Obscura has the most ambitious design here. It splits the VPN into two parties. A relay sees your IP but not your traffic. A Mullvad-run exit sees your traffic but not your IP. No single party can tie the two together. The clients are open source and the team has deep cryptography experience. There are no Windows or Linux apps yet and the price sits at the higher end. On a Mac or a phone, it gives you metadata protection a normal VPN cannot.
Obscura VPN
Two-party relay VPN where neither side can link your traffic to you.
obscura.com
PaidOpen SourceE2E EncryptedAccepts CryptomacOSiOSAndroidUnited States
Pricing $8 per month. Pay with card, Bitcoin via Lightning or Monero.
Strengths
- Sign up with a randomly generated account number, no email required
- Two-party relay so no single operator can correlate IP to traffic
- Open source clients; transparent design
- Accepts Bitcoin and Apple Pay
- Built by a small team with crypto-engineering pedigree
Considerations
- No Windows or Linux clients yet
- Pricier than the budget VPNs
Listed in VPN
