A dozen-odd VPN subscriptions, and exactly one of them survived long enough on my Windows 11 desktop to become the permanent default. That's not a marketing claim — it's just where a long stretch of billing statements and a very patient partner landed me after my employer disclosed a third-party data breach and I stopped assuming my network traffic was nobody's business but mine.
That VPN is Private Internet Access, and the moment I actually trusted it wasn't a benchmark chart. It was running a DNS leak test on this same Windows 11 machine and watching every result trace back to the VPN's own servers instead of my internet provider's. I'd spent a while assuming that flipping on DNS-over-HTTPS inside Firefox already covered that ground. It didn't. DoH encrypts the lookup in transit; it does nothing about which network your traffic actually exits through, and mixing up the two is an easy mistake for a developer who reads about privacy tools without doing networking for a living.
Quick disclosure before any of the comparisons below: some of these links, PIA's included, are affiliate links, and I earn a commission if you sign up through one at no extra cost to you. I paid full price out of my own pocket for every subscription mentioned here before any of these partnerships existed, which is the only reason I trust my own numbers enough to publish them.
Why Windows 11 Makes This Comparison Necessary
Windows 11 out of the box is chatty in a way that rarely shows up in a settings menu. Telemetry pings, background app syncs, OneDrive quietly phoning home — none of it is sinister by itself, but it adds up to a machine that's almost never silent on the network, even when you're not actively doing anything. Before picking a VPN, consider your threat model: you might be mainly worried about your ISP monetizing browsing data, about the sites you visit fingerprinting your device, or about something specific to your job. The answer changes which features actually matter for network privacy, more than any speed number does.
PIA versus NordVPN: Two Different Philosophies for the Same OS
Private Internet Access is the one that stuck, and it's not because it's the friendliest option on the market — it's because it hands you the controls instead of hiding them. The desktop client lets you dial encryption strength up or down depending on what you're doing, the apps are fully open-source so anyone with the patience can go read the code on GitHub, and a server count north of 35,000 (more than any other major provider I've tested) means congestion is rarely the bottleneck. That same granularity is why it ended up anchoring my Best VPN for Remote Software Developers in 2026 piece. Juggling several VMs or containers that each want their own network rules is exactly the situation where configurable beats simple.
NordVPN takes the opposite bet: fewer knobs, more polish. NordLynx keeps speeds consistent without you touching a setting, and the app looks like something a non-technical relative could set up without a phone call. Its no-logs policy has also gone through multiple independent audits, which matters more than it sounds — a friend from a VPN subreddit I help moderate, Waverly Obasi, has a running bit about providers whose most recent audit is pushing three years stale, and she's not wrong to be picky about it. NordVPN currently gives her nothing to mock.
What Actually Changes When You Switch Protocols?
Which protocol a VPN defaults to is one of those settings most people never touch, and comparing them properly is its own rabbit hole. I go deep into the actual numbers in a separate speed-test piece, so I'll spare you the full breakdown here. The short version for Windows 11: WireGuard-based protocols are lighter on CPU than older OpenVPN connections, which matters if you're also running Docker containers or a handful of Chrome tabs that already have your fans spinning. I leaned on exactly this setup while building out my Fastest WireGuard VPN for Home Lab Servers and Personal Tech Kits piece, and it's held up without complaint since.
My old teammate Ezra Pontis, who's since moved to a company across town in SoMa, ran his own version of this test on his own hardware and emailed over the raw CSV without me asking — that's just how he operates. His numbers landed close enough to mine that I stopped second-guessing my methodology. One setting neither of us skips, regardless of protocol: the kill switch, which cuts the connection outright the moment the tunnel drops instead of quietly falling back to a normal, unencrypted one.
Split Tunneling, Port Forwarding, and Where Torrenting Fits In
Split tunneling is the other setting worth knowing before committing to a provider. It lets you route specific apps through the encrypted tunnel while everything else uses your normal connection, which solves the classic problem of one app throwing errors because it's decided a VPN looks suspicious. I've written a full breakdown of how to configure it elsewhere, so I won't rehash it here, but on Windows 11 it's the difference between an all-or-nothing tunnel and one that actually fits how you use the machine day to day.
Port forwarding is a related headache, especially if you're moving large files around. Best VPN for Torrenting and Secure P2P File Sharing covers the mechanics in more depth than fits here. What's worth saying briefly is that some ISPs quietly deprioritize traffic they can identify as VPN-encrypted or P2P-shaped, throttling it below your paid speed tier without ever telling you, which is one more reason a full tunnel with a properly configured kill switch beats routing only your browser through a proxy extension and calling it done.
CyberGhost and ExpressVPN: Where the Comparison Breaks Down
Private Internet Access and NordVPN cover most of what a Windows power user needs, but the picture isn't complete without the other two names that keep coming up in my testing. ExpressVPN's Lightway protocol is the one I'd point to if battery life on a laptop mattered more to you than raw throughput — its TrustedServer setup runs entirely in RAM and wipes on every reboot, a genuinely different security posture than a VPN that stores configs on disk. CyberGhost, meanwhile, is worth a look for anyone who'd rather pick servers pre-labeled by use case than guess by country; it's also worth knowing that CyberGhost, ExpressVPN, and PIA all share the same parent company, which doesn't change how any of them perform but is the kind of ownership detail I'd want disclosed if I were buying.
Neither product solves everything, and two more scenarios are worth flagging even though they deserve more room than a paragraph. Setting up a VPN at the router level, so every device on the network is covered without installing a client on each one, changes the calculus in ways that go beyond a quick comparison. Dedicated IPs solve a narrower but real problem too, for anyone who needs a consistent address for remote access rather than a fresh one on every connection. I ran into a version of that router-level question myself near Pike Place Market, trying to explain to my partner over coffee why "just install the app on your phone" doesn't cover the smart TV or the thermostat back home.
Which One Should You Actually Install?
So: choose Private Internet Access when you actually want to touch the settings — when open-source code you can audit yourself, adjustable encryption levels, and a server count deep enough to dodge congestion matter to how you use a Windows 11 machine day to day. Choose NordVPN instead when you'd rather the app make good decisions for you, when a polished interface and an already-audited no-logs policy count for more than granular control, and when you'd prefer not to think about any of this past the initial setup.
For my own rig, the answer keeps being Private Internet Access. It isn't the prettiest client I've tested, and there's still a whiteboard near my desk covered in half-erased notes from configs that didn't pan out, but it's the one that has never made me choose between security and actually getting work done. If you want to see the code before trusting it with your traffic, grab Private Internet Access and set it to a WireGuard-based connection right out of the gate — everything else in this piece is secondary to getting that one decision right.