I torrent (on the same PC that I run a Plex server from), but also auto connect on my devices whenever I’m on public wifi, so speed and avoiding blocks/captchas is also important. From what I understand having port forwarding will make a big difference in my torrent transfer speeds and ability to connect to peers.
I’m currently using Nord, but I’d like to make the switch to a company with a better privacy track record. I’m still really drawn to PIA because of the speeds and port forwarding, but I know their ownership is pretty sketchy, even if there’s nothing to point to there (yet). Mullvad dropped port forwarding, which seems to leave ProtonVPN. But now I’m hearing that the influx of Russian users post-invasion has increased the number of sites and services that block PVPN servers?
It seems like despite the huge amount of choices, nothing checks all the boxes except PIA. Am I missing something, or misinformed?
I’ll see if I bookmarked it but there was a site with a bunch of VPNs listed with their privacy/functionality compared. Using it as a reference I ended up on Mullvad VPN. Super simple set up for the basic stuff with some more functionality under the hood if you need. iOS and windows app for quick set up too. My experience with them has been only positive so far.
Idk if this was the article you were thinking of, but I used this article from torrentfreak and also settled on Mullvad. I’ve been subscribed for years, they’re great and pretty cheap.
Edit: I reread your post and realized that you’re looking for a VPN with port forwarding. Frankly, I trust Mullvad enough at this point that if they removed port forwarding as a feature, then I assume that feature is probably just a bad idea for VPNs in general.
I need a VPN with port forwarding because I want to host game servers behind a CG/NAT. So there’s at least one reason why they should still be featured.
I think hosting something and wanting inbound traffic through a VPN is a pretty unusual use case.