Need a VPN? Perhaps you're someone who gravitates toward getting products or services that have been extensively tested and reviewed by expert analysts. Or maybe you're more into having the same product or service that everyone else is using. If you're the former, read our roundup of the Best VPN Services.

If you're the latter, and you're in the market for a virtual private network that's popular and in use by as many people as possible, the new report by VPNpro.com (exclusive to PCMag) spells out exactly who the number-one vendor is in the consumer VPN market. (So as not to bury the lede, the answer is, mainly, NordVPN.)

VPNpro—which also reviews and sells VPNs via affiliate links—looked at the top 10 most popular VPNs on the market today. That includes all the usual suspects, including TunnelBear, ExpressVPN, PrivateInternetAccess, IP Vanish, CyberGhost, PureVPN, VYPRvpn, Hide My Ass!, Hotspot Shield, and NordVPN ($3.71 Per Month for Two Year Plan (68% Off!) at NordVPN) . It checked on a few publicly available marketing metrics, such as search frequency, social media mentions, installs according to the mobile app stores, and website traffic.

NordVPN was clearly ahead of the rest in search, with 1.29 million searches per month (see at top). The number includes misspellings and other variations, such as "nord vpn" and "nord vpn review."

NordVPN also came out on top as part of searches for terms such as "best vpn" and "free vpn" and "vpn for PC," among others, although the results varied a bit from country to country. Google Trends showed NordVPN getting the most online interest in 2018 (though Hotspot Shield had a spike in May).

How about how many servers are in use by a VPN? In 2018, no one came close to NordVPN. It had a reported 5,079 servers by the end of the year—a 601.52 percent increase since 2016. ExpressVPN and Hotspot Shield each had a larger-percentage increase but both still have less than half as many servers as NordVPN.

The one area in which NordVPN doesn't win is social media likes and mentions. Hotspot Shield and PIA do the best on Facebook, and TunnelBear is the king of VPNs on Twitter. But NordVPN's videos perform better on YouTube, albeit only slightly ahead of Hotspot Shield, which also has the most installs according to both Google Play and the Apple App Store.

NordVPN's website has about 4 million more visitors per month than the next best, which is ExpressVPN. This is according to SimilarWeb.

However, for organic website traffic, which VPNpro says means more for overall value, the winner is ExpressVPN. It puts ExpressVPN at a value of $2.5 million in traffic, compared to NordVPN's second-place $1.8 million valuation. These results are from Ahrefs.

The bottom line is that NordVPN is poised to be the number-one VPN provider in the world if it keeps going the way it has. VPNpro's report said it all: "We're confident giving the crown for the VPN with the greatest market share to NordVPN."

You can read more in the infographic below or at VPNpro.com when they publish the full results on February 19.





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