ExpressVPN vs Private Internet Access

Both of these belong to Kape Technologies. Neither marketing site leads with it, though ExpressVPN names its parent in its own privacy policy, unprompted, which is more than most services in this market manage. ExpressVPN scores 3 for privacy and Private Internet Access scores 4, and from there they diverge about as far as two products under one owner can.

Where ExpressVPN wins

It is the fastest entry in this directory: 247 Mbps against a 1,078 Mbps line, where Private Internet Access managed 145 Mbps. If bulk throughput is what decides it, the comparison ends here.

Its kill switch held under testing. Private Internet Access's leaks unencrypted traffic after a system reboot, which is why the feature is recorded as absent for PIA rather than present.

On jurisdiction, ExpressVPN operates through a British Virgin Islands entity under BVI law, outside both intelligence-sharing arrangements. Private Internet Access is a United States company and therefore inside Five Eyes, which is the objection most readers raise first.

Where Private Internet Access wins

It publishes numbers. Its quarterly transparency report records four subpoenas, seven other government and civil requests, and six foreign or informal requests, with logs produced in none of them. It also states it was subpoenaed for user activity logs in 2016 and 2017. No other entry in this directory publishes anything comparable, and it is a stronger form of evidence than a jurisdiction claim.

Private Internet Access scores 4 for value against ExpressVPN's 2, and the reason is renewal behaviour. PIA's three-year plan is $79 and renews at $79. ExpressVPN charges $83.72 covering twenty-eight months and then renews at $99.95 a year. PIA also allows unlimited simultaneous connections against ExpressVPN's eight, publishes open-source clients, and supports port forwarding where ExpressVPN does not.

ExpressVPN's most recent locatable audit is from October 2022 — nearly four years old — and its own audit index returns errors.

Which should you choose?

Choose Private Internet Access if published evidence persuades you more than jurisdiction does, and you can treat its kill switch as absent. Choose ExpressVPN if speed is what you are buying and you want a working kill switch.

If the shared owner is itself the problem, Mullvad and Windscribe both score 4 for privacy, and neither has a corporate parent.