Best VPN for School Wi-Fi in 2025: Stream Netflix, Unblock BBC iPlayer, Bypass Censorship and More

Student life is complicated enough without the added headache of dealing with restrictive school Wi-Fi networks blocking access to the sites and services you want to use. If you’re accustomed to an unfettered internet connection, being blocked from the apps and websites you need to access — especially for research purposes — can make your life more difficult. Apps like Instagram aren’t just for entertainment; they can be a vital part of networking and interacting with fellow students.

With a virtual private network, all of the traffic you send through your school’s network to a VPN server is encrypted, so network administrators can’t tell whether you’re visiting Wikipedia, streaming Netflix during a late-night study session in the library to keep your morale up or organizing a group project with your friends over Snapchat. You’ll be able to keep up with what your friends overseas are streaming, too, thanks to the geo-unblocking capabilities most quality VPNs use. You won’t have to break into the piggy bank to sign up for a VPN, either. There are plenty of payment plans that make even the best VPNs budget-friendly. However, you should make sure before you sign up that you aren’t breaking your school’s code of conduct by accessing the school network using a VPN.

Our VPN experts at CNET have been studying the ins and outs of VPNs for years, testing dozens of different providers to bring you the best VPN for your needs, depending on whether you want the fastest VPN, the cheapest VPN, a highly private VPN or something in between. Accordingly, we’ve conducted thorough VPN evaluations, making sure they’re going to work on your Windows or MacOS laptops, as well as Android devices and iPhones. Most importantly, each VPN we’ve recommended comes with an obfuscation mode, ideal for bypassing firewalls on your school’s Wi-Fi network.

Surfshark is the best VPN for school Wi-Fi right now. It packs a ton of value into a budget-friendly package (as long as you choose the yearly plan) and allows for unlimited simultaneous connections, which is great for students with a lot of devices or those who want to share it with roommates and friends.

NordVPN is an excellent VPN for students that’s fast and offers unique collaboration features that may be helpful for the classroom. Plus, NordVPN’s proprietary NordWhisper protocol, obfuscated servers and Onion over VPN features give you multiple ways to bypass network blocks, so you can take advantage of its high-quality streaming capabilities.

ExpressVPN is a bit pricey, but it’s a user-friendly, top-notch VPN for any use case and is great for streaming.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t traipse around campuses testing how well the VPNs we’ve selected perform at circumventing firewalls and network detection. We’re no longer students, and we’d be awkwardly explaining ourselves to an unimpressed security guard pretty quickly. However, there’s another way. We’ve picked the best VPNs for school Wi-Fi based on the experiences we’ve had with VPN testing, especially with how well they perform obfuscation. Ideally, we’re looking for providers that offer proprietary VPN protocols with obfuscation, as well as OpenVPN. We also looked for manual VPN protocol selection, so you can try different options to get around basic firewall blocking.

But it’s not good enough that a VPN offers obfuscation. It also needs to be fast and unblock streaming sites so you can take a moment during a busy school schedule and unwind with a Netflix show without having your time wasted by buffering. We’re also concerned about value for money, so we’ve paid special attention to the cost of each provider and whether there are any additional features useful to students to justify a slightly high price.

IPVanish

IPVanish is a decent VPN for beginner VPN users and has budget-friendly introductory pricing. (Disclosure: IPVanish is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) But considering that the price for the yearly and two-year plans skyrocket after the initial term, I don’t recommend IPVanish over others on this list that offer a better product for similar or lower prices. IPVanish costs $13 per month, $48 for the first year (then $90 annually) or $72 for the first two years combined (then $90 annually). With IPVanish, you’ll be able to connect an unlimited number of devices at once to any one of its 2,400 servers in 108 countries. IPVanish was mostly competent in our streaming tests, unblocking content from streaming services like Netflix, Disney Plus and Hulu. However, its slow speeds caused issues during our testing while streaming certain content.

Read our IPVanish review.

Based on our testing and research, these are the most important factors for students to consider when choosing a VPN for school Wi-Fi:

Privacy

Privacy is perhaps the most important consideration when choosing a VPN. Especially when you’re on your school’s Wi-Fi network, you’ll want to make sure that your online activity is protected and hidden from network administrators or anyone who may be snooping on what you’re up to. It’s important to choose a VPN that offers industry-standard privacy protections such as AES 256-bit encryption, a kill switch and DNS leak protection. Students should also look for a VPN that offers obfuscation to disguise their VPN traffic as regular internet traffic.

Speed

Internet speed is crucial for students. A VPN can cut your internet download speeds by 50% or more, so if your school’s Wi-Fi is already slow, then you’ll need to make sure you have a fast VPN that will limit your speeds by as little as possible. Fast VPN speeds are essential for activities like streaming, gaming and video conferencing. If you need the fastest speeds possible, look for providers that offer WireGuard or an equivalent (like NordVPN’s NordLynx) as a VPN protocol, as this generally performs better than OpenVPN.

Cost

Being a student is expensive, so you’ll want a VPN that offers the most value within your budget. Good VPNs can range from about $40 to $100 a year, so you should be able to find a reliable option within your budget. You might be tempted by a multi-year plan with significant discounts, but we generally advise against them. Much can change about a VPN provider’s service within a year, and the best value for money option could easily shift to a competitor within that time, too. If you don’t find an affordable VPN subscription, you can use Proton VPN’s free plan — which is the only free VPN I enthusiastically recommend.

Usability

Most VPN apps are pretty user-friendly — but some may be a little more complicated to use than others, and some may work better than others for things like streaming or gaming. What’s most important is that the VPN you choose works well for you and has all the functionality you need to succeed at school.

Server network

A large server network will give you better opportunities to connect to a nearby server with a light load and optimize the speed and stability of your connection. Having access to a large network of VPN servers can also help you expand your streaming horizons by unblocking content from a wide variety of regions globally. Some VPNs have servers in up to 100 or more countries, but most decent VPNs have servers in at least 50 to 60 countries. Usually, VPN companies have a list of their server locations on their website, so you can check the list of servers before buying to make sure the VPN has servers in the countries you want.