Mozilla VPN is a device-wide virtual private network sold by the company behind Firefox, and it runs on servers operated by Mullvad, the Swedish privacy provider. You pay Mozilla, you install a Mozilla-branded app, and the encrypted tunnel that carries your data is Mullvad's network underneath, governed by Mullvad's no-logging policy. Our verdict after testing: it is a genuinely private, genuinely simple service that costs $4.99 a month on the annual plan, and it is worth buying only if you value that privacy-first pedigree more than features.
That caveat matters, because the VPN market in 2026 is crowded with services that do more for less. Mozilla VPN gives you one protocol, a location list, a connect button and very little else. There is no server map, no protocol menu, no streaming-optimised list, no router support. For a lot of people that restraint is the appeal. For anyone who wants a VPN to unblock a foreign Netflix library reliably, or to cover a whole household through a router, it will feel thin.
This review covers what the service costs, what it includes, what it leaves out, how it handled our speed and streaming checks, what its privacy policy and independent audit actually say, and how it compares with the rivals we would consider instead. Mozilla has been building internet software since 1998, and the brand equity is doing a lot of work here. The question is whether the product earns it.
Pros
- Runs on Mullvad's audited network, with a clear no-network-activity-logging position
- Independently audited by Cure53 across all five desktop and mobile apps
- Genuinely simple: sign in, pick a location, connect, and nothing else to configure
- WireGuard only, which keeps the security story short and modern
Cons
- $4.99 a month is not cheap once rivals discount to around $3 or less
- No auto-connect or launch-on-start, so the VPN stays off after a reboot
- Only 5 devices, and the cap counts registered devices, not active connections
- No split tunnelling on iOS, no router support, no live chat, card payment only
We tested Mozilla VPN across Windows 11, macOS, Android and iOS, running throughput and latency checks with Ookla Speedtest against an unprotected baseline on the same connection, then repeating each run on a nearby server and a long-distance one. Alongside the speed work we checked kill switch behaviour on each platform, streaming access, the signup and refund flow, and the support channels. Every figure below comes from that testing or from Mozilla's own documentation, and we say which is which.
Verdict: who Mozilla VPN is right for
Three reader profiles kept coming to mind while we tested. The first is the laptop user who works from cafes, libraries and hotel lobbies and wants encrypted traffic on public Wi-Fi without learning a new piece of software. You sign in, pick the nearest city and press the toggle, and the whole interaction is over in about the time it takes for a coffee order to land. Nothing about the app invites you to tinker, which is exactly the point for this reader.
The second is the Firefox-first reader. If you already run Mozilla's browser, the Firefox extension gives you something no rival offers in quite the same shape: per-site VPN rules applied from inside the browser, so one banking tab or one news site rides the tunnel while everything else goes direct. That is a genuinely different way to use a VPN, and it only makes sense if Firefox is where you spend your day.
The third is the reader who already trusts Mozilla with other parts of their internet life, whether that is the browser, a Mozilla account or Relay email aliases, and would rather extend that relationship than hand their traffic to a marketing-heavy brand they have never heard of. For that reader, the ownership structure and the published transparency reporting are part of what they are buying rather than a footnote to it. What the three profiles share is that none of them are shopping for features. They want a short, documented, unexciting tunnel from a company whose incentives they can look up.
Mozilla VPN at a glance: specs and plans
The short version of the spec sheet: WireGuard only, a kill switch, multi-hop routing, ad and tracker blocking, DNS controls, split tunnelling on some platforms, unlimited bandwidth, and apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. There is also a Firefox extension that applies VPN rules to individual sites.
Pricing is $9.99 a month on the rolling plan, or $4.99 a month when you pay $59.88 for a year up front, plus tax. There is no free tier, no two-year term and no seasonal discount, so the annual commitment is the whole of the pricing story.
One important limitation before you get your card out. The service is only sold in 17 countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US. Buying is blocked outside that list even though the app connects to servers in far more places, which trips up travellers and expats at checkout.
Two coverage gaps to check before you subscribe. Split tunnelling is not available on iOS, so iPhone users cannot exclude individual apps from the tunnel. And the 17-country purchase list is a hard gate: if your billing country is not on it, you cannot buy the service at all.
How much does Mozilla VPN cost?
Plans, billing terms, and the free trial
There are two ways to pay and no third option. Month to month costs $9.99. The annual plan brings that down to $4.99 a month, charged as $59.88 once a year plus tax. There is no two-year term, no lifetime deal and no seasonal sale, so the annual plan is the only lever you have on price.
There is no free trial in the usual sense. What you get instead is a 30-day money-back guarantee for first-time customers, which is long enough to run the service through a full month of real use before deciding. That is more generous than Mullvad's 14-day window.
Payment is card-only through a Mozilla account. That is worth noting because the underlying network is Mullvad's, and Mullvad is known for anonymous numbered accounts and cash payment. None of that carries over. You will have an email address on file and a payment record tied to your identity, even though Mozilla says it keeps no logs of your network activity.
If you are going to keep the service past a month, take the annual plan on day one. The 30-day guarantee applies either way, so paying annually costs you nothing in flexibility and saves $60 over a year of rolling monthly billing.
Is the price fair against the competition?
Judged on its own, $4.99 a month is a fair mid-market price. Judged against what else you can buy, it is a hard sell. NordVPN's Basic tier starts at $3.09 a month on the two-year term and ExpressVPN's starts at $2.49, and both include more protocols, more device slots and dependable streaming. Mullvad charges a flat EUR 5 a month regardless of term, which lands close to Mozilla's annual rate while adding OpenVPN, anonymous accounts and cash payment.
So you are paying roughly Mullvad money for a reduced Mullvad. What you get back is Mozilla's account system, its app design, its support channel, and the assurance that comes with a name you already run in your browser. Whether that trade is worth the difference is genuinely a matter of taste, and we would not call anyone wrong for taking it.
What you get for your money: features
WireGuard protocol and encryption
Mozilla VPN runs WireGuard and nothing else. WireGuard is open source, modern, and far smaller than the protocols it replaced, which makes it easier to audit and faster to connect. In our testing, tunnels came up in a second or two on every platform, which is the practical benefit of that design.
The trade is that you have no fallback. Some networks, particularly restrictive corporate or hotel Wi-Fi, block or throttle WireGuard's UDP traffic, and a service with OpenVPN over TCP in reserve can route around that. Mozilla gives you no protocol menu, so if WireGuard cannot get out, you are stuck. This is the single most consequential simplification in the product.
Kill switch, DNS, and device limits
The kill switch cuts your internet if the tunnel drops, which is what stops your real IP address leaking during a reconnect. It behaves differently by platform: on Windows and iOS it is on by default, while on Android you have to enable it yourself in the system VPN settings. Mozilla covers the behaviour in its kill switch documentation, but it is an easy thing to miss, and an Android user who assumes it is on may not be protected. If you are new to the idea, our guide to what a VPN kill switch is covers the mechanics.
DNS handling is a strong point. You can block ads, trackers and malware at the DNS level, or point the app at a custom resolver, all from the same settings screen. Multi-hop routing lets you enter through one country and exit through another, which is unusual at this price.
The device limit is 5 devices, and the wording matters. The cap counts registered devices rather than active connections, so a phone you replaced last year keeps occupying a slot until you remove it by hand from your account. We hit that ceiling during testing simply by installing the app on the machines we tested on. NordVPN allows 10 simultaneous devices and ExpressVPN 8, so this is a real gap for anyone covering a family.
Features Mozilla VPN is missing
The absence list is long enough to be the deciding factor for many buyers. There is no SmartDNS, so you cannot cover a smart TV or a games console. There is no router support, and no Fire TV or Kodi app. There is no protocol choice. There is no anonymous payment. There is no live chat.
The omission we found most irritating in daily use is the lack of auto-connect or launch-on-start. The VPN stays off after a reboot until you switch it on manually, which means the protection you paid for depends on you remembering it every morning.
Split tunnelling exists on Windows, Android and Linux, and lets you route chosen apps outside the tunnel. It is not available on iOS. The Firefox extension is a neat partial substitute, applying per-site VPN rules from the browser, but it works only on Windows, so macOS and Linux users cannot use the same trick.
Privacy and logging: does Mozilla VPN keep logs?
The no-logs policy and the Cure53 audit
Mozilla's position is that neither it nor Mullvad keeps logs of your network activity. That claim is set out in Mozilla VPN's privacy notice, which is unusually readable for a document of its type, with the broader terms in the subscription services privacy policy.
There is one detail the marketing does not lead with. IP addresses appear in server logs and are held for 90 days. That is operational data rather than a record of the sites you visited, and Mozilla says it is used for troubleshooting and abuse prevention. It is still a longer retention window than the strictest providers accept, and you should factor it in if your threat model is serious. Mullvad, by contrast, deletes support emails after 70 days and issues numbered accounts that require no email at all.
The Cure53 security audit is the strongest evidence on the table. Cure53 examined five Mozilla VPN apps covering macOS, Linux, Windows, iOS and Android, and published its results in August 2021. It found 3 issues of medium or higher severity, including one high-severity cross-site WebSocket hijacking flaw that was limited to pre-release debug builds and never shipped to users. A small number of findings across five codebases, publicly disclosed, is a good result. The caveat is age: that audit is now several years old, and ExpressVPN in particular has run repeated audits with PwC, KPMG and Cure53 since.
Mozilla's ownership structure supports the privacy pitch in a way most VPN companies cannot match and the Mozilla Foundation publishes its finances in its public records. You can find out who owns the service and what it does with legal demands, which is not true of every provider in this market.
The Mullvad relationship, explained
The most important fact about Mozilla VPN is that it is not Mozilla's network. The service is a white-label of Mullvad, one of the most privacy-focused providers in the industry. You get Mullvad's servers and Mullvad's no-logging posture wrapped in Mozilla's account system and app design.
Mozilla does not run VPN servers. It resells capacity on Mullvad's fleet and wraps it in its own apps and billing. When you connect through Mozilla VPN, your traffic exits from a Mullvad server, under Mullvad's operational policies.
That is mostly good news. Mullvad is one of the few providers whose privacy engineering is widely respected, and inheriting it means Mozilla starts from a strong base rather than a marketing claim. Our own Mullvad VPN review goes deeper on that network.
The awkward part is what does not transfer. Mullvad's anonymous account numbers, its cash and Monero payment options with a crypto discount, and its OpenVPN support all stop at the Mozilla layer. You get the network, not the account model. For a service sold on privacy, paying by card under a named account while the provider underneath will happily take an envelope of cash is a strange gap.
Server network and country coverage
Having settled what the service costs and whose network runs underneath it, the next question is how far that network reaches. Server counts are the murkiest number in this review, so we will not pretend otherwise. Mozilla's own page advertises 500+ servers in 30+ countries, while one third-party tracker of the same underlying fleet cites over 1,000 servers across 57+ countries. Published totals for the Mullvad network differ between listings and change often, so treat any single figure as directional rather than fixed.
Either way, the network is small by category standards. ExpressVPN lists 3,000+ servers in 105 countries, and NordVPN's counts run into the thousands, though its country totals also vary widely between listings. If you need an exit point in a specific, unusual country, check the location list before you buy.
Do not confuse coverage with availability. The 17 countries where you can subscribe are a completely separate list from the 30-plus where you can connect. A reader in a country that is not on the purchase list cannot buy the service even though servers are available nearby.
Speed and performance: our test results
Simplicity costs nothing in security, but it does show up in speed. That was where Mozilla VPN proved least consistent for us, and the pattern is worth understanding before you judge the numbers. WireGuard is fast, and on the right hardware the overhead is small enough to ignore. On the wrong hardware it is not.
Nearby server speeds
On a nearby server, our iPhone runs stayed within a few percent of the unprotected line rate, losing about 2.4% of download speed while ping rose 74%. That is an excellent throughput result and a typical latency penalty.
The same nearby server on a Samsung Galaxy S23, on the same network within minutes of the iPhone run, lost 81% of download speed while ping rose 31%. That is a dramatic gap for a single service, and it points at the Android client rather than the network. VPN throughput swings with server choice, platform and time of day, so read these as a snapshot rather than a fixed rating, but the direction was consistent enough to flag.
Long-distance server speeds
Long-distance connections behaved as WireGuard usually does. Latency climbed in proportion to distance while throughput held up better than the ping figures suggest. Desktop performance on transatlantic servers stayed comfortably in the range where streaming and large downloads are unaffected. Android again lagged the other platforms.
Our practical advice is to test on your own devices during the 30-day guarantee window rather than trusting any single number, including ours. If Android is your main device, pay particular attention.
Apps and ease of use
Windows and macOS
Setup is short: create a Mozilla account, sign in, register the device, then pick a location and press connect. There is nothing else to configure, and no onboarding wizard to click through. From download to protected traffic took us under two minutes on both platforms.
The interface is deliberately bare. You get a location picker and a connect toggle, with no server map, no protocol menu and no advanced tuning. Settings hold the kill switch, DNS blocking, multi-hop and split tunnelling, and that is the whole surface.
Android and iOS
Both mobile apps mirror the desktop design, and both were easy to set up. iOS was the better performer for us on speed, but it is also the platform missing split tunnelling.
Android was the weaker client. Connections dropped or hung more often than on desktop, and the kill switch has to be enabled manually there rather than defaulting on as it does on Windows and iOS. Combined with the throughput gap we measured, Android is the platform where we would spend the most of your trial period.
Linux and browser support
There is a Linux app, which is more than many competitors offer, and it supports split tunnelling. The Firefox extension is the genuinely distinctive piece. It lets you apply the VPN to specific sites rather than the whole device, so you can route one banking site or one news site through the tunnel and leave everything else direct. It works only on Windows.
Streaming and torrenting
A network this compact has consequences beyond raw throughput, and streaming is where you notice them first. Netflix access was inconsistent for us: some servers loaded the regional catalogue without complaint, others returned the proxy error, and there is no streaming-optimised server list to fall back on. With no SmartDNS and no router app, you also cannot cover a TV or a console.
If unblocking is the reason you want a VPN, this is not the service to buy. Rivals maintain dedicated streaming infrastructure and rotate addresses when they get blocked, and it shows. Our Surfshark VPN review and ExpressVPN review both cover services that handle this reliably.
Torrenting is allowed, with a caveat that matters if you seed. P2P traffic runs on every server in the network, and nothing is redirected or blocked, but there are no P2P-optimised nodes and no port forwarding of any kind. Mullvad, the network Mozilla VPN runs on, removed all forwarded ports on 1 July 2023 after the feature was abused to host malicious services, and asking support whether it will return produces no commitment. Downloads work fine; seeding is hobbled, because only peers who can already reach you will connect back. Throughput during transfers dropped sharply for us, though torrent speeds depend on swarm health, server choice and time of day, so treat that as a snapshot rather than a rating. Mozilla also publishes no P2P policy page of its own, so the practical rules come from the underlying network rather than from Mozilla-branded documentation.
Customer support
The same minimalism that keeps the app clean also shapes the support offering. Support runs through an in-app contact form, email and a knowledge base. There is no live chat and no phone line, so an urgent connection problem waits on an email reply. NordVPN and ExpressVPN both run 24/7 live chat.
The knowledge base itself is good, and Mozilla's support site covers the common setup questions clearly, including the kill switch and country availability pages we cited above. It is still a gap you will feel at the worst possible moment.
Mozilla VPN vs the competition
| Product | Mozilla VPN | Mullvad | NordVPN | ExpressVPN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $9.99 | EUR 5 flat | $12.99 | $15.99 |
| Annual price | $4.99/mo ($59.88/yr) | EUR 5 flat | $3.09/mo (2-year) | $2.49/mo (2-year) |
| Server countries | 30+ (500+ servers) | 40+ | 137+ | 105 countries |
| Simultaneous devices | 5 devices | 5 | 10 | 8 |
| Protocol | WireGuard | WireGuard, OpenVPN | NordLynx, OpenVPN, IKEv2 | Lightway, OpenVPN |
| Kill switch | Yes (manual on Android) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Split tunnelling | Not on iOS | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Streaming unblocking | Inconsistent | Limited | Strong | Strong |
| No-logs audit | Cure53 (2021) | Independent audits | Deloitte | PwC, KPMG, Cure53 |
Read across that table and the shape of the decision is clear. Against Mullvad you are paying similar money for the same network with fewer payment options and one fewer protocol, in exchange for friendlier apps and a longer refund window. Against NordVPN and ExpressVPN you are paying more for less, unless the nonprofit backing is what you are buying.
Proton VPN is the closest philosophical rival, matching the privacy-first pitch with a free tier and stronger streaming. Windscribe is the pick if you want configurability at a low price. If you are still deciding whether you need one at all, start with what a VPN actually does.
Is Mozilla VPN worth it in 2026?
For most readers, no, and the reason is not that the service is bad. It is that the market moved and Mozilla did not. The security fundamentals are sound, the network is Mullvad's, the audit is public, and the app is the easiest we tested. Security.org's SecurityScore for the service is 7.9/10, which lands it squarely mid-tier, and that matches what we found.
Where it becomes worth it is narrower than the brand suggests. If you want encrypted traffic on public Wi-Fi from a company whose incentives you understand, and you will genuinely never miss auto-connect, streaming servers or a sixth device, $4.99 a month is a defensible price for peace of mind.
Everyone else should look at what the same money buys elsewhere. The 30-day guarantee means you can find out for yourself at no risk, which is the most useful thing about the way this service is sold.
