Affiliate disclosure. These Visit buttons are affiliate links. Scores and rankings are editorial and unchanged by this relationship. See ethics.
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Best VPN Match is an independent editorial project. This page explains who built it, why, and how the site stays honest.
Publisher, Best VPN Match
We built this site because we kept coming across VPN comparison pages that looked authoritative but were transparently pay-to-rank: every "independent test" conveniently crowned whoever paid the highest affiliate commission, and the methodology was always hidden behind vague language about "extensive testing."
We wanted to build something we'd actually trust as a source — publicly scored, methodology-first, with clear data sources anyone can check.
If you want to get in touch, the contact page has the details. If you've found an error in a score, we want to know — please link the source and we'll update it.
The VPN comparison market has a structural problem. Most comparison sites are paid per referral. That's not a conspiracy — it's a business model — but it creates a strong incentive to rank whichever provider pays them the most first, then reverse-engineer a methodology that produces that result.
The tell is usually the methodology section: either it doesn't exist, or it's written in the passive voice and avoids any specific criteria. Vague claims about extensive testing could mean anything or nothing.
Best VPN Match is built the other way round: methodology first, then scores that follow from it. The eight scoring categories and their weights were defined before any VPN was scored. The weights are locked and versioned — they cannot be adjusted to favour a provider once we have a commercial relationship with them. See /ethics for the formal policy.
affiliateActive flag is true. Savings badges stay off for NordVPN and hide.me. Other providers link to official sites. Affiliate relationships never affect scores or rankings. See /ethics.
A note on one specific editorial choice: we apply a −15 point ethics penalty to VPNs owned by KAPE Technologies (formerly Crossrider), which includes ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and Private Internet Access.
KAPE's predecessor company had a documented history of distributing adware. ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, and PIA are all technically solid products with legitimate audits — the penalty is not about their current product quality. It is about the information asymmetry: users deserve to know who owns what they're paying for.
If this seems unfair, the methodology is fully documented including what would change the penalty. This is the kind of editorial judgment that should be visible, not hidden.
If a score is wrong, we want to know. The standard for a correction is: a source link to a document that contradicts the stated score, audit, price, or feature claim. Corrections with sources are acted on promptly. Corrections without sources ("your ExpressVPN score is too low") are noted but not sufficient to change a score on their own.
Use the contact page. Responses are typically within 48 hours.