Affiliate Disclosure: How We Earn Without Bias
VPNTesting.com contains affiliate links. This page explains what that means, how it works, and what it does and does not affect. We believe this disclosure should be thorough enough that you never have to wonder whether a recommendation was influenced by money.
What Are Affiliate Links?
An affiliate link is a URL that contains a tracking code identifying us as the referral source. When you click an affiliate link on our site and go on to purchase a VPN subscription, the VPN provider knows you came from VPNTesting.com and may pay us a commission for the referral.
This is how it works in practice:
- You read a review or comparison on our site.
- You click a link to a VPN provider. That link contains our affiliate tracking code.
- You arrive on the provider’s website. A cookie is set on your browser to record the referral.
- If you purchase a subscription within a set window (typically 30 to 90 days), the provider pays us a commission.
- You pay the same price you would have paid going directly to the provider’s website. Our commission comes from the provider’s marketing budget, not from your pocket.
Where Affiliate Links Appear
Affiliate links may appear in:
- VPN reviews – Links to the provider being reviewed
- Comparison pages – Links to each provider featured in the comparison
- Recommendation lists – Links to providers we recommend for specific use cases
- Buttons and calls to action – “Visit [Provider]” or “Check Price” buttons
Affiliate links do not appear in:
- VPN leak test tools – Our testing tools are free, contain no affiliate links, and function identically regardless of which VPN you are testing
- Methodology and editorial pages – Pages that describe how we operate contain no commercial links
- Privacy, legal, and policy pages – These are purely informational
Our Affiliate Partners
We believe you should know exactly which VPN providers we have affiliate relationships with. The following table lists every provider where we earn a commission if you purchase through our links.
| Provider | Published Review? |
|---|---|
| NordVPN | Yes |
| Surfshark | Yes |
| ExpressVPN | Yes |
| CyberGhost | Yes |
| Private Internet Access | Yes |
| Proton VPN | Yes |
| IPVanish | Yes |
| PureVPN | Yes |
| Hide.me | Yes |
| Hotspot Shield | Yes |
| TorGuard | Yes |
| VyprVPN | Yes |
| PrivadoVPN | Yes |
| Windscribe | No |
| F-Secure Freedome | Yes |
| Ivacy | Yes |
| VPNSecure | Yes |
| StrongVPN | Yes |
| Avast SecureLine | Yes |
| VPN Unlimited | Yes |
| TunnelBear | No |
| HideMyAss | Yes |
| Hola | Yes |
We aim to keep this list current in real time, but it may occasionally be out of date. Last updated: March 18, 2026.
Providers We Review But Do Not Earn From
Some VPN providers we review and recommend do not offer affiliate programs, or offer programs we have chosen not to join. We cover them anyway because our job is to help you find a VPN that works – not to funnel you toward whichever provider pays us.
- Mullvad – No affiliate program. We review and recommend Mullvad based entirely on its merits. We earn nothing when you subscribe.
- IVPN – No affiliate program. Same as above – our coverage is based on product quality alone.
If a provider on this list starts offering an affiliate program in the future, we will update this disclosure. Our review and recommendation will not change as a result of joining or declining an affiliate program.
What Affiliate Relationships Do Not Affect
This is the part that matters most. Our affiliate relationships have zero influence on:
- Leak test results. Our testing tools are automated code. A VPN either leaks your IP address, DNS queries, or WebRTC data – or it does not. There is no mechanism for a commercial relationship to change a test result, and we would not build one.
- Review scores. Scores are determined by our documented methodology and applied consistently to every provider we review. A VPN that pays us a high commission and fails our leak test will receive a low score. A VPN that pays us nothing and passes every test will receive a high score.
- Rankings and recommendations. The order in which VPNs appear in our comparison pages and recommendation lists is based on test performance and overall assessment – not on commission rates.
- Whether we review a provider. We select VPNs to review based on user demand, market share, and testing priority – not on whether the provider offers an affiliate program.
- Whether we recommend a provider. If a VPN delivers a genuinely good product but does not offer an affiliate program, we recommend it anyway. We would rather send you to a good VPN we earn nothing from than a mediocre one that pays well.
- Negative findings. If we discover leaks, privacy policy concerns, or other issues during testing, we report them regardless of any commercial relationship. We have never suppressed a negative finding because of an affiliate partnership, and we never will.
How We Keep Editorial and Commercial Separate
The structure of the site is designed to prevent affiliate revenue from influencing editorial content:
- Testing is automated. Leak detection runs the same code for every VPN. There is no human step where someone could adjust a result.
- Methodology is public. Our testing methodology is published in full. Anyone can verify whether we applied it consistently.
- Scores follow rules, not discretion. A VPN that fails a leak test cannot achieve a top-tier score regardless of any other factor. This is a hard rule documented in our methodology.
- We disclose relationships. You are reading this page. We also note affiliate relationships on pages where affiliate links appear.
Why We Use Affiliate Links
Running a testing and review site costs money. Servers, testing infrastructure, multiple VPN subscriptions for review, and the time required to conduct thorough evaluations all have real costs.
Affiliate commissions are currently our only revenue source. If that changes, we will update this page before introducing any new revenue stream. We chose this model because the alternatives are worse:
- Display advertising slows the site down, degrades the experience, and often serves ads for the very products we are reviewing – creating an even more direct conflict of interest.
- Sponsored content means a provider is paying for editorial space. We do not accept sponsored content.
- Paid placements mean rankings are for sale. We do not offer paid placements or premium listings.
- Paywalls would put our testing tools behind a login. The people who need to check whether their VPN is working should not have to pay for the privilege.
Affiliate revenue lets us keep the site free, the tools accessible, and the reviews independent. It is not a perfect model – no funding model is – but it is the most honest one available to us, provided we maintain the separation between editorial and commercial that we describe on this page.
Your Choice
You are never obligated to use our affiliate links. If you prefer, you can:
- Go directly to the VPN provider’s website by typing their URL into your browser
- Search for the provider by name and click the organic result
- Use an ad blocker or privacy extension that strips affiliate tracking codes
Our reviews, test results, and recommendations are the same regardless of how you reach the provider’s site. Using our affiliate link is simply a way to support the site at no cost to yourself – but it is always your choice.
Questions
If you have questions about our affiliate relationships or believe a recommendation has been improperly influenced, we want to hear about it. Contact us through our contact page. We take these concerns seriously because our credibility depends on addressing them honestly.
For more detail on how we fund the site and maintain editorial independence, see our about page.