VPN without log: which are the best providers?

When choosing a VPN provider, there are many criteria to consider. One of the most important is certainly the absence of logs conservation. Indeed, if a provider keeps logs, it can very quickly become dangerous for your security.

At any moment, this recorded information could turn against you and take away the very interest of the Virtual Private Network. We have selected the three best VPNs that do not keep logs and we will present their privacy policy in detail.

What are VPN logs?

Before we start our presentation of the three best VPNs without logs and connection logs, we wanted to remind you why.

First of all, you need to know that in some countries, there are laws on data retention. Companies collecting personal data are obliged to keep them for a certain period of time (30 days, 6 months, 1 year,…). In fact, when a VPN provider has established its headquarters in such a country, this can become a deterrent criterion which is totally normal.

You should also know that some countries are members of the 5, 9 or 14 Eyes alliance. These are countries that collect and exchange confidential information with each other in order to fight, for example, against terrorism, fraud, or other. Therefore, a VPN provider based in these countries is not reliable in our eyes. Indeed, intelligence agencies in these countries can pressure VPN providers to collect and save their users’ connection logs.

The logs then stored can be for example the sites you visited, your originating IP, the time of your connections, the amount of data downloaded, and much more.

In the end, if you don’t want to have any problems, it is therefore imperative to choose a VPN based in a country that doesn’t have a data retention law and isn’t based in a 5, 9 or 14 Eyes member country.

The best log-free VPNs of 2023

Now we’re going to introduce you to our favorite VPNs that don’t keep logs. You should know that some of them keep some information, like your email address, but this is not dangerous because it is only to let you access the account. How to manage your customer area if your email and password are not kept anywhere?

There is no risk to keep this information. No one will blame you if you are one of the tens of millions of customers of a provider, there is nothing wrong with that, it is completely legal.

NordVPN

Among the best no-log VPNs in 2023, there is also NordVPN.

This VPN is based in Panama, a country that does not share any information with intelligence agencies and has no obligation to keep user information.

On the market since 2012, it had one misstep in 2018 but it was not a log issue. In fact, hackers hacked into a Finnish datacenter where NordVPN had servers. Fortunately, none of NordVPN’s servers were compromised, but we still wanted to highlight this point.

Aside from this misstep, NordVPN has not encountered any problems and its No Log policy is very serious. In order to strengthen users’ trust in its services, the provider had its entire log policy audited in 2018 and its servers analyzed by PwC (like ExpressVPN). No problems were then detected by these audit experts.

NordVPN then assures not to keep :

• The times of your connection
• The sites you visit
• The amount of bandwidth used
• Your original IP address and that of the server used

For some time now, the provider has deployed on its entire network, servers running only on RAM. This brings NordVPN closer to ExpressVPN and its “TrustedServer” technology. The interest of such a thing is simple: not to save anything on hard drives. Moreover, it is worth noting that as soon as a server is turned off or on again, its entire memory will be erased (since all of it is included in RAM).

The information kept by NordVPN

Like its two competitors mentioned above, NordVPN keeps information. Again, we do not call it “logs” because it has nothing to do with your activity on the Internet but it is really information to manage your account.

Without much surprise, we find once again the e-mail address and the payment method but also the time of your last disconnection in order to manage the 6 active connections simultaneously or the exchanges you had with the customer support (unless you oppose it).

All of this is only meant to improve your user experience and will not harm you in any way if someone contacts NordVPN for information.

ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is certainly the most secure at the moment and is undeniably one of the best no-log VPN in 2023.

The first reason for this is that it is based in the British Virgin Islands, a country outside of any intelligence alliance and which has no data retention laws. Therefore, ExpressVPN is perfectly able to carry out their “No Log” policy.

To reinforce their lack of log retention, ExpressVPN has implemented in 2019 the “TrustedServer” servers that run directly on RAM and by default, therefore, cannot keep any trace of any activity as soon as they are rebooted.

As proof of its seriousness, ExpressVPN had all its servers audited by PwC to verify that no data was kept after use. No anomalies were found. And as if this information wasn’t enough, ExpressVPN has never experienced a single problem in 11 years on the market. Millions of people using a service without ever complaining is a pretty good sign, right?

Some “information” kept

As we said above, all VPNs keep some information but we can’t call it “logs”. Indeed, the logs are related to your activity during the use of the VPN, to the sites you visit,… These logs are obviously very bad.

On the other hand, some information, which are essential to the good use of your VPN, must be kept.

This is the case of your personal information such as your email address and your payment method. It seems obvious that the provider must keep this information in order to manage your account and ensure communication. Note that, as we mentioned in our ExpressVPN review, you can pay in Bitcoins and there is nothing to stop you from creating an email address specific to your ExpressVPN account.

In order to improve the user experience, other small pieces of information are kept such as the version of the app you are using, the success or failure of connection to a country on a given day (the server in question and your IP are not kept), the amount of data transferred (just to see if there are any abnormal consumptions).

CyberGhost

CyberGhost is also an excellent VPN without keeping logs or connection logs.

First of all, it is based in Romania, a country that has no log retention laws and is not a member of any intelligence alliance. So that’s already a good start to offering a quality VPN. It is also the only European country that has refused all data retention laws.

As a proof of their lack of log retention, CyberGhsot publishes, every three months, their “transparency report” in which they share the numerous information requests they received from third parties and never shared.

As an example, in April, May and June 2019 alone, CyberGhost received 19051 requests from law firms, police or rights holders but obviously didn’t reveal anything about its users.

This transparency is really what is expected in the world of Virtual Private Networks and we can only congratulate them for that.

CyberGhost assures on its website that it never keeps the following information:

• the original IP
• DNS requests
• The history of visited sites
• The dates and times of access to the VPN
• The amount of data exchanged
• The VPN servers you use

So it is really a no-log VPN that does not keep any “dangerous” information.

The few information kept by CyberGhost

As we have seen with ExpressVPN, CyberGhost keeps some information, but nothing dangerous.

In this case, they have your email address with which you created the account and your payment information. Finally, like any website, CyberGhost places cookies on your computer that you can perfectly delete or block in your browser settings.

To learn more about Cyberghost, read our full review here.

Conclusion

Among several hundred VPN providers currently available, it is not easy, or even dangerous, to find the right one. Finding the best VPN without logging seems like a real ordeal for many potential users.

Luckily for you, we’ve analyzed the privacy policies of the top VPN providers in great detail to ensure that they won’t keep your login activities.

The three no-log VPNs we’ve presented below have over 50 million users between them and have been on the market for a total of 28 years. In all these years, they have never betrayed a single one of their customers. So you can trust them to keep your data anonymous.