A VPN that fails to meet Norton’s standards

One thing I need to make clear right from the start: this is a review of Norton VPN (formerly Norton Secure VPN, and briefly Norton Ultra VPN) as a standalone app, not of the VPN feature in the Norton 360 package. They’re similar, but Norton VPN has a few more features, including the ability to choose cities as server locations in countries with more than one option.

I’ll state my opinion up front. Norton VPN isn’t a bad service, but it’s not good enough to get ahead of its direct competitors. ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN and NordVPN are all either faster, more feature-rich, more secure, more affordable or some combination of the four. There’s no reason to go with Norton as your VPN unless you’re getting it as part of another Norton 360 bundle.

For this review, I ran rigorous tests that highlighted Norton VPN’s strengths (well-designed user interfaces, a verified privacy policy) along with its weaknesses (holes in its security, renewals that double the price, weak customer support). Norton’s history of focusing on Windows means that app is by far the most complete; if you’re on any other platform, expect to miss out on the best VPN protocols and the complete feature set.

Editors’ note: We’re in the process of rebooting all of our VPN reviews from scratch. Once we do a fresh pass on the top services, we’ll be updating each review with a rating and additional comparative information.

Gen Digital

A VPN that doesn’t quite live up to the Norton legacy.

Pros

• Apps are easy to use
• IP rotation and double-hop connections
• Verified privacy policy

Cons

• Exposes IP address while switching servers
• Poor customer support
• Not all servers unblock Netflix

$3 at Norton VPN

Table of contents

Findings at a glance

Use this table as a quick reference for my test results, investigations and thoughts about Norton VPN. For more details, jump to the relevant section using the table of contents above.

Installing, configuring and using Norton VPN

Here, I’ll do my best to convey how it feels to use Norton VPN on various platforms. Its apps for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and browsers are all similar, but there are distinctions in both design and features.

Windows

Once you download the Norton VPN app from its website or the Microsoft Store, an installation wizard takes over and makes the rest of the process easy. You’ll have to click to grant a few permissions and skip through a tutorial, but after that, you’re free to move about the interface.

Norton VPN’s Windows UI was a pleasant surprise. There’s no wasted detail on the front page. Click the large yellow button to connect to the VPN, or select the server name to go to the location list, which is alphabetized. Clicking the very first entry in the list connects you to the fastest location. IP rotator servers and double VPN routes are grouped under tabs below that. There’s no clutter and no aggressive popups, and connections happen quickly.

You’ll find four tabs on the left-hand side of the Window. The top one manages the VPN. Then there’s a store for other Norton products (IMO the only real misstep), a set of help pages and the controls for the VPN’s settings and features. This last is subdivided into a row of easily understandable subtabs. I’m impressed by how seamlessly the design works in explanations of what each setting does — it makes the whole thing that much more accessible.

Mac

Downloading Norton VPN for Mac is a quick and painless process, with one slight difference from Windows: you’ll have to mess around a bit in System Preferences to give Norton the permissions it needs. Fortunately, the setup wizard guides you through the steps with text and animations.

The actual interface is just as free of clutter as the Windows app — more so in some cases, as there’s no shilling of the rest of the Norton family. The downside is that there’s also no help center access from the main window; you have to go to Settings -> Troubleshooting to find the link. There also aren’t links to specific help articles like the Windows app includes.

Android

One word of warning about Norton VPN’s mobile apps: you need an internet connection for the initial login and setup. It doesn’t appear to be opening a website, but if you don’t have web access, you’ll get stuck in an endless loading loop.

The front pages of Norton VPN’s desktop apps don’t have many design elements, so the same general schematic is easy to compress onto mobile. The Android client has a status indicator, a large button to start your connection, tabs along the bottom and a gear icon for settings in the top-right. It’s all intuitive and responsive.

If I were to change anything, though, I’d take some of the options from the upper-right settings menu and swap them with the bottom tabs for notifications and accounts settings. VPN preferences should be accessible in one click, especially protocols. Frankly, the messages you get from this app aren’t important enough to merit such pride of place.

iOS

Norton VPN’s apps for iPhone and iPad are almost identical to its Android app. The only real difference is that the iOS client is missing some features, most notably split tunneling; also, the kill switch is only available on the Mimic protocol, about which there’s limited information. Other than that, it feels good to use. While it’s not great that Apple users lose out on the full feature set, I can’t deny it alleviates the problem of the VPN preferences menu feeling overstuffed.

Browser extensions

Norton VPN has browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Edge. The only reason to install any of these is to access the ad blocker, which doesn’t come with either of the desktop apps. Other than that, it’s an underwhelming extension. I recommend skipping it and going with a dedicated ad blocker instead — you’ll get more customization features that way.

Norton VPN speed test

Using speedtest.net, I tested Norton VPN to see how much it slowed down my browsing speeds. I then calculated the results as percentages. While different networks give you different starting speeds, the same server location tends to slow down all those networks at about the same rate. You can use this table to estimate how much speed you can expect while Norton VPN is running.

As a reference, you generally need download speed for loading web pages and videos, upload speed for sending large amounts of data and latency for real-time communication. Latency always increases sharply over longer distances, but a good VPN can still keep the jumps under control. Let’s see how Norton VPN did.

Before I interpret the results, I should mention that the algorithm Norton VPN uses to pick the fastest server doesn’t seem to be reliable. Every time I clicked it, it gave me the server in Texas, thousands of miles from my real location in Portland, Oregon. Moreover, the Portland server was obviously faster. This happened repeatedly over multiple days of testing.

To the point: this table doesn’t look good for Norton VPN. Download speeds dropped an average of 21.1 percent, the worst showing of any VPN I’ve tested so far. What’s worse, the data clearly trend toward worse speeds at greater distances. Although it’s true that distance impacts download speed as well as latency, it’s also true that a well-implemented modern server OS should be able to render that effect minimal.

Upload speed looks better, with an average drop of under 10 percent — mainly dragged down by the Nigeria server, which cut speeds sharply across every test. Latency is also not awful. Controlling for the expected variance due to distance, Norton VPN beat out both Surfshark and NordVPN in average worldwide ping, which suggests that gaming may be its comfort zone.

Norton VPN security test

A VPN’s primary job is to change your IP address. While doing this, it must also encrypt your communications with its servers so nobody can follow your connection home — this is what separates a VPN from a simple proxy. In this section, I’ll run three checks to see whether Norton VPN can guarantee anonymous browsing.

VPN protocols

VPNs use protocols to establish stable connections between your devices and their servers. Most providers pick from the same pool of field-tested options, but you do see a surprise every now and then, like Norton VPN’s Mimic.

Norton VPN’s protocol selection follows its general trend of serving very different experiences to users on different platforms. Windows and Android users get WireGuard, OpenVPN and Mimic, while macOS and iOS users only get Mimic and IKEv2. Here’s a rundown of each.

• WireGuard is the most modern open-source VPN protocol currently available. It’s almost always the fastest and uses a secure stream cipher for cryptography. The one downside is that it saves your real IP address to keep the connection open. Norton VPN deals with this by assigning temporary dynamic IP addresses during the authentication process.

• OpenVPN is an open source protocol that’s been in use for ages. Its source code is slightly clunky after years of volunteers poking it for weaknesses, but that also makes it the most trustworthy option. It’s fast on average, though usually slower than WireGuard or IKEv2.

• IKEv2 is a fast protocol that’s good at reconnecting mobile devices as they move between networks. Norton VPN uses it in conjunction with IPSec encryption. If you’re on an Apple device, it’s your only option other than Mimic.

• Mimic is an obfuscation protocol, which makes your VPN connection look like regular HTTPS traffic. This can get around networks that block all VPN traffic regardless of content. Mimic is based on TLS 1.3, and uses the same standard encryption algorithms as the other protocols.

Normally, I advise letting your VPN choose what protocol is best. Norton VPN is different. There simply isn’t enough information about Mimic for me to trust it, and you shouldn’t let the VPN switch you to it without your knowledge. All the others are fine, though.

Leak test

Testing a VPN for leaks is easy: just check your IP address before and after connecting, and see if it changes. I used IPleak.net to run that test on several Norton VPN servers. I first observed that Norton VPN prevents IPv6 leaks by blocking IPv6 altogether. On every run, the IPv6 test failed to load, no matter which server location I chose. This is an effective way to make leaks impossible, since almost none of the internet is IPv6-only yet.

My second conclusion was that Norton VPN’s servers don’t leak through DNS or WebRTC while your connection remains stable. However, every time I changed from one location to another, my real IP address was visible on the test screen for several seconds. Enabling the kill switch solved this problem, but the kill switch is not active by default, so make sure you turn it on in the settings.

There is one other serious problem with this: on the iOS app, the kill switch cannot be used except with the Mimic protocol. This forces users to choose between leaving a hole in their security or trusting it to a protocol with limited transparency. Until this changes, I can’t recommend installing Norton VPN on iOS at all.

I tested the rotating IP server in the United States to see if it had the same problem, and thankfully didn’t notice it. A Norton representative also confirmed that all servers have their own DNS resolvers that avoid public servers, cutting off a big source of leaks. Still, I’d recommend keeping the kill switch engaged. As long as you remember this, Norton VPN is secure.

Encryption test

Finally, I ran a test with WireShark to see if Norton VPN’s protocols managed to encrypt my traffic. Since I’ve been uncertain about Mimic, I used it for the encryption test. I found that Mimic does in fact encrypt data packets, even on an unsecured HTTP connection. WireShark also confirmed to me that Mimic is using TLS for key exchange and encryption.

How much does Norton VPN cost?

Norton VPN subscriptions are only available for one year at a time — there’s no monthly option. There are three different subscription tiers, summarized in the table below. “Number of devices” refers to how many devices you can have installed on a single account, whether or not any of them are connected to the VPN.

The Standard subscription is a reasonable price for what you get, but the superior Proton VPN is barely more expensive and Surfshark is actually cheaper. In other words, Norton VPN is a good price, but not great value — especially when you factor in the renewal prices, all of which force you to pay double or more what you paid the first time. If you’d like to decide for yourself, all the plans do come with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Norton VPN side apps and bundles

Norton is better known as an antivirus company than a VPN provider, so naturally Norton VPN is packaged with the rest of the Norton 360 family. Be warned — unless you turn the option off in the Settings -> Privacy tab, Norton will collect information on your app usage and use it to target you with ads for its other products.

Norton 360 is a massive product line encompassing dozens of individual subscriptions. To keep this section from bloating, I’ll focus on the software available as part of an upgraded Norton VPN subscription, then end by listing the Norton 360 plans that include Norton VPN.

Features on Norton VPN Plus

A Norton VPN Plus subscription adds several features from Norton’s antivirus suite, but isn’t a complete replacement for Norton or any other dedicated antivirus software. Plus users get most of the antivirus features that work in real time, including a smart firewall, anti-ransomware backups, a sandbox for quarantining suspicious programs and a malicious script blocker.

VPN subscribers do not get access to the quicker Smart Scan option, instead getting a different scan feature that checks for online threats (note that the FAQ page about this erroneously says Norton VPN includes Smart Scan). VPN users also miss out on the LiveUpdate feature that installs security patches autonomously, plus the automated hard drive cleaner.

Features on Norton VPN Ultimate

In addition to raising the device limit to 10, Norton VPN Ultimate adds two features on top of Plus: parental controls and Privacy Monitor. The latter is only available in the US and Canada.

Parental control is both a time-based site blocker and a monitoring app. It can not only track a child’s internet activity, but also their physical location, giving you alerts if they leave set boundaries during a certain time (say school property during a weekday). Privacy Monitor scans for your information on data brokerage sites so you can send deletion requests, similar to Surfshark Incogni.

Norton 360 plans that include Norton VPN

Instead of subscribing to Norton VPN directly, you can also pick a Norton 360 plan that includes VPN service. Norton 360 Standard and Norton 360 For Gamers each let you install Norton VPN on three devices. Norton 360 Deluxe raises that number to five, while Norton 360 with Lifelock Select and Norton 360 with Lifelock Advantage grant you 10 total VPN installs. Norton 360 with Lifelock Ultimate Plus lets you install Norton VPN on an unlimited number of devices.

Close-reading Norton VPN’s privacy policy

To assess Norton VPN’s privacy, we need to look at two different privacy policies. Like I said in the introduction, there are technically two products called Norton VPN — the standalone service I’ve been reviewing and the VPN features of the Norton 360 bundle. I’ve been focused on the independent Norton VPN so far, but since the Norton 360 VPN add-on is a privacy risk, I want to mention it here.

Norton lists the privacy policies for each of its products of its website. The VPN feature of Norton 360 is governed by the top two policies, Norton Security Products (desktop) and Norton 360 Mobile Apps. The standalone Norton VPN has its own policy further down the page.

The Norton 360 policy is a privacy nightmare. Both the desktop and mobile apps claim the right to save your IP address, device fingerprints and web activity for up to 36 months, and there’s no exception for the VPN feature. I strongly advise against using Norton 360’s bundled VPN for any activity you don’t want Norton seeing.

Fortunately, Norton holds the standalone VPN to a much more acceptable set of rules. It isn’t permitted to collect IP addresses, browsing history or DNS requests, nor can it share any of the data it does collect with partners. The partners note is important because one of Norton’s sibling companies, Avast, is known to have to corporations for ad targeting. A Norton representative stated that Avast is no longer involved in harvesting or selling user data. More importantly, he said that no data from VPN products is shared between Gen Digital brands.

Independent privacy audits

A recent audit by penetration testing firm VerSprite provides reason to be hopeful about Norton VPN’s privacy. According to a report published in August 2024, which you can download from this page, VerSprite found that Norton VPN posed an overall “low” privacy risk, judged on a scale of low, medium, high and critical risks.

During their audit, VerSprite informed Norton that certain conditions could make VPN users identifiable. In a second round of tests, Norton appears to have fixed those vulnerabilities. That’s certainly reassuring, but I wish the report — which only runs three pages in all — was more specific about what the problem actually was. Regardless, the VerSprite audit is a good sign that Norton VPN is taking privacy more seriously than Norton as a whole.

Can Norton VPN change your virtual location?

If a VPN can change your virtual location, it can not only throw ISPs and other interlopers off your real identity, but also change what you see on the internet — especially on streaming sites, where connecting through a different country can unlock new shows. However, Netflix and its brethren block VPN traffic for copyright reasons, so it’s never a guarantee that you’ll get in.

I tested Norton VPN’s ability to unblock Netflix on five different locations, connecting three times on three different servers in each place. I set the app to automatically choose the protocol. In the table below, you’ll see how many tests each location passed, and whether Netflix showed new content each time. If I get into Netflix but the library doesn’t change, that indicates the server might be leaky.

I had no problems in four out of five of the locations I tested, but Netflix utterly defeated the Iceland servers. No matter how many times I disconnected and reconnected to get a new IP address, Netflix recognized a VPN server and blocked me. This happened even when I switched to the Mimic protocol.

That indicates that Netflix has blocklisted most or all of Norton VPN’s servers in Iceland, and the company hasn’t caught up. It’s another troubling indication that Norton isn’t committing the level of attention that its server network requires.

Investigating Norton VPN’s server network

Speaking of the server network, now’s the time to get deeper into it. The relative scarcity of different IP addresses on Norton VPN, along with the download speed drops over long distances, suggest to me that Norton might have relegated maintaining VPN data centers to an afterthought. So, let’s see what its worldwide server selection looks like.

All of Norton VPN’s server locations are physical, with no virtual locations. This makes its network more reliable — virtual server locations can deliver unexpected speed swings. However, it does limit the number of locations Norton is capable of offering.

The selection is reasonably good, with many locations in often-underserved Africa and South America, and many options in marquee regions like the US and Europe. However, it’s a pretty small network for what Norton is charging. Also, as we saw with the Iceland location getting blocked by Netflix, having a country on the menu doesn’t necessarily mean it will do the job.

Extra features of Norton VPN

Norton VPN added a ton of features in the first several months of 2025. Most of these mainly brought it up to par with other VPNs, like city-level region selection or support for smart TVs. However, there are one or two you won’t find in many other places, like the IP rotator — to my knowledge, nobody else has that except Surfshark. Here are the most important extras to know about.

Ad blocker

Norton VPN’s ad blocker can be used on its browser extension. Its mobile apps can block the trackers embedded in ads, but not the ads themselves. There’s not a lot of customization potential; you can turn it on and off, and that’s mainly it. The one option you have on the extension is to turn “acceptable ads” back on. This can help you get into sites that normally block users with adblock on, or use sites where you want to see ads to help them monetize.

Double VPN and IP rotator

Norton introduced these two features in 2025 as “enhanced anonymity” upgrades. Double VPN runs your VPN through two server locations instead of one, so you’re still safe if one server breaks down. You can choose from eight pre-determined multi-hop paths with endpoints in the USA, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Germany and Taiwan.

IP rotation servers change your IP address frequently while you’re connected, which makes you harder to track. Unlike Surfshark, which lets you turn this on everywhere, Norton VPN limits you to six IP rotator locations: the USA, the UK, Canada, Japan, Germany and Australia.

Convenience features

The next three features were also added in the last eight months. The server location menu now puts your last five locations at the top for easy retrieval. While connected to a server, you can pause the VPN for 15, 30 or 60 minutes, after which it turns back on. Finally, the mobile apps have added a home screen widget so you can operate the VPN without opening the app.

Kill switch

A VPN kill switch cuts off your internet access if you lose your VPN connection, so any sensitive information isn’t broadcast unprotected. Norton VPN’s kill switch is vital, since it appears to briefly drop encryption while switching server locations. Unfortunately, it’s not available on iOS.

Split tunneling

The Windows and Android apps for Norton VPN allow split tunneling, in which only certain apps go through the VPN while others connect directly. Norton uses app-based split tunneling, but if you want to protect or remove protection from specific URLs, you can use two different web browsers.

Wi-Fi security

This feature, which appears on NortonVPN’s mobile apps only, activates whenever you connect to a Wi-Fi network. Norton VPN scans that network for common attacks launched over Wi-Fi, like DNS poisoning and SSL stripping, and sends you an alert if it detects any.

P2P optimization

Norton VPN has certain servers in its network configured for torrenting. You can’t use it for torrenting outside those locations — if you try, the VPN will disconnect. To connect to a P2P server, just select “P2P-optimized region” from the server menu. You can’t choose a torrenting server in a specific region; the app just selects the fastest.

Norton VPN customer support options

Following the broad trend of Norton VPN, the Windows app gets most of the love, having much more in-app support than any other platform. Mac users get a troubleshooting tab in the settings menu, with three options: go to the online help center, send a bug report or go to the community forum. iOS and Android just have a “help and support” button on the accounts page that sends you straight to the website.

On Windows, there’s a separate help and support tab above the settings tab, which gives you direct links to some of the most important pages on the Norton website. It’s also got links to the forum and help center. Then there’s the same troubleshooting tab as the Mac app, but with more options. Windows users can reset the app to default, record a problem to get more specific help, send debug logs and run an automated “Repair Norton” process.

If you got to the website through a desktop app, it’s surprisingly difficult to get to the general support page for Norton VPN — Windows links to a splintered set of FAQ pages, while Mac sends you to a Mac-specific page for the entire Norton Family. I recommend just going to support.norton.com in your browser, then clicking the Norton VPN button. At least the links in both mobile apps take you straight there.

Once you have gotten to the Norton VPN support page, you won’t find much of use. Help articles are limited and leave some big holes. For example, all connectivity problems are limited to a page called “Fix problem accessing the internet when connected to Norton VPN.” The only advice for Windows, Mac and Android is to choose a different VPN protocol, and there’s nothing at all for iOS.

Even worse, whenever you use the search bar to look anything up, you’re forced to watch an AI answer type itself out in real time, so links to the actual help pages are constantly jumping around as you try to click on them. It’s this feature that pushes Norton’s help pages from negligent to hostile.

Live support experience

There are a few other ways to get support from Norton VPN. You can check in on the community forum, chat live with an agent or call their phone line. The forums are reasonably active for Windows, but pretty dead for all other platforms.

I used live chat to ask about a problem with installing the iOS app. I managed to reach a human pretty quickly, but there were several long pauses during our conversation. Eventually, they escalated my case to a higher support team.

I assumed that this team would send me an email, per standard practice. Instead, they repeatedly tried to reach me by phone. I was not warned that they would do this, and each time, the call was flagged as spam. By the time I realized Norton was calling me, I’d already solved the problem myself. Be aware of this if you plan to contact Norton with a difficult issue.

Norton VPN background check

The Norton software brand has existed in some form or another since the Norton Utilities package was developed for DOS in 1982. The brand was acquired in 1990 by Symantec, which had published its own first antivirus program the year before. Symantec began releasing Norton Antivirus in 1991, and continued distributing it until its merger with Avast in 2022. Since then, the combined company has been called Gen Digital.

Compared to that long history, Norton VPN has only been around for a blip. It launched in 2019 as part of Symantec’s bid to expand the Norton Antivirus line into a suite that could defend against more types of threats. As such, while Norton and Symantec have been involved in their share of controversies over the years, very few of them happened during Norton VPN’s lifetime.

Despite Norton’s long and checkered history, checking the background of its VPN is pretty simple: nothing has gone seriously wrong yet. This VPN has problems, but they’re mainly out in the open, stemming from it being a relative afterthought from a company more focused on other types of security.

Final verdict

For me to recommend a VPN, it has to stand out in a crowded field. After a week of working with Norton VPN, I have to conclude that the only way it distinguishes itself is the Norton name. For everything else it does, a competitor does it better. Surfshark scoops it on IP rotation and multihop, ExpressVPN has better protocols, NordVPN is faster and Proton VPN’s ad blocker works in more places.

One thing I will say in Norton VPN’s favor is that it’s working to rectify all this. In the last year, it’s added a lot of features. The problem is that most of those are options I’d have expected it to have already, such as city-level region selection and a kill switch on Mac. It’s catching up, not innovating.

It’s also nice that you can use the bundles to roll more Norton products into one subscription. However, since Norton is much more experienced at developing other sorts of security software, I’d advise going the Norton 360 route if you’re interested in those other features and treating the VPN as an add-on. Norton VPN is a side dish, not an entree.