Mullvad vs Windscribe: what breaks the tie

At a yearly rate the two cost almost the same — about $5.71 a month for Mullvad, $5.75 for Windscribe — and neither raises prices at renewal. Pick Mullvad for anonymity: numbered accounts, no email, cash accepted. Pick Windscribe for capacity: unlimited devices, six protocols, and a 10 GB free plan.

Price decides most VPN matchups. It cannot decide this one. Mullvad charges a flat €5 a month — about $5.71 at the exchange rate its pricing page showed on 23 Jul 2026 — and Windscribe’s yearly plan bills $69 every 12 months, which is $5.75 a month. Four cents apart, and neither figure moves later: of the eight providers in our full VPN rankings, these are the only two that charge the same price at renewal as at sign-up.

So the choice runs on three other lines. Identity: Mullvad’s sign-up generates a random account number with no email attached, while Windscribe runs conventional accounts with a small but real stored footprint. Capacity: the same money buys five devices, one protocol, and 50 countries at Mullvad — or unlimited devices, six protocols, 69-plus countries, and a 10 GB free tier at Windscribe. And jurisdiction: Sweden against Five Eyes Canada. Figures below come from the two vendors’ own pricing, server, legal, and audit pages as of 23 Jul 2026; third-party claims are attributed where they appear.

Mullvad vs Windscribe at a glance, as of 23 Jul 2026
	Mullvad	Windscribe
Monthly price	€5 — about $5.71	$9.00
One year	€60 — about $68.50	$69
Renewal behavior	Flat €5 since 2009 — no sales, ever	$69/yr — same as sign-up
Custom plan	None — one flat plan	Build A Plan from $3/mo
Free plan	None, and no trial	10 GB/month (2 GB without email)
Money-back guarantee	14 days, selected payment methods	7 business days, under 10 GB used
Simultaneous devices	5	Unlimited
Server network	584 servers, 50 countries, all physical	69+ countries, 120+ cities, all physical
Protocols	WireGuard only since 15 Jan 2026	WireGuard, IKEv2, OpenVPN, Stealth, WSTunnel
Anonymous sign-up	Yes — random account number, no email	Email optional (2 GB free tier)
Cash accepted	Yes — by post, plus Monero and Bitcoin	Yes — $69 yearly plan only
Latest audit	Cure53 infrastructure audit, Jun 2024	Packetlabs security audit, Jun 2024
Jurisdiction	Sweden	Canada (Ontario) — Five Eyes

Where the price tie holds — and where it breaks

The tie holds only if you pay yearly. A year of Windscribe costs $69; a year of Mullvad costs €60, about $68.50, with the dollar figure drifting as the exchange rate does. Pay month to month and Mullvad pulls clear: the same €5 against Windscribe’s $9.00, because Mullvad’s flat rate does not care what cadence you pick — one month, one year, or one decade all cost €5 a month, and the only discount in existence is 10% off for paying with cryptocurrency. Windscribe’s counterpart promise sits on its homepage: “The price you signed up for is the price you pay. Forever.”

Billing cadence	Mullvad	Windscribe
Rolling monthly	€5 (about $5.71)	$9.00
One year	€60 (about $68.50)	$69
Cheaper route	10% off with cryptocurrency	Build A Plan from $3/mo

Windscribe holds one lever Mullvad has no answer to: Build A Plan, a custom subscription at $1 per Pro location with a three-location minimum. If you only ever connect to the same two or three countries, $3 a month undercuts everything else on this page.

Refunds are the fine print both sides share, unusually for this market: there is no 30-day guarantee anywhere here. Mullvad gives 14 days, and only on credit card, PayPal, Google Play, Swish, and bank-wire payments. Windscribe gives 7 business days, only on the initial payment, only under 10 GB of use, and only after support fails to fix a stated technical issue. The practical difference is the trial path: Windscribe’s free tier is an indefinite test with no card required, while Mullvad sells no trial of any kind — testing it costs €5.

Both also take cash, for opposite reasons. Mullvad accepts banknotes by post as an anonymity feature, alongside Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Monero — though anti-money-laundering rules exclude cash from its refund window. Windscribe’s cash option is newer and narrower: TechRadar reports it applies only to the $69 one-year plan — not monthly or custom plans — is non-refundable, and that Windscribe itself calls it the slowest and riskiest way to pay.

What does each one know about you?

Mullvad’s answer is close to nothing: an account is a random number, never tied to an email or a name, payable in ways that leave no financial trail — the design our Mullvad review examines in full. Windscribe sits nearer to that model than most rivals. Its free tier runs without any email at all, at 2 GB a month instead of 10, and its privacy policy (updated 30 Jul 2024) states it stores no historical session logs, source IPs, or visited sites — just a rolling 30-day bandwidth total and a last-activity timestamp per account. The real gap is narrower than “anonymous versus not”: no identity at all on one side, a small and dated fingerprint on the other.

Jurisdiction tilts the same way. Mullvad VPN AB answers to Swedish law, whose LEK statute — per the company’s legal page — imposes no data-retention duty on VPN providers. Windscribe Limited sits in Ontario, Canada — Five Eyes soil — which its self-funded, no-parent-company structure softens but cannot cancel.

Do the audits settle it?

No — and this pair is unusual in how evenly that cuts. Both providers’ most recent audits date to June 2024, and neither is a formal no-logs attestation of the kind the biggest rivals commission. Cure53’s fourth infrastructure audit of Mullvad was scoped to “anything that would impact privacy”; the auditors tried to find ways a user’s traffic anonymity or integrity could be compromised and found none. Packetlabs audited and penetration-tested Windscribe’s FreshScribe server stack, covering the RAM-disk servers and whether they could be made to disclose personal information. Mullvad’s later engagements — the web app in 2025, the payment and account API in 2026 — cover other components, and Windscribe’s fallback evidence is a Greek court case it cites as real-world proof of what its servers store. What a security audit can and cannot prove is laid out in our guide to no-log VPN audits.

The hardware claims mirror each other. Mullvad’s servers hold nothing on disk — RAM only, booted through its own STBoot chain; Windscribe’s fleet has run on RAM disks since Q3 2024. Both also state that every location is physical hardware — no virtual servers on either map — and Mullvad adds that its hosting providers get no OS-level access.

Devices, countries, and protocols

Capacity is Windscribe’s section. It allows unlimited simultaneous connections on every plan, free included — its terms only bar sharing one account between people — while Mullvad stops at five devices. On coverage, Mullvad’s live list showed 584 servers in 50 countries and 91 cities on 23 Jul 2026; Windscribe’s server page heading says 69-plus countries and 120-plus cities, a figure best treated as a floor since its own pages disagree on the exact count. Check both public lists for the countries you need before paying.

Protocols split on philosophy. Mullvad speaks WireGuard and nothing else — OpenVPN was removed client- and server-side on 15 January 2026, so routers and third-party setups that depend on it no longer connect — and layers quantum-resistant tunnels and DAITA traffic obfuscation on top. Windscribe stacks up to six connection protocols, including WireGuard, IKEv2, and OpenVPN, plus its Stealth and WSTunnel obfuscation protocols for networks that block VPN traffic outright. One more line for heavy seeders: Mullvad’s port forwarding is gone — new ports were disabled on 29 May 2023 — a trade our torrenting rankings weigh in detail.

What does the speed and streaming record support?

Not much, on either count. The one write-up that publishes head-to-head numbers for this pair, FahimAI’s, quotes a 950 Mbps-plus peak for Windscribe against an 86.5% speed-retention figure for Mullvad — two different metrics that cannot settle a race. We run no benchmarks, and no outlet publishes reproducible, same-conditions results for these two.

Streaming leans Windscribe’s way, but on weak legs: Windscribe’s own comparison page markets it as the streaming pick — vendor comparisons favor vendors — and third-party write-ups lean the same direction without publishing region-by-region results. The cheap way to get a real answer for your platforms: Windscribe’s free 10 GB tests one side at no cost, and a single €5 month — refundable within 14 days if paid by card — tests the other.

Choose Mullvad if

You want no identity on file: a numbered account, no email, cash or Monero accepted.
You pay month to month: €5 (about $5.71) against Windscribe’s $9.00.
Jurisdiction matters: Swedish law over a Five Eyes member.
One modern protocol suits you: WireGuard with quantum-resistant tunnels and DAITA on top.

Get it at Mullvad — the five-device cap and thin streaming record are the trade-offs.

Choose Windscribe if

Your household outgrows five devices: connections are unlimited on every plan.
You want to try before paying: 10 GB a month free, no card, 2 GB even without an email.
You need a few specific countries cheaply: Build A Plan starts at $3 a month.
You connect through networks that block VPNs: Stealth and WSTunnel ship in every app.

Try the free plan at Windscribe; our Windscribe review covers the full record, streaming caveats included.

Frequently asked questions

Is Mullvad more private than Windscribe?

On stored data, yes. Mullvad accounts are random numbers with no email or personal details attached, and payment can be cash by post or Monero. Windscribe stores little for a conventional service — no session logs, source IPs, or visited sites, per its privacy policy — but a rolling 30-day bandwidth total and a last-activity timestamp still attach to each account, and the company answers to Canadian courts.

Which is cheaper, Mullvad or Windscribe?

Paying monthly, Mullvad: a flat €5 — about $5.71 — against $9.00. Paying yearly, they tie within pennies: about $68.50 for Mullvad against $69 for Windscribe, and neither raises prices at renewal. The outlier is Windscribe's Build A Plan, which starts at $3 a month if three locations are enough for you.

Does Mullvad have a free plan?

No — no free plan and no trial; Mullvad's pricing FAQ states it does not operate that way. The free Mullvad Browser is a separate product, not the VPN. Windscribe's free plan gives 10 GB a month once an email address is confirmed, and 2 GB without.

How many devices do Mullvad and Windscribe allow?

Mullvad allows five devices per account. Windscribe sets no limit on any plan, including the free one — its terms only prohibit sharing a single account between different people.

Which is faster, Mullvad or Windscribe?

No published test answers this fairly. The write-ups that exist compare mismatched metrics — a peak speed for Windscribe against a speed-retention percentage for Mullvad — under unstated conditions. Both networks run WireGuard; Windscribe's free tier plus one €5 month of Mullvad is a cheap way to run the comparison on your own connection.

Which is better for streaming, Mullvad or Windscribe?

The published record points to Windscribe, weakly: its own comparison page claims the streaming edge, and third-party write-ups lean the same way, but none publishes reproducible region-by-region results for this pair. Test your must-have platforms on Windscribe's free 10 GB before paying anything.