Best GTA Online VPN 2023

With the best GTA Online VPN, you’ll find there are a number of improvements to the popular crime game. The criminals in the game are no doubt using a VPN when chatting about all the people they killed and cars they stole online, so it makes sense for you to use one too, right?

Of course, if you’re using a GTA Online VPN, it won’t be to cover the tracks of illegal activities, but actually, to protect you from them. Namely, DDoS attacks from players who are a little too much like Trevor Philips. Meanwhile, a gaming VPN can help your game to run more smoothly (especially if you go for one of the fastest VPN providers).  Here’s how they do it.

Why you need a GTA Online VPN

In detail, here’s an overview of exactly how a VPN can help to avoid certain problems while playing GTA Online:

• Privacy: if you come across a malicious player online, they can use your IP address to find out your real life location and possibly even your real name and other personal information. They can also harass you by launching DDoS attacks against your IP, creating loads of connectivity problems and making it impossible to play the game. With a VPN, you’re connecting through a proxy server, and so nobody will be able to see anything about your personal information – only the IP address of that server.
• Performance: it is common practice for internet service providers (ISPs) to slow down the connection speeds on an application or devices that are using a lot of bandwidth. If you have a VPN on, your ISP won’t be able to see what’s using a lot of bandwidth, and since it can’t slow down the connection of every single device, it won’t slow down anything. This may mean that your game has less lag and generally plays much better than it ever did before.

Of course, these are only the benefits related to GTA Online. Outside of the game, you’ll have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that huge corporations aren’t monitoring your every action on the internet, as well as the ability to access content not usually available in your region.

Which is the best GTA Online VPN?

Deciding that you want to use a VPN with Grand Theft Auto Online is one thing, but deciding which one is going to be best for you is quite another. To help make it a easier to make a decision, we have six recommendations for you.

These are the best GTA Online VPNs:

• ExpressVPN – best choice
• Ivacy VPN – cheapest option
• NordVPN – fastest choice
• Surfshark – best for multiple devices
• PureVPN – best for absolute privacy
• Private Internet Access – most servers

1. The best GTA Online VPN

ExpressVPN is the best GTA Online VPN and its pricing works out as $8.32 USD or £5.70 GBP per month.

ExpressVPN overview:

Pros:

• Uses the fantastic Lightway protocol
• Servers span over 90 countries

Cons:

• Costs a little more than others
• No free trial available

ExpressVPN is probably as big in the VPN world as Grand Theft Auto is in the gaming world – could there be a better pairing? Something that makes this provider a particularly appealing choice is its use of the Lightway protocol, which can offer extremely fast encryption. Of course if, for whatever reason, this protocol isn’t going to be best for you at any given time, it automatically chooses whichever protocol will offer the best performance. It can help make your experience in the game as smooth as a cruise around Los Santos in the Benefactor LM87.

You’ll probably have already noticed that the price tag for this provider is a little higher than the others. If you need a cheap VPN, then one of the others might be a better choice. However, if you want a comprehensive, fast, and privacy-conscious service, then you can’t do much better than ExpressVPN. Though it is unfortunately lacking in a free trial, you can always fall back on its 30-day money-back guarantee (which ensures you can get a refund any time during the first month).

We’d also be remiss if we didn’t mention its vast array of server locations. ExpressVPN has servers in 94 countries around the world, which is an impressive spread. Wherever you live, or wherever you may travel to, you shouldn’t have trouble finding a relatively nearby server – on the flipside of that, if you really want to throw off the scent of cyber-jerks, you’ll have so many countries to choose as a connection point.

2. The cheapest VPN for Grand Theft Auto Online

Ivacy VPN is the cheapest GTA Online VPN and its pricing works out as $1 USD or £0.80 GBP per month.

Ivacy VPN overview:

Pros:

• Wonderfully cost-effective
• Covers 100 countries

Cons:

• No free trial
• No kill switch for Apple devices

If you’re after something that you can more easily fit into your budget, then Ivacy VPN is the one to go for. You may have to pay for five years in one go, but hey, it’s still less than you pay for significantly smaller periods of time with other providers. Who knows, maybe that would even see you through to the GTA 6 release date? Nah. Only joking. We hear they’re saving that for the 500th anniversary of the invention of the car.

You’ll no doubt have seen that we listed ‘No kill switch for Apple devices’ on the cons list, and if you don’t know what a kill switch is, let us explain. Most VPNs use a kill switch to help provide a higher level of privacy. If the VPN goes down, even for a second, it severs your internet connection too so that your IP address won’t be exposed to the broader internet while the VPN is down. If you use an Apple device for GTA Online, this is a small chink in your privacy armour, so it’s important to be aware of that.

Still, all things considered, Ivacy VPN is a very cool service. Despite its lower price, it still manages to span over 100 countries, and its overall number of servers is pretty high too. Plus, with military-grade 256-bit encryption you can be sure that your data remains as private as the secrets of Area 69.

3. The fastest VPN for GTA Online

NordVPN is the fastest VPN for GTA Online and its pricing works out as $4.19 USD or £2.99 GBP per month.

NordVPN overview:

Pros:

• Offers a tremendously speed service
• Uses the fantastic NordLynx protocol

Cons:

• On the slightly more expensive end of the spectrum
• Doesn’t offer a free trial

Like ExpressVPN, NordVPN is a very well-known and respected provider that offers a fantastic service. Part of what makes it so appealing is the fact that it uses the NordLynx, a protocol that rivals Lightway and which allows Nord to provide a really speedy service. Though it is difficult to directly compare speeds on different protocols, when compared against the other VPNs on this list on OpenVPN, Nord is the one that came out on top.

Of course, this is another of those providers that does something really amazing, but also costs a little more money. We think that it’s well worth the price, but your decision is going to be based on your budget. Think of this: how many times have you lost a mission, or been randomly killed by another player you didn’t see coming, all because of lag? This is one of the VPNs in the best position to reduce lag, and wouldn’t the game be so much more fun without it?

While it may not cover as many countries as ExpressVPN, it does still have a larger selection of servers overall. It also lets you have six simultaneous connections, while ExpressVPN allows only five. There’s a lot in common between these two, and though we put NordVPN a little below it, that’s only by a hair’s breadth.

Find out more about this provider in our detailed NordVPN review.

4. The best GTA Online VPN for multiple devices

Surfshark is the best GTA Online VPN for multiple devices and its pricing works out as $2.30 USD or £1.87 GBP per month.

Surfshark overview:

Pros:

• Allows for unlimited simultaneous connections
• Offers a 7-day free trial

Cons:

• Smaller sever total than some others
• Covers fewer countries than some others

Do you ever play GTA Online with the people in your household? Each on your own devices, but all enjoying the game together? Well, if so, Surfshark is going to be your best option. Even if you had a household of ten people, you could all have the VPN on at the same time, with only a single plan. Of course, you could also use it on all of your devices that connect to the internet.

If unlimited simultaneous connection is its biggest strength, what’s its biggest weakness? Well, there’s not a lot that can be said against Surfshark, but it is notable that it has a smaller server count combined with a smaller range of countries. If you’re someone who wants or needs access to servers all over the world then one of the other VPNs might be more appealing for you.

Having said that, Surfshark is one of very few VPNs to offer a genuine free trial. While others require you to fall back on a 30-day money-back guarantee, which might cause the hassle with you having to go through the refund process, this provider lets you use the VPN for free for a whole week (and then has the money-back guarantee on top of that). If you’re still unsure about whether a VPN is worth it, then you should definitely take Surfshark for a spin via the trial.

5. The best GTA Online VPN for privacy

PureVPN is the most private GTA Online VPN and its pricing works out as $2.08 USD per month.

PureVPN overview:

Pros:

• Undergoes third-party privacy audits
• Up to ten simultaneous connections

Cons:

• No across-the-board router support
• No free trial

The more privacy conscious of our readers won’t only be worried about the DDoS attacks from nasty GTA Online players, but also the faceless corporations and villainous governments that are licking their lips, waiting to chow down on all of your personal information. If you’re worried that a VPN might be keeping tabs on you, just like your ISP, then PureVPN might be the best option for you, because it regularly undergoes third-party privacy audits in order to prove it isn’t storing your data and to find ways to improve its service.

This is a fantastic choice for anybody who plays GTA Online on their PC and wants a VPN to use on their gaming PC. However, it’s worth pointing out that it has some limitations if you prefer to have the VPN on your router so that all of your devices automatically connected through it – only the PPTP and OpenVPN protocols in PureVPN can be used through routers, so there will be more appropriate router VPN services for you to use.

Still, router-compatibility aside, PureVPN still has tons of neat features to talk about. It has a pretty impressive selection of servers (6,500+ in over 78 countries) and it lets you have ten simultaneous connections too (which, short of having no cap, is pretty much the biggest allowance you’ll get). And did we mention that this is one of the more affordable VPNs too? Because despite all of its fantastic features, this VPN costs a lot less than most of the others on this list.

6. The GTA Online VPN with most servers

Private Internet Access (PIA) is the GTA Online VPN with the most servers, and its pricing works out as $2.08 USD per month.

Private Internet Access overview:

Pros:

• Absolutely enormous server count
• One of the cheaper options

Cons:

• Marginally slower than other providers
• Does not offer a free trial

Private Internet Access (PIA) has the most servers… So what does that mean for your GTA Online experience? Well, if you were using one of the providers that has a smaller number of VPN servers, there would be a higher risk of you encountering something called server congestion. This happens when too many users are connecting via the same server and the result is that everything goes a bit more slowly for them. Of all the providers on this list, you are, by far, going to be at lowest risk of this with Private Internet Access.

To put things into perspective, this VPN has over 35,000 servers, which means that it not only has a lot more than every other VPN on this list, but more than all of them combined, which is wild. Ironically though, it does span fewer countries than a few of the other providers, but for playing GTA Online specifically, a higher overall total is probably more valuable than a long list of countries to connect through.

Unfortunately, Private Internet Access is marginally slower than some of the other big VPNs, but this may be off-set by the reduced risk of server congestion. Meanwhile, it’s another of the more affordable VPN services, and as with the others we’ve mentioned – considering all the benefits it has, it is very reasonably priced.

How to use a GTA Online VPN

If you’re playing on your PC, you just need to install your VPN, choose a server, and switch it on (the process will be a little bit different depending on the provider you choose). On the off-chance we’ve got any console gamers here, might we point you towards the guides on how to use a VPN on Xbox and how to use a VPN on PS4 or PS5 from our sister site, The Loadout.

How we picked the best GTA Online VPN

In order to put this list together, we carefully considered the strengths and weaknesses of a number of the most highly-regarded VPN services. We then compared that against the needs of GTA Online players and were able to pick these six VPNs out. While we do think that ExpressVPN is the best choice overall, we can also see that it might not be ideal for everybody, but we’re confident that you’ll be satisfied with at least one of the VPNs mentioned in this list.

For more GTA content, take a look at our guides on GTA 5 cheats and GTA RP which might help open your eyes to new worlds of fun. For more VPN content, read our guide on the best VPN services.