Most people pick a VPN region the way they pick a queue at the supermarket: quickly, and slightly wrongly. Here is how to do it deliberately.
Start with the nearest one
Distance dominates latency, and nothing else comes close. Every kilometre adds real time that no amount of server capacity can remove. In almost every case, the region physically closest to you will be the fastest, and you should treat that as the default rather than something to be argued with.
The obvious exception is when you are connecting for a reason other than speed.
When to pick something other than the nearest
You need to appear somewhere specific
If a service is only available in one country, you need a server in that country, and you accept the latency cost. A UK server from the Gulf will always be slower than a Gulf server. That is the trade, and it is worth making consciously rather than by accident.
The nearest route is the congested one
Occasionally the closest server sits behind a saturated link while a slightly more distant one has a clean path. This is uncommon but real, and it is exactly why testing beats assuming.
You are connecting to something far away anyway
If the game server you play on is in Germany, a German VPN region may shorten the second half of the journey enough to be worth it, even though it lengthens the first half. Match the VPN region to the destination, not to yourself.
Ignore the country count
A great deal of VPN marketing is built on how many countries a provider claims. It is close to meaningless. Many of those locations are rented capacity in a shared facility, some are not in the advertised country at all but merely present an address registered there, and almost none of them are places the provider’s own users actually connect from.
Six regions that are placed where the users are will beat ninety that exist for the marketing page. What matters is whether a server is near you, not how long the list is.
Where our regions are
We run six, chosen for where our users actually connect from rather than to pad a number:
- United Arab Emirates — Dubai
- Saudi Arabia — Riyadh
- India — Mumbai
- United Kingdom — Portsmouth
- Germany — Frankfurt
- United States — San Jose, California
You can measure all six from your own browser. The numbers are generated by your device when you load that section, not written by us.
Test at the time you actually use it
Networks are busiest in the evening. A region that tests beautifully at breakfast may be mediocre at nine in the evening, which is precisely when you are gaming or streaming. If you are choosing a region for evening use, test it in the evening.
A short checklist
- Default to the nearest region.
- Override it only when you need a specific country, or when testing proves otherwise.
- Match the region to your destination for gaming, not to your own location.
- Re-test occasionally. Routes change.