IVPN

Is IVPN safe?

Yes. IVPN, run from Gibraltar by IVPN Limited, is one of the most private VPNs we have scored. It asks for no email or name, Apple's privacy label says the app collects nothing, and its apps are open source. The German security firm Cure53 has audited part of the service every year since 2019 and IVPN publishes the reports. We score it 89/100.

That puts it just behind Mullvad (91), the closest match in approach, and ahead of Proton VPN (88) and Windscribe (86). The points it loses come from security: an August 2026 attack on its Bitcoin payment server took the company's own funds, and IVPN does not pay for bug reports.

IVPN is also small. Its iPhone app had about 250 ratings on the US App Store in October 2026, and the Android app was temporarily off Google Play. Small is not the same as risky, but it means fewer outside eyes than on the big brands.

How little does IVPN know about you?

Very little. A new account gets a random ID like i-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX and nothing else; an email is optional and only lets IVPN contact you. The policy rules out connection timestamps and duration, bandwidth logs and customer IP addresses. To enforce device and connection limits, the authentication server keeps a temporary record of which account IDs are connected, and deletes it when you disconnect or log out.

Payments are where the policy gets specific. Cash and Bitcoin, the latter through IVPN's own BTCPay server, leave the least behind. A card payment through Braintree stores a transaction ID against your account, and PayPal adds a subscription ID; both payment companies keep their own records, which IVPN says it does not see. Voucher codes are deleted 30 days after use. When an account ends, everything except basic accounting data is deleted after 90 days, or at once if you press the delete button.

The website runs self-hosted Matomo analytics with the last two parts of your IP address removed. Mobile crash reports are on by default and go to IVPN's own server; you can switch them off in settings.

What do the audits show?

The 2019 Cure53 audit checked the no-logs claim, and it is the only one of its kind. In June 2026 IVPN said it would not repeat that format, because a no-logs check shows only one moment and is often used as marketing. The later yearly audits test code and systems instead. The 2022 apps audit found eight issues, one of them high severity; a daemon weakness took a later release to fix. The 2023 server audit found one medium and six low issues, and the 2024 website audit two low ones. All were fixed, and the full reports are published with only hostnames removed. The eighth audit, of a system that lets IVPN subscribers use its other services without sharing an account ID, ran in July 2026.

What happened to the payment server in 2026?

On 7 August 2026 BTCPay Server, the open-source software IVPN hosts to take Bitcoin, disclosed a critical flaw that let anyone read files on the server without logging in. It was already being exploited. An attacker read the credentials for IVPN's Lightning node, closed its channels and moved out 0.6168 BTC in two transactions. IVPN says this was indiscriminate scanning rather than a targeted attack.

The money was IVPN's own operating balance. According to its report, the customer database sits on separate infrastructure, no VPN servers were involved and no account passwords were touched. Lightning payments were down from 7 to 10 August. IVPN published a detailed account four days later, which is what we want to see after an incident, but the episode shows that running payment software yourself to protect privacy comes with its own risk.

How to use IVPN safely

1. Save your account ID in a password manager; without an email there is no reset if you lose it.
2. Pay with cash or Bitcoin if you want no card or PayPal trail.
3. On Android, check the APK checksum against the one on IVPN's site, or install through F-Droid or Accrescent while the Play listing is down.
4. On iPhone, expect some traffic to Apple's own servers to bypass any VPN. IVPN removed its iOS kill switch in 2023 because Apple's version leaked.

How we scored it

Privacy (93) and transparency and control (92) are the strongest factors: no email, almost no stored data, a published owner and a delete button. Regulatory record (92) reflects more than 15 years with no fines and yearly published audits. Security (86) is lowered by the 2026 payment-server compromise and the lack of a paid bug bounty. Scams and harmful content (82) is the weakest, only because an anonymous VPN account is easy for a child to open.