What is happening with Mullvad VPN these days

I have been a loyal user of Mullvad VPN for years and it used to be great. Recently I am really unhappy with the quality. I keep getting disconnected, having issues connecting to entire regions for several minutes, and experiencing significant speed drops, making it hard to watch anything outside of YouTube. Plus, many regions hit me with captchas every time I try to search on Google.

This is happening on both my mobile and desktop devices, and over the last year, the quality has really gone down. I’m starting to think about switching to a different VPN provider, even though I really don’t want to.

Am I the only one dealing with these problems, or are others facing similar issues? And if you have suggestions for a good alternative, that would be awesome. I’m not a fan of ProtonVPN since I have doubts about them after some privacy issues they had with anonymous email accounts. Privacy isn’t my biggest concern, but it would be nice to have as an extra feature.

By the way, this isn’t due to local regulations—my country hasn’t put any restrictions or bans on VPNs. So it seems like this is an issue with Mullvad itself.

I don’t get disconnected from the internet or Mullvad at all. Sometimes a server seems slow but switching to a different one fixes it.

Wynn said:
I don’t get disconnected from the internet or Mullvad at all. Sometimes a server seems slow but switching to a different one fixes it.

Wow, you’re lucky.

Nyle said:

Wynn said:
I don’t get disconnected from the internet or Mullvad at all. Sometimes a server seems slow but switching to a different one fixes it.

Wow, you’re lucky.

Lucky isn’t the word. I run Mullvad wireguard with several peers on my router all the time and I have never seen any disconnections. I mainly use servers in northern Europe.

@Gabi
Well, 2024.6 had DNS issues. I experienced that too. Everything looked connected, but nothing worked. The update for 2024.7 fixed that.

Wynn said:
I don’t get disconnected from the internet or Mullvad at all. Sometimes a server seems slow but switching to a different one fixes it.

Same experience for me in California. It has always worked well.

Oaklee said:
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The captchas drive me crazy and I don’t like DuckDuckGo.

Aeron said:

Oaklee said:
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The captchas drive me crazy and I don’t like DuckDuckGo.

They’re annoying, but switching VPNs won’t make them go away.

Aeron said:

Oaklee said:
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The captchas drive me crazy and I don’t like DuckDuckGo.

You can’t escape them. Just embrace the captchas and you will be content.

Oaklee said:
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Yeah, I’m in the same boat.

I like Mullvad better than any other VPN. But lately, my connections have been bad. No disconnects though. I mainly use servers in Sweden, Albania, and Germany.

Have you enabled DAITA? If so, turn that off. Captchas are a general VPN issue, not just a Mullvad issue.

Oaklee said:
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If you’re curious, get the VPN server’s “IN” IP Address. The Windows app shows this. Then exit the VPN and run a trace route to that IP Address. Each output line displays a different router on the way to the VPN server.
You can do this in the Windows command prompt: “tracert xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx”.

I don’t understand this part. Can you explain what you mean?

Everything is completely fine for me :ok_man:

There could be many reasons behind your issues like bad connections, a down server, ISP maintenance, etc.

It wouldn’t be fair to blame Mullvad entirely, but it’s understandable to be upset if you’re paying for the service.

You should reach out to Mullvad directly to share your complaint and get their assistance.

Multihop seems to be making it worse, and I suspect that many people using DAITA servers are affecting performance.

I doubt the captcha problem is exclusive to Mullvad; many websites dislike VPNs.

I’m connected all the time using the WireGuard app. My laptop automatically connects to my local area when it starts up.

No issues on my end in the US :grin:

Halston said:
No issues on my end in the US :grin:

No problems in the UK for me either.

Halston said:
No issues on my end in the US :grin:

I’m in the US too and I’m facing these issues. Which servers do you use?