VPN Services

Red VPN letters on a gray grid background

A VPN, or virtual private network, is a way for Internet users to send and receive data while maintaining the secrecy of a private network.

There are many reasons why somebody wants to use a VPN service, but for people from abroad living in Germany the main reason is access to streaming media. Either the service you’re usually watching is not available at all from Germany or you only get the German catalog, which might not feature as many shows as you’re used to.

There are many VPN services to choose from, but you should make sure that you get a reliable one, since the streaming services regularly block IP addresses that try to get around their location blocks. From our experience, NordVPN* works well for this, but there’s no guarantee that it will stay this way. If you ever have problems, you can usually just switch to a different server, and NordVPN offers customer support in case you cannot solve an issue you’re having.

* This is our referral link: if you’re new to NordVPN and sign up through it on the NordVPN website, you can get up to 3 months of NordVPN free (3 extra months with a 1-year or 2-year plan, 1 extra month with the monthly plan).

If you only need to access websites that are blocked for German IP addresses, you can download the Opera Browser. It has a built-in VPN which is free to use.