European alternatives to ExpressVPN

ExpressVPN is a consumer VPN sold on speed and reach: servers in over ninety countries, a proprietary Lightway protocol, apps on every desktop and mobile platform plus routers, and a diskless RAM-only server design the company audits publicly. Much of its appeal is practical rather than political — it is the service most likely to get a streaming catalogue to load from the wrong country.

A VPN has no data to migrate, so switching is cheap in the usual sense. What matters instead is who you are trusting, because a VPN moves your traffic metadata from your ISP to the provider. On that question the ownership history is the material fact. ExpressVPN was acquired in September 2021 by Kape Technologies, which also owns CyberGhost, Private Internet Access and ZenMate. Kape was named Crossrider until March 2018, when its business was a browser-extension SDK whose monetisation features had been abused by malware developers. Kape itself was delisted from the London Stock Exchange in May 2023 and taken private by Unikmind Holdings, owned by the Israeli and Cypriot businessman Teddy Sagi — so four of the best-known consumer VPN brands now sit under one privately held owner.

The European alternatives below compete on exactly that axis: independent ownership, published infrastructure, and in one case a no-account, cash-payable subscription that collects nothing to hand over.