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Private Internet Access

A long-established, budget-priced US-based VPN with open-source apps, RAM-only servers, and a no-logs policy repeatedly audited by Deloitte and tested in court.

www.privateinternetaccess.com ↗
⚠ Not scored

⚠ Documented concerns

We don't give Private Internet Access an overall score. A proven logging breach, or an ownership history in adware or surveillance, is not something a good feature list should be able to average away. The data below is still shown in full so you can judge it yourself.

  • 2019: Acquired by Kape Technologies

    Kape acquired PIA's parent holding company in late 2019, its third VPN purchase after CyberGhost and ZenMate. PIA had until then been independently owned with a strong privacy-community reputation. No logging failure has been documented at PIA itself, before or since.

    Source ↗
  • 2015: Later owner's ad-injection history, long predating the purchase

    Kape traded as Crossrider until 2018. Research by Google and UC Berkeley identified Crossrider as the top affiliate feeding the Superfish and intext.nav-links ad injectors. Note the chronology: PIA was independent and founder-owned in 2015, Crossrider shut the ad platform down in 2016, and it did not acquire PIA until three years later.

    Source ↗
  • 2021: Parent also owns VPN review sites

    Kape's purchase of Webselenese gave it vpnMentor and Wizcase, review sites that rank VPNs including its own brands. Ownership disclosure on those sites has been criticised as inconspicuous.

    Source ↗

What counts in their favour

  • Court-tested twice in US federal proceedings, more than any other VPN on this site. In a 2016 FBI case a subpoena to London Trust Media produced only a rough region of the country, with no identifying logs.
  • In a 2018 case PIA's general counsel testified under oath that the company holds no customer logs, and none were produced.
  • Deloitte Audit Romania audited the no-logs policy and found server configurations were not designed to identify users or their activity. PIA runs RAM-only servers.
  • PIA publishes a transparency report on the legal demands it receives.
  • The concern is prospective, about whether Kape ownership since 2019 changes any of this, rather than any documented failure by PIA.

Listing a concern is a statement about the documented record, not a claim about how the service behaves today. Where a provider has since changed owner, jurisdiction or policy, that is noted above and in the report below.

Jurisdiction
United States (five eyes)
Founded
2010
Owner
Kape Technologies
Best price
$2.03/mo
Devices
unlimited
Free tier
No
No category scores are shown for Private Internet Access because of the documented concerns above. Every individual data point is still published below, so you can weigh the record yourself.

Best for

  • · Budget-conscious users who want a heavily audited, court-tested no-logs VPN
  • · Households with many devices (unlimited simultaneous connections)
  • · Torrenting / P2P with port forwarding
  • · Users who value open-source, inspectable client apps

Not ideal for

  • · Users who need a non-Five-Eyes jurisdiction
  • · People who distrust Kape Technologies' ownership and conflicts of interest
  • · Those requiring fully anonymous signup or cash payment
  • · Users wanting a genuine multi-server double-VPN hop

Strengths

  • ✓No-logs policy is unusually well-proven: three Deloitte Audit Romania reviews (2022/2024/2025) plus two real court tests (2016 FBI bomb-threats case, 2018 hacking trial) that yielded no user data
  • ✓Fully open-source client apps (desktop/Android GPLv3, iOS MIT) that anyone can inspect, plus a full-featured Linux GUI app
  • ✓Very cheap on long-term plans (~$2/mo) with unlimited simultaneous device connections
  • ✓Strong feature set: WireGuard + OpenVPN, multi-level kill switch, port forwarding, MACE ad/tracker blocker, RAM-only servers, P2P-friendly

Weaknesses

  • ✗US jurisdiction (Five Eyes) is a turn-off for threat models worried about intelligence-sharing, even though there are no data-retention laws forcing VPN logging
  • ✗Owned by Kape Technologies, a group with a controversial history (former Crossrider ad-injection roots and ownership of VPN review sites), which raises trust-conflict concerns
  • ✗Account signup is not anonymous (email required); the only trial is a 7-day mobile (iOS/Android) free trial alongside the 30-day money-back guarantee
  • ✗'Multi-hop' is VPN-plus-proxy (Shadowsocks/SOCKS5) rather than a true server-to-server double VPN

Protocols & encryption

The tunnelling protocols this service offers and the cryptography behind them.

WireGuard

Modern

A modern, lean protocol (~4,000 lines of code) that is fast and easy to audit. Its cryptography is fixed and state-of-the-art, with no weak options to misconfigure.

Data cipher
ChaCha20-Poly1305
Key exchange
Curve25519 (ECDH)
Integrity
BLAKE2s

OpenVPN

Trusted

The mature, widely-trusted open-source standard. Flexible and heavily audited over two decades, though slower than WireGuard.

Data cipher
AES-256-GCM
Key exchange
RSA-4096 / ECDH
Integrity
SHA-256 / SHA-512 HMAC

IKEv2 / IPsec

Trusted

A fast, stable protocol that reconnects quickly when you change networks, so it is popular on mobile. Built natively into most operating systems.

Data cipher
AES-256-GCM
Key exchange
Diffie-Hellman (ECP)
Integrity
SHA-256 / SHA-384
This provider's setup
Stated data cipher
AES-256-GCM (OpenVPN); ChaCha20 (WireGuard)
Stated handshake
RSA-4096 (OpenVPN TLS, SHA-256); Curve25519 (WireGuard)
Perfect forward secrecy
Yes
Post-quantum resistant
No
RAM-only servers
Yes
Kill switch
Yes
First-party DNS (leak protection)
Yes
IPv6
Unknown

Full data sheet

Every attribute we track, coloured by whether it helps or hurts your privacy.

Company & jurisdiction
Based inUnited States
Eyes alliance5 Eyes
Enemy of the InternetNo
OwnerKape Technologies
ConglomerateKape Technologies (Unikmind Holdings / Teddy Sagi)
Founded2010
Logging
Traffic / activityNone kept
DNS requestsNone kept
TimestampsNone kept
BandwidthNone kept
Source IP addressNone kept

Strict no-logs policy: no traffic, DNS, timestamp, bandwidth, or IP logging. Runs on RAM-only (RAM-disk) servers so data does not survive a reboot. Independently reviewed by Deloitte Audit Romania under ISAE 3000 (Revised) three times (June 2022, April 2024, and 2025).

Payment & anonymity
Anonymous signupNo
Accepts cashUnknown
Accepts cryptoYes
PGP keyUnknown
Protocols & features
OpenVPNYes
WireGuardYes
Proprietary protocoln/a
Multi-hopYes
ObfuscationYes
Kill switchYes
First-party DNSYes
RAM-only serversYes
Port forwardingYes
P2P / torrentingYes
IPv6Unknown
Encryption
Data cipherAES-256-GCM (OpenVPN); ChaCha20 (WireGuard)
HandshakeRSA-4096 (OpenVPN TLS, SHA-256); Curve25519 (WireGuard)
Transparency
Open-source clientsYes, all apps
Independent audits3
Transparency reportYes
Court / seizure-testedProven

PIA was subpoenaed in a 2016 FBI bomb-threats case and again in a 2018 hacking trial (Embarcadero Media defacement) and produced no usable user data in either. Its quarterly transparency reports continue this pattern: the latest Q4 2025 report logs 30 legal requests with zero user data disclosed (the prior Q2 2025 report logged 46 requests, also zero).

Infrastructure
Simultaneous devicesUnlimited
Countries91
Servers0
Linux supportGUI app
Pricing
Month-to-month$11.99
Best $/mo$2.03
On plan2-year (plus bonus months); periodic promos as low as ~$1.75/mo
Free trial7 days
Refund window30 days
Free tierNo
Ethics
Logging policyConsistent
Marketing honestyNo overclaiming

Independent audits

  • Deloitte Audit Romania· 2022 · First independent ISAE 3000 limited-assurance review of no-logs server configurations (server configs as of mid-2022)report ↗
  • Deloitte Audit Romania· 2024 · Second independent ISAE 3000 (Revised) limited-assurance review of VPN server network, no-logs server configurations, management systems, and token-based dedicated-IP system (published April 2024)report ↗
  • Deloitte Audit Romania· 2025 · Third ISAE 3000 (Revised) review covering VPN configuration, management systems, access/change/incident management, and dedicated-IP technologyreport ↗

PIA was founded in 2010 by Andrew Lee under London Trust Media and acquired by Kape Technologies on 18 Nov 2019 (reported ~$95M; some sources cite higher figures). Kape (sibling brands ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, ZenMate, Intego) was taken private by Teddy Sagi's Unikmind Holdings and delisted from the London AIM market on 31 May 2023. HQ operations are US-based (Denver, Colorado). Server count is marketed as "thousands" (some reviews cite ~35,000) across 91 countries/locations, but PIA does not publish a precise, audited server total, so the numeric servers field is left at 0 (unknown). Pricing reflects rotating promotions; the long-term effective rate hovers around $2/mo (Security.org cites $2.03/mo on the 2-year plan; Tom's Guide has seen ~$1.75/mo promos). PIA offers a 7-day free trial via its iOS/Android apps (one-time) plus a 30-day money-back guarantee; there is no perpetual free tier.

Sources

Last verified 2026-06-17. Point-in-time data, so always confirm on the provider's own site.

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