — that's normal and not a red flag by itself, but it should be disclosed plainly rather than obscured.
• Has the policy been reviewed by an outside party? Independent audits of no-logs claims exist in the industry, though audit scope, methodology, and recency vary considerably between providers and over time — this is exactly the kind of detail that goes stale fast, so check each provider's own site for its current audit status rather than relying on anything stated secondhand, including in this article.
• What jurisdiction is the company based in? Data retention laws and government data-request obligations vary by country, which can affect what a provider is legally required to log or disclose, independent of its stated policy.

This is one of the checklist items where doing your own reading pays off more than trusting a summary — the actual privacy policy on a provider's own site is a more reliable source than any third-party description of it, including this one.

How Many Devices and Which Platforms Does It Cover?

Simultaneous device support is one of the more concretely comparable items on this checklist, and it's also one that's easy to underestimate if you're only thinking about your primary laptop or phone. Consider everything that might realistically be connected to a VPN at once: a phone, a laptop, a tablet, a second household member's devices, maybe a smart TV or streaming box, and possibly a router-level installation that covers an entire home network as a single connection.

Providers vary in how they structure this. Some offer a fixed number of simultaneous connections per account; others allow unlimited simultaneous connections, which removes the need to think about the number at all. If you're a single user with one or two devices, this may not be a deciding factor. If you're covering a family or a household with a mix of device types, it's worth comparing directly, since running out of connection slots mid-month is a genuinely annoying way to discover a limit exists.

Platform coverage matters just as much as the raw device count. Check specifically for:

• Native apps for your actual devices — Windows, macOS, iOS, Android at minimum; Linux support if you need it, since it's less universal than the others.
• Browser extensions if you want quick browser-only protection separate from a full system-wide connection.
• Router-level support if you want to protect every device on a home network — including smart TVs, game consoles, and other devices that can't run a VPN app directly — through a single installation.
• Smart TV or streaming device apps if streaming on a TV without a router-level setup matters to you specifically.

Among the four providers covered on this site, simultaneous-device allowances and platform coverage differ, and PureVPN in particular is generally positioned around a generous number of simultaneous connections, which is worth a direct look if a large household device count is your main concern — but always confirm the current, specific number on the provider's own site, since these figures change over time and are not restated as fixed facts here.

Is the Server Network Actually Where You Need It?

A large total server count is one of the most heavily marketed numbers in the VPN industry, and it's also one of the least useful in isolation. What actually matters is whether the provider has servers in the specific countries or regions you need, and whether those servers are reliable and reasonably fast — not the total number across the entire network.

A few more useful questions than "how many servers total":

• Does it have servers in the specific countries you care about? If your goal is a particular streaming catalog, a specific business's regional website, or simply a nearby server for low latency, country and city-level coverage matters more than a global total.
• Are the listed locations physical servers or virtual ones? Some providers use virtual server locations — a server that's physically located in one country but configured to appear as though it's in another, usually for licensing, legal, or infrastructure reasons. This isn't inherently a problem, but transparency about which locations are virtual versus physical is a reasonable thing to expect and check for on a provider's own site if the distinction matters to you.
• How does the provider handle server load? A server list is only as useful as its actual capacity. Providers that show live server load information, or that automatically route you to a lower-load server, tend to deliver more consistent real-world performance than raw server counts alone would suggest.

NordVPN is generally positioned around a large global server network spanning a wide range of countries, which is a reasonable starting point if broad geographic coverage is a priority for you specifically. That said, "large network" is a general positioning note about NordVPN's public reputation, not a specific server count claimed here — check the current, exact figures and location list on the provider's own site before deciding.

How Do Speed and Streaming Reliability Actually Compare?

Speed is one of the hardest items on this checklist to evaluate from a features page alone, because it depends on so many variables outside a provider's control: your own base internet speed, the distance to the server you connect to, that server's current load, the protocol you're using, and even your device's own processing overhead for encryption. A VPN will almost always introduce some amount of speed reduction compared to an unprotected connection — that's the cost of routing traffic through an extra encrypted hop — the practical question is how much, and whether it's noticeable for what you're actually doing.

Rather than trusting a specific speed claim (which is highly dependent on testing conditions that rarely match your own setup), a few more durable things to check:

• Does the protocol support matter for your speed needs? WireGuard-based protocols generally deliver a faster, more efficient connection than older alternatives, which is one practical reason protocol support belongs early on this checklist rather than as an afterthought.
• Does the provider publish a free trial or money-back guarantee? This is genuinely the most reliable way to judge real-world speed on your own connection, your own devices, and the specific servers you'd actually use — no published benchmark from anyone else fully substitutes for testing it yourself.
• Is streaming access mentioned specifically, and does the provider maintain it actively? Streaming services regularly update their VPN-detection methods, which means a server that reliably reaches a particular streaming catalog today isn't guaranteed to work the same way in a few months. A provider that's actively maintaining and updating its servers for streaming compatibility is a better long-term bet than one that made a one-time claim.

NordVPN is generally positioned around strong performance for streaming and speed-sensitive use, which is worth investigating firsthand if that's a top priority for you — but treat that as a starting point for your own testing during a trial or money-back window, not as a substitute for it.

What Extra Features Are Actually Worth Checking For?

Beyond the core checklist items above, a lot of VPN feature lists include extras that range from genuinely useful to mostly marketing. A few worth understanding so you can judge which ones apply to you:

Split tunneling

Split tunneling lets you choose which apps or traffic route through the VPN and which use your normal connection directly. This is useful if you want, say, your browser protected while a bandwidth-heavy local app (or a service that doesn't work well over VPN, like some banking apps) uses your regular connection at the same time. If you don't have a specific need to route only some traffic through the VPN, this feature is nice to have rather than essential.

Ad and tracker blocking

Several providers bundle a network-level ad or tracker blocker into their apps, which can reduce ads and some tracking scripts without needing a separate browser extension. This is a genuine convenience feature, but it's not a substitute for a dedicated ad blocker or privacy-focused browser if that's specifically what you're after — think of it as a helpful bonus layered on top of the VPN's core job, not a core requirement.

Dedicated or static IP addresses

Most VPN connections assign you a shared IP address that rotates or is used by many other customers simultaneously, which is good for anonymity but can occasionally trigger extra verification steps on websites that flag shared VPN IPs as suspicious (some banking sites, for example). A dedicated or static IP option, where offered, gives you a consistent IP address tied to your account alone — useful in specific scenarios like remote access to a work network, but unnecessary for most everyday use.

Obfuscation / stealth modes

Some networks and some countries actively try to detect and block VPN traffic. Obfuscation features disguise VPN traffic to look like regular encrypted web traffic, making it harder to detect and block. This matters a great deal if you're regularly on a restrictive network or traveling to a country with VPN restrictions, and matters far less otherwise — so weight it accordingly based on your own situation.

Multi-hop / double VPN connections

This routes your traffic through two VPN servers instead of one, adding an extra layer of separation between your original IP address and your destination, at the cost of some speed. It's a meaningful feature for a narrow set of high-privacy use cases and unnecessary overhead for typical daily use.

The pattern across all of these: none of them are universally essential the way encryption, a kill switch, and a real no-logs policy are. They're genuinely useful for the right person and irrelevant for everyone else — which is exactly why building your own prioritized checklist matters more than checking every box on a provider's marketing page.

What Does Customer Support Quality Actually Look Like?

Support quality is easy to skip on a features checklist because it's invisible until you actually need it — and then it matters a great deal, usually at an inconvenient moment (a connection issue right before you need to join a video call, or a billing question after a renewal you didn't expect). A few concrete things to check rather than assuming support is fine because a provider is well-known:

• What channels are available? Live chat tends to be the fastest for troubleshooting an active connection problem; email is usually fine for account or billing questions that aren't time-sensitive.
• Is support available when you're likely to need it? If you're often online outside typical business hours, 24/7 availability (where offered) matters more than it would for someone with a predictable daytime-only usage pattern.
• Is there a genuinely useful self-service knowledge base? A well-organized help center that actually answers common setup and troubleshooting questions can save you from needing to contact support at all for routine issues, which is often faster than any live channel.
• What does the refund or money-back process actually involve? A provider that makes cancellation and refunds straightforward is a good sign about how it treats customers generally; one that makes cancellation deliberately hard to find is worth noting as a broader signal, independent of the VPN's technical quality.

This is a category where a quick real-world test — sending a genuine question through the support channel before you commit to a long-term plan — tells you more than any marketing page's claim about "24/7 world-class support."

How Should Pricing and Billing Terms Factor Into the Checklist?

Pricing is deliberately positioned near the end of this checklist rather than the top, and that's intentional: a VPN that's cheap but missing the core security features above isn't actually a good value, no matter the price, because it's failing at the fundamental job you're paying it to do. That said, once a provider clears the essential checklist items, price and billing structure become a completely legitimate deciding factor.

A few things worth understanding about VPN pricing structure generally, without quoting any specific numbers (current pricing changes often enough, and varies enough by promotion and billing term, that any figure stated here would go stale immediately — check each provider's own pricing page directly):

• Monthly vs. longer-term billing. VPN pricing is structured almost industry-wide so that monthly plans cost more per month than plans billed annually or for multiple years upfront. This is standard practice, not unique to any one provider, but it means the flashy discounted rate you often see advertised usually assumes a longer upfront commitment.
• Renewal pricing versus introductory pricing. A common industry pattern is a lower promotional rate for an initial term that renews at a higher rate afterward. Checking the renewal price before subscribing, not just the introductory offer, avoids an unwelcome surprise later.
• Refund and money-back windows. A genuine trial period or money-back guarantee lets you test real-world performance on your own devices and network before fully committing — this is arguably more valuable than any single spec on a features page, since it replaces trust in marketing copy with your own direct experience.
• What's included at each tier. Some providers gate certain features (like dedicated IPs, additional simultaneous connections, or specific advanced settings) behind higher-priced plans. Confirm which tier actually includes the features from your checklist rather than assuming the base plan covers everything advertised on the homepage.

NordVPN, Proton VPN, PureVPN, and FastestVPN each publish their current plans, promotional terms, and refund policies directly on their own sites — checking there, rather than relying on a secondhand summary, is the accurate way to compare current cost across providers: NordVPN's current plans, Proton VPN's current plans (which also offers a genuinely usable free tier, worth a look if you want to test the basics before paying anything), PureVPN's current plans, and FastestVPN's current plans.

How Do You Turn This Into a Checklist You Can Actually Use?

Reading a long list of features is one thing; actually using it to compare providers is another. Here's a practical way to convert everything above into a short, personal checklist:

1. Start with the non-negotiables. Modern protocol support (WireGuard and/or OpenVPN), a real system-wide kill switch, and a specific, clearly stated no-logs policy. Any provider that doesn't clear these three shouldn't make your shortlist regardless of anything else it offers.
2. Add your personal must-haves. Pick two or three items from the rest of this checklist that map directly to how you'll actually use the VPN — device count and platform coverage if you're covering a household, specific country server coverage if you have a particular region or service in mind, streaming reliability if that's your main use case, obfuscation if you're on a restrictive network.
3. Note your nice-to-haves separately. Split tunneling, ad blocking, dedicated IPs, multi-hop — useful tie-breakers between two providers that already clear your must-haves, but not worth ruling out an otherwise-strong provider over.
4. Check pricing and refund terms last, on the provider's own site. By this point you've already narrowed the field to providers that meet your actual requirements, so price becomes a fair, apples-to-apples comparison rather than the first (and sometimes only) factor you looked at.
5. Test it yourself during a trial or refund window before fully committing. No feature list, including this one, replaces a few days of real use on your own devices and your own network.

Written down, a checklist like this might be as short as five or six lines — and that's the point. The goal isn't to memorize every feature a VPN could theoretically have; it's to know which handful actually matter for you, and to check providers against that shortlist instead of against whichever "best VPN" article you happened to read first.

A couple of worked examples make this more concrete. Someone whose main goal is covering a household's mix of phones, laptops, and a smart TV might weight the checklist toward a generous simultaneous-device allowance, broad platform coverage including a router-level or smart TV option, and streaming reliability — with server-count breadth and advanced features like multi-hop pushed down to "don't care." Someone whose main goal is protecting sensitive research or communication on a restrictive network, by contrast, might weight it toward obfuscation support, a verified system-wide kill switch, a specific and detailed no-logs policy, and confirmed DNS/IPv6 leak protection — with device count and streaming support becoming far less important. Same checklist, same set of features to check, completely different ranking of what actually matters — which is exactly why a personal checklist built around your own situation beats a generic "best VPN" ranking built around someone else's.