You just moved to a new country, got all your affairs in order, and are ready to enjoy the good life – or are you?
Many of you were probably really upset when you tried accessing the sites you used to browse every day back home, only to see a message telling you they’re not available in your current location. Or maybe you just weren’t able to find the same shows you used to watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime back in the US.
We know how frustrating that is. One of our writers experienced a similar problem when he moved from the US to a different country – they loaded up Netflix to watch Supernatural but it no longer showed up!
What did they do in that situation? Well, they used a VPN – the go-to solution for geo-blocked sites.
But while using a VPN as an expat is a great way to unblock content, do these services always unblock streaming sites?
We’ll answer that question in-depth in this article.
So Do All Expat VPNs Unblock Streaming Sites?
In a perfect world, they would all do that.
But we don’t live in a perfect world, unfortunately.
The truth is, only a few expat VPNs are able to bypass geo-blocks on popular streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. With many other VPNs, you’ll only see proxy errors or you’ll still end up on your country’s content library.
Why?
Because the top expat VPNs refresh their IPs very often. So, streaming sites can’t block their servers’ IPs fast enough. That way, people can use the VPNs to regularly unblock the content they want. By the time the sites block the IPs, they’ll already be refreshed.
So it all comes down to using the right expat VPN.
Which Expat VPNs Consistently Unblock Streaming Sites?
We tested over ten top VPNs with sites like Hulu, Amazon Prime, Pandora Radio, Netflix, HBO Go, Disney+, and Crunchyroll.
According to our research, these three VPNs are always able to bypass geo-blocks:
We managed to unblock content on the first try, and never saw a proxy error message. It’s not surprising – these VPNs have large server networks and refresh their IPs very fast. On top of that, they offer excellent security features and really good streaming speeds.
If you know other expat VPNs that unblock streaming sites really well, please tell us about them in the comments.
Do Free Expat VPNs Unblock Streaming Sites?
Not really. Some of them manage to get past the geo-blocks for a short while, but they soon get blocked.
Here’s the problem – because free VPNs don’t make a lot of money (they’re free, remember?), they can’t refresh their IPs very often. So, streaming sites end up blocking their servers very easily.
Even if you manage to find a free VPN that unblocks your favorite site on a regular basis, there are still other problems that will ruin your streaming experience:
- Free VPNs are very slow – you’ll often have to wait 10 or more seconds for an HD video to load. Not to mention you’ll deal with a lot of buffering.
- Free VPNs limit how much data you can use with bandwidth caps. Usually, they limit you to 2 GB per month. If you were to watch HD videos on Netflix, you’d consume around 3 GB of data per hour, so those bandwidth caps barely let you watch anything.
- The apps you download and use are usually buggy – you’ll see errors often and experience a lot of crashes.
- Free VPN providers can’t afford to offer quality 24/7 customer support. You’ll usually have to settle for email support and waiting over two or three days for a reply.
- To make money, some free VPNs might log your data. After that, they’ll sell it to advertisers.
- Free VPNs might expose you to malware.
All in all, using a free expat VPN is just not worth it. You’re much better off with a paid premium VPN. Many of them have cheap long-term plans and offer 30-day money-back guarantees. So you get good value and pay with no risk!
Do All Expat VPNs Have Fast Speeds?
Most VPNs are optimized to offer fast speeds, though they will still slow down your speeds by some percentage. That’s especially true if you’re a continent away from the server you need to connect to.
When we tested the top VPNs, we saw an average 40% speed decrease, which isn’t bad. Still, there are things you can do to increase the speeds you get. Here’s a quick list of the things you can try:
- Try connecting to a server that’s close to you. If the shows/movies you want to watch are only available in specific countries, then connect to the nearest country to your location.
- Most VPNs use the OpenVPN protocol by default. It’s very secure, but it’s also slow. We recommend using WireGuard instead if it’s available – it’s significantly faster than OpenVPN. If WireGuard isn’t available, try L2TP/IPSec or IKEv2/IPSec. Just don’t use PPTP – it’s extremely fast but its encryption is very weak.
- If the VPN offers split-tunneling, use it. It’s a feature that lets you choose which apps use the VPN and which apps use your ISP’s network. Configure the VPN to only route the streaming site or app’s traffic, and you should get faster speeds (because there’s less data to encrypt and decrypt).
- Don’t use WiFi because its signal can really mess with your speeds. Instead, unblock streaming sites over a wired connection. In our tests, our speeds were 60% faster with wired connections.
To Sum It All Up
No, not all VPNs can unblock top streaming sites – only really good services that refresh their IPs very often can do that. We told you which ones worked well in our tests, but we’d also like to hear which VPNs you use to unblock streaming sites.
