Meet Maggie, PCMag'sNorton VPN Ultimate is a security suite that packages the company's award-winning antivirus with its VPN (short for virtual private network). Fans of Norton's antivirus will find the same excellent performance here, and the VPN offers compelling features such as multi-hop servers and a polished proprietary protocol called Mimic. However, it lacks some basic comforts, such as a monthly subscription option and feature consistency across platforms. While Norton VPN Ultimate provides much more than just a VPN, that core product falls short compared with other leaders in the space, like Editors' Choice winners NordVPN and Proton VPN, which offer a more robust VPN experience in terms of server coverage, data retention, and feature consistency.
Norton only has annual plans. There is a seven-day free trial, but it requires you to input payment information. Generally speaking, we don’t recommend jumping right into a long-term VPN plan. It’s better to try the monthly plan or a free trial first so you don’t get locked into a service that doesn’t work as you need it to.
Norton VPN Standard is $39.99 for the first year (renewing at $79.99 per year), and it includes basic VPN and an ad blocker. Norton VPN Plus also costs $39.99 for the first year, then renews at $109.99 per year. Plus includes scam protection, virus detection, 10GB of cloud storage, and a password manager. Norton VPN Ultimate is $49.99 for the first year (renewing at $129.99 per year) and includes everything from the prior tiers plus parental controls, 50 GB of cloud storage, and dark web monitoring. Keep in mind that these are all introductory prices. Norton’s introductory prices are heavily discounted compared with the base renewal prices. You can see how Norton's prices stack up against the competition in the chart below:
Payment options are limited to credit cards, Google Pay, and PayPal. You cannot pay with cryptocurrency or any alternative anonymous payment methods. Several VPNs beat Norton's pricing and offer excellent monthly plans at comparable discounts, such as Mullvad, which costs 5 euros per month ($5.71 as of this writing) and can be paid for with cryptocurrency.
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Each plan is backed by a 60-day money-back guarantee. That is a longer return period than most competing VPNs, which is good.
There are also free VPNs worth considering if you’d rather try before you buy with no strings attached. Proton VPN is one of the few services that do not place data caps on their free subscription plans.
Norton VPN Ultimate is just one way to get your hands on Norton’s core products. Security suites full of bundled options are becoming increasingly common in the VPN space. Competitors like Nord and Surfshark also have plans that include password managers, identity monitoring, and encrypted storage. Norton’s options aren’t quite as straightforward.
There are a variety of bundled plans under different “Ultimate” names that share some degree of software overlap. Norton 360 with LifeLock Ultimate Plus includes additional identity monitoring tools but otherwise looks a lot like the Norton VPN Ultimate plan. Then there’s Norton Utilities Ultimate, a distinct offering that includes system cleanup tools. Each of these product categories has its own tiered plan structure with varied features, just like the VPN category does.
While the VPN has grown beyond being a secondary add-on to the 360 security suite, it is still overshadowed by Norton’s long-standing antivirus and bundled features. Aside from the VPN, you get the following extras with the Ultimate plan:
Antivirus (real-time scanning and removal)
Ad blocker
AI-powered scam detection
Password manager
Dark web monitoring
50 GB of cloud storage
Parental monitoring
Household device tracking
On the VPN side, Norton’s Ultimate plan supports up to 10 devices simultaneously. That figure meets the industry standard, but I’d prefer unlimited connections given the high up-front subscription cost. Aside from the increased allowance for simultaneous connections, the VPN is identical to what you get with Norton VPN Standard. Essential features are present, such as split tunneling and a kill switch.
You can configure the VPN to launch with specific applications or at system boot. Norton offers multi-VPN support, allowing you to run multiple VPNs at once, though we don’t recommend this practice. More often than not, the two programs interfere with each other. There’s also a built-in tracker and ad blocker that we found worked well on both text and video sites. Norton has squeezed the most essential components of its antivirus, firewall, parental control, password manager, and cloud backup services into a single security suite.
Norton’s Mimic protocol is proprietary and built to bypass blocks by disguising VPN activity as normal HTTPS traffic. With Mimic, Norton joins ExpressVPN by backing its protocol with post-quantum encryption. That additional protection means you’ll experience slower speeds with Mimic compared with open-source protocols like WireGuard or OpenVPN. Mimic was independently verified by VerSprite in November 2025.
You’ll find Mimic, Open VPN, and WireGuard on Windows and Android. MacOS and iOS users can make use of Mimic, WireGuard, and IPSec.
Norton supports connectivity in more than 92 countries, with the vast majority being physical servers. Although it is worth noting that there is a high concentration of virtual servers in Africa and the Middle East. Additional city-level options in the US and UK make it easy to fine-tune your connection in those regions.
Each location includes details on which city it is nearest to, whether it is optimized for streaming, and whether it supports all available protocols. Most servers support streaming access, but torrenting on Norton is restricted to a handful of servers in New York, California, Japan, and Spain.
Norton supports IP Rotation for certain locations, meaning it intermittently changes your IP address. It can be useful for bypassing certain website blocks and for helping to prevent tracking. However, using it will impact your performance. These servers are available in the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, and Australia.
Norton also offers advanced Double VPN (also known as multi-hop) servers that route your traffic through multiple countries before it reaches its final destination. Double VPN servers are available in the following configurations:
United States ⇄ Canada
United Kingdom ⇄ Germany
Australia ⇄ New Zealand
Canada ⇄ US
Germany ⇄ United Kingdom
Japan ⇄ Taiwan
All the above configurations work in reverse as well. For example, you could connect to a server in Canada by routing through the US first.
We tested Norton on an Intel NUC 12 “Serpent Canyon” running the latest version of Windows 11. Installing the application was simple, with a native app available directly from Norton. The VPN Ultimate app shares the same general design scheme and theme as the Norton 360 security suite.
The main dashboard features a large map with a quick selection of available servers. You’ll find your other bundled applications as well as your VPN settings a click away in the left-hand side panel.
The settings menus are well organized, with tabs that lead to the privacy policy, support options, and troubleshooting steps. Overall, the Windows experience is streamlined and beginner-friendly.
We also tested Norton on an M4 Mac Mini running macOS 26 Tahoe. There isn’t an App Store version, so you’ll have to download the macOS client directly from Norton. Visually, the app is identical to the Windows interface. Most features are available on macOS, except for split tunneling and the OpenVPN protocol.
We then tested Norton on an iPhone 14 running iOS 26.4. You can get Norton VPN directly from the App Store on mobile, which makes for easy installation. The user interface is sleek and easy to use.
There are a few quirks to contend with on iOS. Split tunneling and post-quantum encryption are not available in the app. Additionally, you can’t enable the kill switch unless you use Mimic or WireGuard as your preferred protocol. IP rotation servers are restricted to IPSec and WireGuard and cannot be accessed on Mimic. These are small gripes, but it can still get a bit annoying to have to cycle protocols if you plan to use all of the standard server options.
Lastly, we tested Norton’s Android app using a Samsung Galaxy S23 FE running Android 14. It’s available directly from the Play Store, making installation a breeze. The app is much more in line with the Windows version in terms of features.
Split tunneling and post-quantum encryption are both available on Android, and there are no protocol compatibility issues to worry about. All other advanced options are present, and we didn’t experience any difficulties navigating the dashboard.
Both Norton AntiVirus Plus and Norton 360 Deluxe put malware protection front and center, with numerous on-demand malware scans and specialized scans for email attachments and USB drives. You can dig into the security history if needed, or ask it to generate a detailed protection report. Norton VPN Ultimate skips on-demand scans and, as much as possible, keeps antivirus protection out of the limelight while still providing the same level of protection.
Like the antivirus, Norton VPN Ultimate includes real-time protection against malware and checks files when they’re downloaded or executed. Not surprisingly, they scored the same in our malware protection test.
Norton VPN Ultimate caught most malware samples on download. In a few cases, it identified the sample as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program), but it sent most samples straight to quarantine. When we launched the samples that reached the Downloads folder, Norton quarantined most of them instantly, prompting Windows to display an error message.
Norton VPN Ultimate detected 97% of samples, including all ransomware samples, and scored 9.7 out of 10. Tested with the same collection of samples, Malwarebytes Premium Security managed 99% detection and 9.8 points, while Sophos Home Premium reached a near-perfect 9.9 points.
When possible, we supplement our hands-on testing with results reported by five global antivirus testing labs. The official stance of the labs is that results apply only to the specific product tested, but Norton VPN Ultimate relies on the same antivirus engine as Norton 360 Deluxe, so we can infer that it would score the same.
It’s not too hard for an antivirus to get the attention of a single testing lab, but very few appear in reports from all five labs we follow. Norton and Avast are the only ones with five scores at present. Norton aced every test, so its aggregate lab score is a perfect 10. Avast managed an impressive 9.6. ESET Home Security Essential, Bitdefender Total Security, and Microsoft Defender caught the attention of four labs and scored 9.8, 9.6, and 9.3 points, respectively.
To assess how well the security system handles the very latest malware, we start with a feed of malware-hosting URLs from the London-based lab MRG-Effitas. We launch each URL in turn and note whether the security app prevents the browser from visiting it, deletes the dangerous download, or sits idly. Once we have 100 data points, we run the numbers.
Norton generally scores high in this test, but in the latest evaluation, Norton AntiVirus came in at a dismal 74%. When we re-ran the test using the supplied Norton Private Browser, the score rose to 91%. Given the disparity in scores, we had to run the test again with Norton VPN Ultimate. This time it scored 95%, in line with its usual high scores. It stopped about a quarter of the samples at the URL level, before they even reached the browser, and caught the rest during download.
That 95% is a good score, but 10 competitors beat it. These include Avira Prime, which scored a perfect 100% in its latest iteration of this test, as well as Aura, Emsisoft, Sophos Home Premium, and UltraAV, all of which achieved 99% protection.
Rather than trying to get past security and plant malware on your system, phishing sites do their best to trick you, the hapless user, into giving away your credentials. They mimic banks and other secure sites, hoping you’ll enter your username and password. When you do, the fraudsters own your account. Our phishing test uses hundreds of reported phishing sites, always the newest available.
Norton scored a solid 100% in this test, substantially better than the phishing protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. But it’s not lonely at the top. Nearly a dozen apps scored 100% in their latest phishing tests, among them AVG Internet Security, McAfee+, and Webroot Total Protection.
The consequences of your antivirus missing a botnet infestation or data-stealing Trojan aren’t great, but typically, an antivirus update wipes out the attacker within days, or even hours. With ransomware, that update is too little, too late. Your files are already encrypted, so there’s no benefit to eliminating the ransomware. Norton provides additional protection against ransomware by blocking all unauthorized changes to files in the Documents folder and other sensitive folders.
For testing, we disabled all other antivirus layers and released a dozen real-world ransomware samples that encrypt files. Norton’s protection proved spotty. A couple of samples encrypted some files in the Documents folder. Most of them encrypted files in non-protected folders, anywhere from a handful to 24,000. And several displayed scary ransom notes. Even so, this component does offer additional protection. And with all components enabled, Norton wiped out all the ransomware in a flash.
Like Norton 360 Deluxe and Norton AntiVirus Plus, Norton VPN Ultimate includes a full-featured firewall. Unlike Norton 360, the firewall is not installed by default. You must select the Security page, click Advanced Security, then click the Install Smart Firewall button. Be sure you do this—otherwise you’re not getting all the protection you paid for.
The firewall handles port scans and other internet attacks. It also puts your PC’s ports in stealth mode, meaning they’re not merely closed; they’re invisible. Do note that Windows Firewall does the same—any third-party firewall must at least match these features.
What you don’t get with Windows Firewall is application control, which refers to monitoring and controlling how apps running on your system use your network connection. Early personal firewalls relied on the user to decide whether to allow network access the first time any program attempted it. This resulted in confusion, at best.
In its default Smart Mode, Norton automatically configures network permissions for known good programs, and its reputation system knows a lot of programs. The antivirus component naturally eliminates known malicious programs.
To see this feature in action, we configured the firewall to prompt the user for advice the first time it sees a new program attempting network access. When we tried to connect using the off-brand browser, Norton described the attempted connection and offered several choices. We could allow or block all the app’s connections, just outbound connections, or connections to the exact port in use. And we could make the decision a one-shot, keep it active until reboot, or create a rule to remember it.
Most users should leave the firewall as it comes out of the box, which means they will rarely, if ever, see these pop-ups. As with the firewall in ZoneAlarm Extreme Security, pop-up alerts are rare. If you see an alert from the firewall, pay attention, as it’s probably significant.
Security protection isn’t effective if a random program can disable it. We verified that Norton’s Registry settings are hardened against tampering, and we couldn’t terminate its processes in Task Manager or with a third-party task-kill utility. Looking at its essential Windows services, we found that the option to stop them simply didn’t exist for most of them. We tried setting the startup type to Disabled for each one, but we got an Access Denied error. Surprisingly, the main VPN service wasn’t protected; we stopped it and set it to be disabled on startup.
On reboot, the VPN reported a problem and offered to self-repair. Alas, the self-repair didn’t work. We’d worry if the firewall or antivirus components could be disabled in this way. The VPN, not so much. Tech support would make quick work of fixing this problem if a consumer ran into it.
Norton’s firewall protection has long included detection of exploit attacks that target vulnerabilities in Windows and popular applications. Keeping Windows and your apps updated is a good defense against such attacks, but an active anti-exploit component covers that dangerous time between the discovery of a security hole and the corresponding security patch. To test this protection, we use about 30 exploit attacks generated by the Core Impact penetration tool. In its latest test, Norton actively detected and blocked 25% of attacks, part of a general downward trend in this test's scores. Because the virtual machine testbed is fully patched, none of the exploit attacks succeeded.
PureVPN, Surfshark, Windscribe, and a few other VPNs offer limited parental controls by blocking access to domains that host inappropriate content. With Norton, parental control is wholly separate from the VPN and vastly more effective. If you choose to install it, what you get is a full installation of Norton Family. We’ve covered that product separately, so we’ll simply summarize here.
You manage parental control through the My Norton console online. This is where you configure controls for each child and view activity reports. A small local agent on each device or Windows account belonging to the child enforces the house rules you create. The parental control system handles Windows, Android, and iOS, but not macOS. There’s no limit on the number of devices, and you can track up to 15 kids, which is surely sufficient.
For each child, you enter a name and pick an avatar (or use a picture). You choose one of four initial restriction levels: Very High, High, Moderate, or Low. You can change or fine-tune restrictions later in the My Norton console. Add a device belonging to the child, and you’re ready to go. You can add more devices in My Norton, and your settings apply to all your children’s devices.
Norton tracks about 40 potentially unwanted categories, pre-selecting banned categories based on the restriction level you chose. Depending on the restriction level, it either blocks all access to those categories or warns the child that continuing to the site will result in parental notification. You can fine-tune the category choices and, optionally, set the content filter to log access without a warning. Filtering works on any commercial browser.
Preventing accidental or deliberate visits to inappropriate sites is one main facet of most parental control systems, while controlling the child’s screen time is the other. Norton pre-configures time supervision based on the restriction level you select.
Some parental control apps just handle content filtering and time scheduling; Norton goes way beyond that. It can track app usage and control when (or whether) certain apps can be used. It enforces SafeSearch and tracks exactly what the little darlings are searching for. It can even monitor what videos they watch.
Installed on a mobile device, the parental control system can keep parents apprised of the child’s location. Parents can define known locations (for example, a school) and get notifications if the child’s device leaves that location.
Norton Family offers comprehensive parental supervision features. We admire its emphasis on supervision and dialogue—if you don’t get buy-in from your kids, they’ll probably defeat any controls you impose.
An antivirus app can keep malware from damaging your computer, but it can’t do a thing if a car crashes through your office window and lands on your computer. Nothing will bring back your smashed computer, but if you have a good set of backups, at least your files are safe. All apps in the Norton product line, starting with the standalone antivirus, include a backup system. With Norton VPN Ultimate, you get 50GB of cloud storage for your backups.
The installation process for Norton’s antivirus and security suite products offers the option to configure a basic system backup. With Norton VPN, you must open the Cloud Backup page and click the Back Up This PC button. By default, it backs up sensitive files, notes, and contacts to any location on your PC. It also backs up all files in the Desktop, Documents, Music, and Pictures folders. You can add any other folders where you routinely install important files. Once you’ve enabled cloud backup, Norton backs up your files to the cloud daily unless you disable automatic sync and trigger backups manually.
There’s just one backup job for the cloud, but you can define multiple backup jobs storing files on any local, network, or removable drive. You won’t find complicated settings here. Just identify the backup destination and the folders to back up. Restoring from a local or cloud backup is a simple matter of selecting the files to restore and choosing whether to place them in their original location or elsewhere.
As you visit websites, make online purchases, and participate in discussions, you leave behind traces of personal information. And when a data breach happens, even more of your personal information is exposed. Norton approaches protecting your private data in two ways. Dark Web Monitoring scans the dark web for your data, and Privacy Monitor seeks your data profile on data broker and aggregator websites. We’ve covered these features in detail in our review of Norton 360 Deluxe. Here’s a summary.
To get started with Dark Web Monitoring, you prime the system with personal data items such as email addresses, phone numbers, and driver’s licenses. It seeks out those personal data items on hacker sites and other dark web locations. If it finds your data in a breach of a particular website, it recommends changing your password for that site. You should review all historical breaches it identifies and follow the instructions to minimize the damage. And if the monitor pops up a new breach, deal with it immediately.
Unlike hackers and data stealers, the people behind data broker websites aren’t breaking any laws. They collect publicly available personal information and match up data items to create personal profiles. Some use the data to support people search sites, places you can pay a few bucks to look up a long-lost friend (or enemy). Others skip the consumer and sell those profiles to advertisers, researchers, or less savory customers, such as identity thieves. You can request the removal of your data from any of these brokers, but you have to know where to look.
Norton’s Privacy Monitor checks hundreds of broker sites and reports where it found your data. Unlike dedicated personal data removal apps like Optery and Privacy Bee, it doesn’t automate sending removal requests. It doesn’t even give you detailed instructions for DIY removal. What you get is a link to the broker site and some generic instructions.
You can get automated data removal from Norton, but doing so requires the separate purchase of Norton Privacy Monitor Assistant. At $109.99 per year, it costs nearly as much as the main Norton VPN Ultimate.
Norton VPN Ultimate is much more than a VPN; as such, the VPN privacy policy section doesn’t cover every interaction you may have with the application. Norton’s privacy overview is the more comprehensive document and covers all aspects of its desktop security apps, family tools, and password manager. While the policy is well-written and explains everything clearly, it can be overwhelming when you consider just how many apps are jam-packed into this Ultimate bundle. Each service has different data retention and interaction standards. For more on how your data is handled by the security products in the Ultimate bundle, you can read our detailed review of Norton 360 Deluxe.
Norton’s VPN has robust privacy standards that include quarterly transparency reports, a public no-logs policy, and annual third-party audits conducted by VerSprite. Some aggregated diagnostic data is retained, and Norton is transparent about the exact nature of the data and how long it is retained. Connection events detail successful and unsuccessful connections to servers and are kept for 12 months. Application events such as install, uninstall, and updates are logged for 18 months. Crash reports are opt-in and are kept for 90 days if a user chooses to share them.
We appreciate Norton's transparency with these figures. Many competitors don’t disclose the exact timeline for backend data retention, making it difficult to tell at a glance whether this retention is significant. We reach out to VPN representatives as part of our testing process and have found that Norton keeps crash reports longer than the average of one month. Norton also keeps aggregated bandwidth data for significantly longer than the one-month average across competitors. Despite being anonymized and aggregated, this information has never led to a user being identified. If this level of tracking is a concern, we recommend using IVPN, since it doesn’t retain any aggregated data.
The physical location of a VPN company also matters for user privacy. It determines which local laws and legislatures apply to (and regulate the VPN's policies regarding) the information it must retain about its customer base. Gen Digital, the parent company of Norton, is physically based in Tempe, Arizona. As of this writing, the United States doesn't have any laws requiring VPN companies to collect or retain user information.
To get an idea of how a VPN’s performance stacks up against the competition, we compare Ookla speed test results with the VPN active to those without it active to calculate the percent change. For a deeper dive into this (and our other testing procedures), check out how we test VPNs.
Norton performed well in our latest round of tests with a 16.60% decrease in download speeds, a 5.24% decrease in upload speeds, and an 86.89% increase in latency. You can see the latest results for all VPNs we test in the table below:
That said, we tend to warn against choosing a VPN solely based on its speed test results, since your experience will vary with several factors, including your proximity to the nearest server. The available features, overall value, and dedication to customer privacy should take priority when considering your purchase.
Licensing deals lead services like Netflix to restrict the shows that are broadcast in certain regions. A VPN can help give you access to your favorite shows, and Norton is no exception.
Norton didn't encounter any blocks or limited catalogs during our tests. The chart above shows which regions we tested and how every VPN we’ve evaluated has performed. For a deeper rundown of how we qualify these results, you can read our guide to unblocking Netflix with a VPN.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Norton)
Norton VPN Ultimate
- 5.0 - Exemplary: Near perfection, ground-breaking
- 4.5 - Outstanding: Best in class, acts as a benchmark for measuring competitors
- 4.0 - Excellent: A performance, feature, or value leader in its class, with few shortfalls
- 3.5 - Good: Does what the product should do, and does so better than many competitors
- 3.0 - Average: Does what the product should do, and sits in the middle of the pack
- 2.5 - Fair: We have some reservations, buy with caution
- 2.0 - Subpar: We do not recommend, buy with extreme caution
- 1.5 - Poor: Do not buy this product
- 1.0 - Dismal: Don't even think about buying this product
Read Our Editorial Mission Statement and Testing Methodologies.
Despite the name, Norton VPN Ultimate is much more than a VPN. This suite bundles an award-winning antivirus with a VPN and a bevy of tools to serve as an all-in-one security solution. Norton's antivirus is the standout software of the bunch with perfect scores from five labs. The VPN works well and covers the basics, but its lack of feature consistency across platforms and annual-only subscription model detracts from the overall experience. Ultimately, Editors' Choice winners like NordVPN and Proton VPN will better serve those looking for a more robust VPN offering, while anyone on the hunt for a more complete antivirus experience (with identical capabilities) can still find what they're looking for in Norton 360.
About Our Experts
When the IBM PC was new, I served as the president of the San Francisco PC User Group for three years. That’s how I met PCMag’s editorial team, who brought me on board in 1986. In the years since that fateful meeting, I’ve become PCMag’s expert on security, privacy, and identity protection, putting antivirus tools, security suites, and all kinds of security software through their paces.
Before my current security gig, I supplied PCMag readers with tips and solutions on using popular applications, operating systems, and programming languages in my "User to User" and "Ask Neil" columns, which began in 1990 and ran for almost 20 years. Along the way, I wrote more than 40 utility articles, as well as Delphi Programming for Dummies and six other books covering DOS, Windows, and programming. I also reviewed thousands of products of all kinds, ranging from early Sierra Online adventure games to AOL’s precursor Q-Link.
In the early 2000s, I turned my focus to security and the growing antivirus industry. After years of working with antivirus, I’m known throughout the security industry as an expert on evaluating antivirus tools. I serve as an advisory board member for the Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO), an international nonprofit group dedicated to coordinating and improving testing of anti-malware solutions.
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My writing journey started in 2012 and has taken me through various niches, but my main focus has always been on tech. I contributed to several growing PC hardware and software sites, focusing on gaming, peripherals, and privacy.
As the amount of information we put out on the internet has grown, so have the threats and the tools we use to combat them. With VPNs gaining traction in the late 2010s as a tool for the public instead of just an option for business security, I found myself reviewing countless options in this continuously changing landscape.
This led to my role before PCMag over at WizCase, where I honed my knowledge of VPNs and privacy tools and eventually oversaw all of the content produced. I led a talented team of fellow writers and editors to evaluate VPNs, password managers, antivirus, and parental controls.
