For a long time, the main VPN that was recommended was Mullvad. iVPN, Proton and AirVPN were distant alternative recommendations. However, since Mullvad, iVPN, and some others removed port forwarding (for a good reason, you can read their blog post about it, but basically, human scum were using PF to allow others to connect with them while sharing child-based illegal material) many people had to make a choice revolving around PF.

PF allows you and others to keep a healthy “swarm,” so it is a vital feature, particularly if you’re hoping to download files that aren’t recent & are no longer seeded by the original uploader. If the original seeder is gone, and everyone in the remaining swarm doesn’t have PF, you’re most likely not getting that file. Many people stayed with Mullvad, and some people switched to AirVPN or Proton, so that they could keep utilizing PF. If you’re only going to download recent releases, I’d suggest Mullvad. Otherwise, AirVPN or Proton should be fine. I have no experience with either one, other than using Proton’s free email service (I’m also testing Tutanota and Skiff, & liking Skiff the best out of all 3 so far).

I would also suggest doing a search for “ProtonMail court order leads to the arrest of French climate activist” and see if that bothers you. Example: see Mullvad’s blog about “migration to RAM-only VPN infrastructure.” Meaning, all the internet traffic going through their VPN service is kept on RAM, so when they say they don’t have any logs, they don’t and can’t. Will Proton rat you out if they get a court order about you? I doubt it, but who am I to say. Although, email and VPN are not the same, but they are somewhat similar in regards to protecting your privacy. I believe AirVPN is also a trustworthy “no log” policy VPN with PF. Just do your own research and make an informed decision.

Me? I switched to Usenet instead of torrenting for anything other than recent releases. The good thing is that you don’t need a VPN for Usenet (as long as you have the SSL connection enabled on SABnzbd in the server section, which should be enabled by default after installation). The bad thing is, it takes a little more research to understand how to best setup Usenet, but you’re pretty much guaranteed to obtain your files, even years old. I don’t need to keep Mullvad, but I have kept it for now, because it’s pretty inexpensive and it’s a great service, even without PF.

Short version: use qBittorrent, manually start it each time after you’re VPN is active (do not have it start up with Windows or whatever you’re using), make sure to BIND your VPN to qBittorrent (do not rely on just a kill-switch, notoriously unreliable), and using Proton should be fine.

EDIT: You may want to also research “nordvpn data breach” and “kape technologies malware” (Kape owns Private Internet Access) if one of those becomes an option for you. I’m not saying don’t use either of them, but you should be aware of those things and make your own decision. I switched from PIA to Mullvad when Kape bought PIA.

EDIT2: Just in case people don’t know, I believe Mullvad is still the provider for the “Mozilla VPN,” just rebranded. And they have their own Mullvad browser (from Firefox), but I haven’t tried it.

Proton is very well known to be the best vpn privacy whise. They went to swiss federal court against the state to not keep network logs for their vpn, i‘d say it‘s very trustworthy

If you are using Linux don’t use the GUI app. It will lock up and leak past a killswitch.

The CLI app works ok. It annoyingly has issues reconnecting on reboot without disabling and renabling the killswitch. Sometimes it works, other times not.

If you’re getting protonmail anyway the bundle is worth it. You can use their client software or native wireguard. I personally use AirVPN, run by an activist group. Their website isn’t shiny, but the VPN works great and has port forwarding which is really good for torrent connectivity.

I don’t think with the Swiss privacy laws governing Proton you don’t have to worry about them ratting to Comcast

I don’t really pirate anymore, but have been using ProtonMail, Proton Calendar and ProtonVPN for a few years on pure privacy grounds, and generally really like it. Their apps have gotten more stable over time and their bona fides are solid (actually fighting against subpoenas, etc).

They are actively improving things like calendar invites and integration in their suite of apps. Between that and ente for photo storage I’ve mostly degoogled myself over the last couple years.

From what I’ve heard ProtonVPN isn’t really recommended. Use Mullvad or use AirVPN if you need port forwarding. (Mullvad removed port forwarding a few months ago).

If you are just using a VPN for pirating then I would just spend that VPN money on a seedbox.

I am pretty happy with them so far.

I have proton unlimited and it’s well worth it imo. With it you get simplelogin premium for free and all the proton stuff with 500gb e2ee cloud storage (which I haven’t used too much). It’s just a really well put together ecosystem and I’m glad to support them. Also, black friday is coming up and iirc they usually do sales right about then.

Proton VPN I found not good for streaming sites. Considering the forum we are on, I doubt that is a primary requirement here but it was unstable and regularly detected by the streaming sites. The stream kept getting buffering issues and the only way to fix it was a series of restarting and refreshing different things and trying different servers. Support just pushes you through a flowchart of settings questions when really their service should just work properly

It was a pretty disappointing experience considering I actually forked out money for it (not the free tier)

Works great and supports port forwarding. VPNs don’t rat you out to comcast, they’d lose all their customers.

I’ve had ipvanish, proton, and now on expressvpn. Express is my favorite so far but it is expensive. You should look into mullvad vpn.

I’ve been using it for torrenting and it works well. I have no complaints. I think it’s less if you buy by the year rather than monthly.

I know I’m really late to this thread:

The 3 VPNs I’d recommend for privacy are Proton, AirVPN, and Mullvad.

When it comes to torrenting, AirVPN is probably the best. It has port forwarding, a no logging policy, and general trust in the community. Proton is similar, but it’s port forwarding is not as good as AirVPN’s version.

When it comes to privacy, Mullvad is the best imo. You can pay in cash. They removed port forwarding recently, but they’re in a privacy oriented country, and when authorities raided them, they had none of the users’ data (the raid being the reason for port forwarding to disappear).

You don’t need port forwarding to torrent, but without it, you may have slower speeds and trouble downloading older/rarer torrents (it effects the number of seeders/peers you can connect to). I’ve been torrenting without port forwarding and have yet to run into a torrent I can’t download in a reasonable time. Highly overrated imo, but incredibly important if you want to seed (I’ve still had no problems, there might be a couple leeches, but the vast majority can be seeded to). Considering you have Comcast, however, I’m guessing you have a data cap, and with that seeding becomes rather difficult. If you really want to pass it on with the data cap, than a seedbox would be the easiest way. Without port forwarding or a seedbox, and especially with a datacap without either of those, you won’t be able to use private trackers (personally I don’t recommend them unless you can’t find content anywhere else, my advice running counter to many in the piracy community).

You’re not going wrong with any of those 3 VPNs. Mullvad for privacy (torrents work just fine, don’t believe the people convincing you otherwise, and if you’re concerned with seeding, then a seedbox will take care of uploading for you). AirVPN if you want a good privacy reputation and port forwarding, or Proton if you prefer them (their privacy is fine, their port forwarding is inferior).

I’ll also mention Windscribe, which is not as good as the above three, and I don’t know as much about. But it’s the only other one I can think of that might be worth it, though I strongly recommend one of the above 3 first.

Stay away from (most VPNS pay for advertising or astroturf, so always be careful when selecting):

PIA (yes, they were proven not to log… And then bought out by Kape (former name Crossrider), a spyware company. The parent company is not privacy oriented, no matter how much PIA simps want you to believe otherwise. Look into it yourself. I loved PIA before they were bought out!)

NordVPN (lol, just stay away, trust me. You can always search for previous NordVPN incidents.).

Give BTGuard a try.