The 3 Best VPNs for Call of Duty Warzone in 2024

Understanding VPN Performance

The fact of the matter is no matter which VPN you select, you’re going to see a decrease in your connection speeds. The extent of these slowdowns, though, is determined by several factors — your hardware, your software, your geographic location, your distance to your selected server — they all play a role in how fast your speeds are going to be. And, as a gamer, you know speed is everything.

So let’s take a second to discuss the different measures of VPN performance. All three of these work in conjunction with each other to determine how fast your connection will be, and, by extension, how enjoyable a gaming experience you’re going to have.

Upload speeds

This refers to how fast your device can send data to another device, usually during activities like video chats and live streaming. Microsoft suggests an upload speed of at least 4.5 Mbps, though 9 Mbps or more is ideal.1

Download speeds

This refers to how quickly you can receive data from other devices. This can come in the form of images, videos, text, sound — you know; all of the “stuff” out there, including all 170+ GB of Call of Duty if it’s your first time installing it. That said, the release of Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 brought the file size down to under 30 GB if you only download the game. File sizes notwithstanding, download speeds are crucial for online gaming. Most experts recommend about a 25 Mbps download speed for online gaming,2 but for downloading a game or DLC, the higher the better.

Ping

Ping, or latency, is the measure of how long it takes for a data packet to be transmitted from your device to a server and then back to your device again. It’s measured in milliseconds and is directly related to how much lag you’re going to experience. Professional gamers want to keep their ping below 10 to 20 ms, but you’re going to be just fine in the 20 to 50 ms range.3 Any more than that, though, and you’re going to start noticing some interruptions. If you ever feel like your crosshair is right on target, but the bullets are just behind, it’s probably due to ping.

You’re going to see some variance in your latency, depending on which server you’re sending data packets to, a.k.a. which server you’re pinging. Speed test tools like Speedtest by Ookla ping an ISP server closest to you, but since we’re talking about Call of Duty: Warzone VPNs here, I decided to get my ping readings from the game itself. You see, CoD Warzone has the option to display network telemetrics including the real-time in-game ping, which was really cool because I was able to monitor the VPNs’ actual gaming performance.

So now that you understand VPN performance in the gaming world, let’s take a look at some of the other criteria I considered to come up with this list.

What to Look for in a CoD: Warzone VPN

Alright, now that you have all the information you’ll need to get the most out of this list, let’s get to it!

Why Would You Play Warzone with a VPN?

You may have heard that VPNs slow down your connection or that they’re only really useful for keeping your data anonymous online. So why on earth would you want to use one while you’re gaming? I’ll give you three good reasons right here:

Reduce Your Ping: Believe it or not, using a VPN can actually help you increase your performance. If your ISP is throttling your connection, for instance, you might be noticing really slow load times and lots of lag. If you switch on your VPN, though, you can connect to a nearby server and get around the throttling issues.

Prevent DDoS Attacks: If you happen to make a tech-savvy player angry, they might hit you with a distributed denial-of-service attack. Without getting into the specifics of how these work — I don’t want to give anyone any ideas — this basically floods you with nonsense data, crashing your connection. Using a VPN to hide your actual IP address means that the VPN server is going to absorb the brunt of the attack, not you.

Get into Bot Lobbies: There’s a lot of technical jargon surrounding this, but the long and short of it is this — CoD uses an algorithm to pair players with similar skills up with each other. Good if you’re looking for competitive gameplay, bad if you’re trying to grind your way up through the ranks. By using a VPN, though, you can easily find players new to the game and improve your stats really quickly.

How to Use a VPN to Get Bot Lobbies in Call of Duty: Warzone

I’m just going to say it: A lot of CoD Warzone players who’ve asked me about VPNs are after bot lobbies. They want to improve their KD stats and rankings, but they prefer to do it the easy way. I can’t blame them; there are lots of highly-skilled Call of Duty players these days.

First, let’s talk about what a bot lobby is. A bot lobby is a game server for new players, because who would want to play a survival game where they’re immediately matched with a two-year veteran? Bot lobbies give newbies a chance to hone their skills while playing with similarly-skilled players in their area and AI bots, thus the name. You’re in the game, but in a less competitive environment, like goldfish in a plastic bag.

For obvious reasons, game devs want to keep experienced players out of bot lobbies, but you can force the system to put you into a bot lobby. It’s actually rather simple, although not always guaranteed.

The key is to change your PC location – or whichever device you’re using to play. There are regions where CoD Warzone isn’t that popular, and with not enough players to fill their normal lobbies, they’d often pool newbies and adept players together in matches. They might even put in a few AI bots.

>> Also See: How To Set Up a VPN on Xbox

Tips to Get Into Bot Lobbies

Again, there’s no guarantee you’ll get into a bot lobby just by connecting to a VPN, but here are a couple of tips to improve your chances. And remember, I’ve tested these myself.

• Location, location, location: Like in real estate, one of the main keys is location. You’ll have a very low chance of getting into a bot lobby if you connect to a location where CoD Warzone is popular, like here in the United States. Instead, connect to a server in Singapore, for example, where Garena Free Fire is the king of battle royale games and CoD Warzone isn’t played very much. Other good locations I’ve learned in my research are Egypt, South Africa, India, and Russia.
• Time it right: Another important factor is timing. Avoid playing during peak hours — between 7 p.m. and 1 a.m. — because that’s when servers are most competitive. Play in the early morning instead or during office hours. Fewer players usually mean easier lobbies. However, it’s not your local time that plays a vital role here. Rather, it’s the time in the location you’re connected to, which is actually perfect. The time difference between New York and Singapore is 12 hours (13 when DST is on), so peak playing time here is office hours there.

>> Learn More: Best VPNs in Singapore

NoLagVPN – Can You Get Bot Lobbies With It?

If you’ve been searching for a way to get into bot lobbies for a while, you might have heard of NoLagVPN (not to be confused with our list of  “no-log” VPNs). The NoLag software claims to be able to connect users to bot lobbies. It has “VPN” right in its name, but just to clarify, it isn’t like any of the VPNs we recommended above. It does tunnel your traffic — thus providing location-changing features — but it doesn’t offer encryption. It’s sort of like a proxy service. We explained all the differences between VPNs and proxies here, if you want to look it up.

Anyway, NoLag seems safe to use, and I’ve seen plenty of reports saying they were able to access bot lobbies using it. Just remember: NoLag is not a real VPN. It changes your location and nothing else, so there’s limited use for it outside gaming. Our top-recommended VPNs work well with Call of Duty: Warzone, while also providing privacy and anonymity for anything else that you do online.

Will I Get Banned for Using a VPN with CoD: Warzone?

You might have heard that a lot of game developers frown on VPN use and that some players have even been banned for using them. Not so with CoD. There’s nothing in Activison or Warzone’s terms of service that says you can’t use a VPN, so there’s no way you will get penalized for connecting through one.

Now, if you’re using a VPN to do things that violate the ToS, like cheating and hacking, you’re probably going to run into some issues. Just recently Activision banned about 14,000 accounts in their efforts to root out people taking unfair advantages over other players.4

Setting Up Your Call of Duty: Warzone VPN

Okay; we’ve established how using a VPN when playing CoD Warzone is beneficial and discussed one of its most common applications. Let’s talk about how to set up your shiny new VPN.

On a PC, setting up a VPN is almost as easy as equipping your loadout – well, almost. Here’s how to set up a Windows or macOS VPN.

1. Get a subscription and create an account.
2. Log-in to your online account dashboard.
3. Look for the downloads page.
4. Download the correct installer for your operating system; once done, run the installer.
5. Log-in with your VPN account credentials.
6. Choose a server location and hit connect.
7. Wait for the connection to stabilize, about 30 seconds or so.
8. Launch Call of Duty: Warzone and start playing.

Easy-peasy, right? Unfortunately, that’s just for PC builds. If you play on a gaming console, there’s more setting up to do. You can’t directly load a VPN onto a Playstation or Xbox. There are no VPN apps for consoles, so you’ll need to connect the entire console to a router or virtual router with a VPN network.

Fortunately, most modern Windows laptops can act as a virtual router as long as they have a mobile hotspot feature. Start by setting up the VPN with the steps outlined above. Once you’re done with that, here’s what you should do.

1. Go to your laptop’s settings.
2. Select Network & Internet.
3. Click Mobile Hotspot.
4. Make sure to create a unique SSID (Wi-Fi name) and password.
5. Hit the toggle button to turn on your mobile hotspot.

After that, just disconnect your console from your Wi-Fi and connect it to the mobile hotspot. If you want to make the connection faster, you could try plugging your laptop into your router via an Ethernet cable. Just make sure to set “Share my internet connection from” to Ethernet.

Another option, especially if you don’t have a Windows laptop that can offer a hotspot, is to use a router VPN. A router VPN is more likely to provide better speed and stability, plus you can connect your console to it using an Ethernet cable. You can set up a VPN router yourself, but it’s much easier to buy one that is already set up with a VPN connection. You can check my list of the best VPN routers, one of which I recommend specifically for gaming.

Laggy Connections? Let’s Fix It!

You have your VPN and you’re ready to dominate, but then you notice something’s off. You’re lagging. Don’t panic; that happens sometimes even with the best VPNs. That doesn’t mean you should live through it though. Let’s try to fix it! Have you tried turning it off and on again, but to no avail? If you have, here are other things you should try.

• Change servers: VPN companies have thousands of servers, and sometimes you just happen to connect to a bad one. That doesn’t mean they’re all bad apples, so the first thing you should try is to change servers. Take a speed test, connect to a different server, then take another speed test. If there’s no improvement, try again. You’ll find where all the good apples are eventually.
• Use a wired connection: Sometimes, it’s not that the VPN is not working, but that your network is not optimized for a VPN connection. Maybe it’s sending traffic through the wrong port or using a different DNS server -– it’s complicated, but the solution is not. If you’re connected via Wi-Fi, switch to a wired connection and see how it goes. Make sure to disconnect the VPN first and start with a fresh connection.
• Switch VPN protocols: You know how you have your strategy for winning matches? I try to loot first and avoid enemy encounters early in the game, and I find that I win more often when I use this strategy. VPNs have something like that, too, called a VPN protocol. It’s their unique way of deciding how to route traffic most efficiently. Some protocols are better-suited for gaming, so go to your VPN app’s settings and set it to either WireGuard or IKEv2, whichever is available.
• Close unnecessary background apps: Call of Duty: Warzone is a monster of a game; even my decent gaming rig needs boosting to run it. Keep in mind that the VPN app is also using some resources in the background. It doesn’t use much, but if you’re running it concurrently with CoD Warzone and other apps, that’s enough to cause even a good PC build to struggle. Close any unused apps, especially Chrome and other RAM-heavy programs.

Hopefully, that fixed your problem with lag and if it ever happens again, check back here. I also put together a detailed VPN troubleshooting guide. Bookmark and feel free to consult it whenever you’re having problems with your VPN.

» Learn about: The best VPN for Roblox

How We Test VPNs: Methodology

Before writing this review, we retested the best VPNs with Warzone, keeping in mind the features that players will most likely need and making sure our VPNs were up to snuff. Here’s what went into our decision-making process.

Speed

If you’re thinking about playing CoD: Warzone with a VPN, the first thing you need to consider is your speeds. We test each VPN for upload speeds, download speeds, and latency on a variety of devices over the course of a few weeks to determine exactly how each one performs. Some do better on particular devices, and some do better under certain circumstances. Generally speaking, you want latency between 20 and 50 ms and your download and upload speeds are as high as they can be.

Servers

The number and geographic distribution of a VPN’s server network play a major role in how well they’ll work for gamers. The closer you are to the physical location of a VPN server, the lower your latency will be, and the more advanced the server network, the faster your potential connection speeds will be.

Additional Features

Most high-quality VPNs are pretty solid on the basics, so we looked for providers that set themselves apart from the competition by providing bonus features that would be helpful for gamers. Surfshark’s NoBorders mode is a great example of that.

Price

Gamers aren’t made of money, so we made sure to include VPNs with prices that are affordable. Most of the VPNs on our list cost around $10 to $15 per month, or you can sign up for a longer term that brings that price down into the $3 to $4 per month range. Additionally, the VPNs we selected support multiple devices so that parents and other family members can share the subscription.