Mullvad vs IPVanish

Two companies, two legal demands, two very different outcomes. This is the rare comparison where both sides have been tested by something other than an auditor's questionnaire, and where the results point in opposite directions.

One was raided, the other was served

In 2023 Swedish police searched Mullvad's servers under warrant and left with nothing, because there was nothing to take. Registration asks for no email address and sets no password, the account is a random number, and payment can be made in cash through the post.

In 2016, under previous ownership, IPVanish received a Homeland Security summons, replied that it kept no usage information, then supplied a subscriber's name, email address, home IP address and the times they connected and disconnected. The affidavit is public. It has changed hands twice since, and Schellman Compliance examined the claim in February 2025, with the report behind a customer login.

The company answering today is genuinely not the company that answered then, and that deserves saying. It is also the reason Mullvad's architecture argument is stronger than a policy: a service that never holds the record cannot be persuaded to change its mind about producing it.

The device ceiling and the Linux gap

Mullvad allows five simultaneous devices and cannot raise it. IPVanish has no cap at all, and ships first-party apps for Apple TV, Android TV and Fire TV where Mullvad has nothing for a television. For a household this is the one axis on which IPVanish plainly wins.

Everywhere else Mullvad leads. Open-source clients against closed ones, servers running from memory against servers writing to disk, five euros a month at any term against a first-year rate that rises sharply afterwards. IPVanish has no first-party Linux app; Mullvad does.

Which should you choose?

Choose Mullvad unless you need more than five devices or an app on a television. Choose IPVanish if you do — and read the 2016 affidavit before you decide the audit has settled it.

If the five-device ceiling is the only obstacle, Windscribe removes it, asks for no email address either, and has no such episode on its record — which is the closest thing to Mullvad without the limit.