Best VPNs for Hulu in 2025

1. NordVPN - Best for Hulu + Live TV

SecurityScore:

9.7 /10

View Plans Links to NordVPN

Product Specs

Server locations	126 countries
Average Speed Loss	6% download & 4% upload
Apps	Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Android TV, tvOS
Best Monthly Rate	$3.39/mo with a 2-year plan
Money-Back Guarantee	30 days full refund

View Plans Links to NordVPN

Speed

We know from past experience that just because a network has fast speeds, that doesn’t mean it can stream without buffering, so rather than relying on speed tests alone, we used the streaming speed test from Ookla’s Android speed test app.1 The app shows the maximum resolution a network can stream with its bitrate, and with our Wi-Fi network, it said we can stream in up to 4K (2160p) resolution.

When we connected to NordVPN, nothing much had changed. The maximum resolution was still 4K, although the load time (i.e., approximate time a video needs to preload) shot up from around 300 milliseconds to 3,000 (equivalent to three seconds), so still not bad.

Those results weren’t really surprising. We’ve known NordVPN for its reliability when connected to nearby and distant servers. So even though we connected from Asia (about 9,500 miles away), we still expected to see good speeds. NordVPN didn’t disappoint.

>> Also See: Comparing Top VPN Speeds

Price

NordVPN’s pricing was a little on the high side. We paid $12.99 to access NordVPN for a month — that’s the going rate if you pay month-to-month — but there were affordable options from the brand. For example, when our subscription ran out, NordVPN offered us a two-year deal with three extra months for free for $102.33. That came out to about $3.79 per month, so still pretty affordable.

>> See More: NordVPN Deals

User experience

As for NordVPN’s user experience, all we can say is that it’s like the Hulu of VPNs. Compared to Netflix, which offers only TV shows and movies, Hulu offers a wider selection of shows, movies, and live programming with Hulu + Live TV. But because of that, the Hulu app can be a little more intimidating to navigate.

Our experience was kind of like that with NordVPN. It wasn’t hard to use, but because it offers more features than average VPNs, we needed a little more time to get the hang of using it. And that’s as VPN experts who have tested NordVPN before. We think it’s because NordVPN is always evolving, which is certainly a good thing. It’s always adding more features, moving things around to make the app more user-friendly, and so on.

>> Learn More: What’s a VPN App, and What Does It Do?

Hulu is one of our favorite cord-cutting streaming services, and one reason we love it is because of its live sports and news programming available across the United States. But that’s not all; with our Hulu + Live TV subscription, we get to watch regional sports networks (RSNs) (kind of like with YouTube TV).

>> Related: The Best YouTube TV VPNs

Now, here’s the thing: We’re based in New York, where we have the Giants and the Jets, but we also love how the Chiefs are playing this season, so when our teams aren’t playing during primetime, we tune in to the Midwest stream to watch the Chiefs. How do we do that? By changing our PC’s location with NordVPN. There are a couple more things you’ll need to do, which we’ll explain after we go through our list, but nonetheless, we were able to access regional programming with NordVPN.

You can do the same to access pretty much any region in the U.S. NordVPN has servers in Los Angeles, Miami, Washington, D.C., and every other major hub, making it the best VPN to use if you have Hulu + Live TV . And it’s not just for the NFL; you can livestream any pro sports league that broadcasts nationally and regionally on ESPN+ by pairing Hulu + Live TV and NordVPN.

>> Check Out: The Best VPNs for ESPN+

2. Surfshark - Best for Smartphone Streaming

SecurityScore:

9.5 /10

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Product Specs

Server locations	100 countries
Average Speed Loss	8% download & 50% upload
Apps	Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Chrome, Firefox, Edge
Best Monthly Rate	$1.99/mo with a 2-year plan
Money-Back Guarantee	30 days full refund

View Plans Links to Surfshark

Speed

Surfshark is another speedy streaming VPN, particularly on smartphones. It’s one of the best Android VPNs. Our streaming speed while connected to the nearest Surfshark server maxed out at 4K, not any lower than our network’s actual streaming speed. Moreover, Surfshark gave us a much shorter load time than NordVPN, which needed three seconds to preload 4K videos so they don’t buffer. With Surfshark, that load time was down to 1,800 ms.

Surfshark’s secret? It uses a technology called Surfshark Nexus. Basically, all Surfshark servers are interconnected, so when you connect to a U.S. server, a piece of software finds the fastest route even if it means using another server as a waypoint for your traffic. Even we’re a little bit confused as to how it works exactly, but our speed tests show that Surfshark Nexus seems to be effective.

>> Read More: The Fastest VPNs Available

Price

Surfshark’s costs can either be high or low, depending on how long you’re willing to sign up for. If you’re going to pay month to month, each month of access will cost you at least $13.99. The price actually fluctuates. When we bought a subscription, it cost us $15.95.

If you’re willing to buy a multi-year subscription, you can get Surfshark for as low as $59.76 for two whole years of access. That’s about $2.49 per month on average, which is lower than NordVPN’s $3.79 best price. To prevent buyer’s remorse when buying a multi-year subscription, Surfshark has a 30-day risk-free trial period.

>> Related: The Best VPNs With Free Trials

User experience

Our user experience with Surfshark on mobile was so much better than it was with the other options we tested, including NordVPN. Surfshark’s mobile app is constantly improving; during the two-week period we tested Surfshark, the Android app received two performance upgrades. One enabled us to sign in using a QR code from our web dashboard. That wasn’t a huge upgrade, but minor improvements like that pile up over time, and Surfshark has been updating its apps at least once a month for years.

As a solid Android VPN and one of the best iPhone VPNs, Surfshark is a breeze to use on mobile devices. It actually has to do with WireGuard, Surfshark’s default VPN protocol.

For those who aren’t familiar with VPN terms, a VPN protocol is kind of like an instructions manual that a VPN follows to tunnel traffic from your device to a VPN server successfully. WireGuard is one of the top VPN protocols right now, especially for streaming, because it’s fast, lightweight, and doesn’t add on a lot of overhead data. With a good server network — which Surfshark has — and WireGuard, you’re more likely to get a streaming experience similar to streaming without a VPN.

In our experience, that’s exactly how streaming with Surfshark turned out. Even when we connected to a California server (the farthest Surfshark server from us when we were in Singapore), our network remained capable of 4K streaming while on mobile data. Plus, since Surfshark’s app is lightweight, our phones never had trouble running it in the background. It weighs in at 88 MB versus NordVPN’s app, which is nearly 150 MB in size.

>>See More: VPN Data Consumption and Cellular Data Usage

3. Proton VPN - Best for Streaming Hulu on Desktop

SecurityScore:

9.3 /10

View Plans Links to Proton VPN

Product Specs

Server locations	122 countries
Average Speed Loss	8% download & 4% upload
Apps	Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Chrome, Firefox, Android TV, tvOS, Firestick
Best Monthly Rate	$4.49/mo with a 2-year plan
Money-Back Guarantee	30 days prorated refund

View Plans Links to Proton VPN

Speed

Proton VPN delivers very fast speeds for streaming on Hulu. In our most recent test, it slowed down our download speeds by no more than eight percent – almost on par with NordVPN and Surfshark.

While streaming HD and 4K videos with Proton VPN, we didn’t notice any buffering. Videos also didn’t take more than five seconds to fully load.

Price

Proton VPN has two paid tiers: “VPN Plus” and “Proton Unlimited.” We recommend “VPN Plus” since it includes all core VPN features. With the longest plan, you pay $4.49 per month – not as cheap as Surfshark, but still pretty affordable.

All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, but the refund is prorated. This means Proton VPN will only refund you for the unused portion of your subscription.

User experience

Proton VPN has user-friendly apps for all platforms, but its desktop apps stand out the most. They’re intuitive and also feature a digital server map, which you can use to quickly connect to US or Japanese servers.

The Windows and macOS apps also include “Profiles,” a tool that lets you automate VPN connections. For example, you can set up a “Hulu” profile that auto-picks the fastest US server, and also opens Hulu’s site in your default browser.

In addition to Hulu, Proton VPN also works with over 90 other streaming platforms. The list includes popular sites, like Netflix, Disney+, Max, fuboTV, Crunchyroll, SyFy, YouTube TV, and Peacock.

Proton VPN’s streaming support is so good thanks to its high IP refresh rate. Also, the service has one of the largest VPN server networks in 2025: over 13,000+ servers in 117 countries.

4. ExpressVPN - Best for Smart TVs

SecurityScore:

9.1 /10

View Plans Links to ExpressVPN

Product Specs

Multihop	No
Obfuscated Servers	Yes
Kill Switch	Yes
Split Tunneling	Yes
Netflix	Yes
Torrenting	Yes

View Plans Links to ExpressVPN

Speed

We’d hate to start on a negative note, but ExpressVPN fumbled a bit when it came to streaming speed. It maxed out at 2K (1440p), but the load time was pretty good. ExpressVPN kept it below 1,000 ms, so if it were just a little bit faster, we’re almost certain it would have reached 4K.

That said, only a small portion of Hulu shows are in 4K (like “Catch-22” and “Great Expectations”), and we were still able to stream them with ExpressVPN, albeit with some minor buffering. Even with its slower streaming speed, ExpressVPN is still one of the best streaming VPNs.

Price

In this regard, ExpressVPN is the opposite of Surfshark. If you’re looking to buy a long-term VPN subscription, there are options more affordable than ExpressVPN. The one-year ExpressVPN plan costs $8.33 per month, nearly double that of NordVPN’s one-year subscription, which costs only $4.49 monthly.

In our opinion, ExpressVPN is more suited to be a short-term VPN — the kind that you pay as you go — because its $12.95 pricing for the monthly plan is on par with industry averages. It’s certainly cheaper than Surfshark’s $13.99 monthly plan.

>> Compare VPNs: ExpressVPN vs. Surfshark

User experience

ExpressVPN made up for its premium pricing by delivering a premium user experience. All its apps shared the same interface, so we didn’t really have any problem switching from a laptop to a smartphone, and vice versa.

Our favorite app feature was the shortcuts. We use VPNs for a number of reasons, one of which is to access streaming services. Right after connecting, the homepage showed us shortcuts to our favorite streaming sites, Hulu included, so we could start watching without exiting and switching to a different app.

The real reason why we picked ExpressVPN was Aircove, a first-of-its-kind VPN router made by and for ExpressVPN. We got the chance to test Aircove once before, when we looked at the best VPN routers, and we can say that it’s ahead of the curve compared to other VPN routers.

One reason for that is Aircove’s ability to switch servers easily without having to go through advanced VPN router setup. With other VPN routers, you’d have to go through a complex setup process anytime you want to change server locations. With Aircove, choosing a location from an easy-to-navigate web dashboard is all it requires. Better still, we could have up to five server locations at the ready and use them simultaneously for the different devices connected to the router.

Because of Aircove, ExpressVPN is the best VPN to use for streaming Hulu on smart TVs, consoles, and other devices that don’t have a native VPN app, like Apple TV. You can simply connect the device to the VPN router and then connect the router to a VPN server, and you’ll enjoy all the location-changing, website-unblocking capabilities of ExpressVPN.

>> Also See: The Best Apple TV VPNs

5. CyberGhost VPN - Most Affordable

SecurityScore:

8.9 /10

View Plans Links to CyberGhost VPN

Product Specs

Multihop	Yes
Obfuscated Servers	No
Kill Switch	Yes
Split Tunneling	Yes
Netflix	Yes
Torrenting	Yes

View Plans Links to CyberGhost VPN

Speed

Our next entry, CyberGhost, gave us maximum speeds capable of 4K streaming with zero buffering and a 3,000 ms load time, similar to our top pick, NordVPN.

We have to note that livestreaming sports and news broadcasts wasn’t always smooth. We noticed a bit of lag on our end, which was odd considering that Hulu recommends at least 8 Mbps for livestreams.2 Our CyberGhost speed was well above that (219 Mbps average download speed). It just goes to show that a fast download speed isn’t the only thing required to stream smoothly. You have to consider the bitrate, latency, and more, and if you’re still not getting good speeds, it might be time to troubleshoot your VPN.

>> Learn More: Common VPN Problems and How to Fix Them

Price

CyberGhost is the most affordable of the VPNs we tested for this roundup. It goes for as low as $2.37 per month normally, but we actually got it for $2.19 per month thanks to a special deal that added three months to our two-year subscription. Not that we’re planning to keep CyberGhost for two years — we canceled our VPN subscription right after testing — but another great thing about CyberGhost’s pricing model is you can get the lowest rate, test out the VPN, and cancel within 45 days for a full refund if you don’t like it. This money-back option worked for us.

User experience

The CyberGhost apps are simple to use. They aren’t feature rich and customizable, so all you need to do is to choose a server and hit the “connect” button. If you want a more customizable VPN — for example, one that you can adjust the encryption standard to make connections faster — check out our review of Private Internet Access, a sister company of CyberGhost. It’s as affordable as CyberGhost, but we preferred CyberGhost’s simplicity.

>> Related: Private Internet Access VPN Pricing

Despite being the most affordable VPN here, CyberGhost stood out because of one of its app’s features: Its server menu that shows a server’s load and latency. Remember how we said that there are factors beyond download speed that can affect streaming speeds? Latency and server load are two of those factors.

Basically, latency is similar to bitrate, as it’s a measure of how much time it takes data to get from point A (your device) to point B (the server). A higher latency can cause buffering. With CyberGhost’s app, we were able to see which servers in the U.S. have the lowest latency, which came in handy because we were in Singapore when we tested CyberGhost. There’s already a great distance between Singapore and the U.S. — another factor that affects speed — so it was important to choose a low-latency server.

>> Also See: The Best VPNs in Singapore

The second factor, server load, measures how much of the server’s bandwidth is in use at a given time. Most CyberGhost servers can handle up to 1 Gbps. However, that’s not exclusive to each user. The bandwidth capacity is shared among all users connected to the same server, so if a server’s load is high, it is more prone to bottlenecks.

Thanks to CyberGhost’s detailed server menu, we were able to choose the best servers every time we connected rather than just going in blind.

6. Hotspot Shield - Best Free Option

SecurityScore:

8.9 /10

View Plans Links to Hotspot Shield

Product Specs

Server locations	80+ countries
Average Speed Loss	3% download & 80% upload
Apps	Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Android TV, Firestick
Best Monthly Rate	$7.99/mo with a 1-year plan (free plan available)
Money-Back Guarantee	45 days full refund

View Plans Links to Hotspot Shield

Speed

Before all else, we’d like to mention that we tested Hotspot Shield’s free VPN instead of its premium VPN. Maintaining subscriptions to streaming services can get expensive, so we wanted to include a free option. And what better choice than one of the best free VPNs?

We chose Hotspot Shield because even though it’s free, it has no speed limits. Your VPN speed will depend on your network speed; if your network is fast, it is fast. And that proved true when we tested its streaming speed. Our network, which can normally stream 4K videos, was still able to stream in 2K — pretty good for a free VPN.

Price

Again, we tested the free version of Hotspot Shield, and we didn’t pay a penny to use its services. Instead, we paid by watching ads. Each ad we watched gave us 15 minutes of access, and there were no data restrictions during those 15 minutes. Moreover, we could stack up ads and save up minutes for future use. At one point, we had over four hours of VPN access saved up.

If you do want to pay for a subscription, Hotspot Shield plans cost a minimum of $7.99 per month if you sign up for one year. Price-wise, it’s similar to ExpressVPN.

User experience

We weren’t expecting much from Hotspot Shield because it’s a free VPN. But the app’s user experience is actually decent. We did have to endure random pop-up ads (in addition to the ones we watched to stock up on VPN minutes), but other than those, the app was user-friendly.

What can you expect from using a VPN to access Hulu? A pretty decent experience for a service you don’t have to pay for. One of the biggest downsides is the limited selection of servers. Hotspot Shield has servers in more than 80 locations, but free users gain access to only four of them: two in the United States, one in the United Kingdom, and one in Singapore. The two in the United States allow you to access Hulu.

>> Check Out: How to Get a U.K. IP Address

The problem with limited server availability is that you’re more likely to share the same server and IP address with other users who are also looking to unblock Hulu. As mentioned earlier in this review, Hulu is looking to block VPN IP addresses, especially those that are used by multiple accounts to access its services. As a result, you might find that some Hotspot Shield free servers are blocked. In our tests, Hotspot Shield connected us successfully only four out of five times. That’s still pretty good, but something to keep in mind.