NordVPN vs ExpressVPN vs Mullvad: An Honest Comparison for Australians
I’ll start with the line that should tell you everything about how this comparison is going to go: one of the three VPNs I’m about to recommend pays me nothing. No affiliate commission, no referral fee, nothing — because Mullvad refuses to run that kind of program at all. I’m recommending it anyway, because for the right person it’s the best of the three. Keep that in mind as you read the rest.
These aren’t the only VPNs worth using — I rank a wider field in the best VPN for Australia guide. But these three come up constantly in head-to-head searches, and they’re worth comparing directly because each represents a genuinely different philosophy about what a VPN should be. Pick the one whose philosophy matches yours and you’ll be happy. Pick on a discount code alone and you might not be.
Three different answers to the same question
The useful thing about these three is that they’re not really competing on the same axis. They’re three different answers to “what should a VPN prioritise?”
NordVPN is the all-rounder. It wants to be fast, feature-rich, and good value on a long-term plan, and it largely succeeds. It’s the one I’d hand to someone who wants a capable VPN that does everything reasonably well without making them think too hard.
ExpressVPN is the premium option. It charges more and positions itself as the polished, reliable, it-just-works choice — strong apps, consistent performance, easy for non-technical users. The price is the catch, and so is one ownership question I’ll get to.
Mullvad is the privacy purist. It doesn’t care about being the fastest or the cheapest or the most feature-packed. It cares, almost obsessively, about collecting as little information about you as humanly possible — and on that single axis, nothing else here comes close.
How I actually evaluate a VPN
Before the head-to-head, here’s the lens. Marketing pages shout about server counts and streaming unblocks; those matter least. What actually determines whether a VPN is worth trusting comes down to a few things.
Jurisdiction. Where is the company legally based, and what can a government there compel it to do? A VPN in a country with aggressive data-sharing arrangements is structurally weaker than one that isn’t, no matter what its marketing says.
No-logs posture — and proof of it. Every VPN claims a no-logs policy. The ones worth trusting back the claim with independent audits, and ideally with a track record of those claims being tested in the real world. A promise is marketing; an audit is evidence.
Ownership and track record. Who owns the company, and how have they behaved? A VPN is a company you’re routing all your traffic through — its incentives and history matter as much as its software.
Protocol and performance. Modern VPNs are built on lean, fast protocols. The newer WireGuard-based options run rings around the older ones, and all three of these have a strong modern protocol — so for most people, real-world speed differences are smaller than the marketing implies.
Price model. Not just the headline number, but the shape of it — flat and honest, or a low teaser that balloons on renewal?
The comparison at a glance
| NordVPN | ExpressVPN | Mullvad | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philosophy | Capable all-rounder | Polished premium | Privacy purist |
| Jurisdiction | Panama (outside major alliances) | British Virgin Islands | Sweden (inside 14 Eyes) |
| Independent audits | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Account model | Standard email signup | Standard email signup | Anonymous account number — no email needed |
| Price shape | Cheap on long plans, higher on renewal | Premium, consistent | Flat monthly rate, no discounts ever |
| Pays me a commission | Yes | Yes | No |
| Best for | Most people wanting value + features | Those who’ll pay for polish | Privacy maximalists |
A note on the jurisdiction row, because it looks like it damns Mullvad: Sweden being inside an intelligence-sharing alliance is a real mark against it on paper. But jurisdiction only matters to the extent the company has data to hand over. Mullvad’s whole design is to hold almost nothing about you — so the jurisdiction question, while legitimate, bites less than it would for a provider that knows who you are. That tension is the whole story of this comparison.
NordVPN — the sensible default
NordVPN is what I’d recommend to most people, most of the time, and the reasons are unglamorous: it’s fast, it’s reliable, its apps are good on every platform, and on a longer plan it’s genuinely good value. Its modern protocol is quick enough that you’ll forget it’s running, which is exactly what you want.
It’s based in Panama, outside the major intelligence-sharing alliances, which is a structural point in its favour. It’s been independently audited more than once. It’s worth being honest that it had a server-related security incident some years back involving a single compromised server — the company’s handling and subsequent hardening are part of why I still trust it, but I’d rather you hear it from me than discover it later and wonder why I didn’t mention it.
Choose NordVPN if you want one capable VPN that does everything well, you’re comfortable on a longer plan to get the value, and you don’t want to think hard about it. For the majority of Australians, this is the right answer.
ExpressVPN — premium, with one caveat
ExpressVPN earns its reputation for polish. The apps are excellent, performance is consistent, and it’s about as close to “install it and never think about it” as this category gets. It’s based in the British Virgin Islands, a privacy-friendly jurisdiction, and it’s been independently audited. Its servers run from RAM rather than disk, which is a genuinely good design choice for limiting what can persist.
The caveat I owe you: ExpressVPN is owned by a larger parent company, and parts of the privacy community view that parent’s history with some caution. I don’t think that makes ExpressVPN a bad choice — the product remains strong and the audits are real — but it’s the kind of thing a thoughtful buyer should know and weigh for themselves rather than have glossed over.
Choose ExpressVPN if you value polish and reliability above price, you want the smoothest possible experience for yourself or less-technical family members, and the ownership question doesn’t trouble you once you’ve looked into it. You’re paying a premium, and you do get something for it.
Mullvad — the one that pays me nothing
And here’s the one I keep coming back to personally. Mullvad has made privacy-maximalism its entire identity, and the result is a service that behaves unlike anything else in this comparison.
You don’t sign up with an email. You’re handed an account number, and that’s your whole identity — no name, no address, nothing tying the account to you. The price is a flat monthly rate that never changes; there are no discount codes, no Black Friday sales, no “70% off your first year” funnels, because the company has decided that pressure-selling privacy is a contradiction. It’s been independently audited, and its design goal throughout is to hold as little about you as it possibly can.
And, as I said at the top, it runs no affiliate program. I earn nothing if you choose it. I’m telling you about it because for a certain kind of person — someone for whom privacy is the entire point — it’s simply the most principled option here, and leaving it out to push something that pays me would make a liar of the whole site.
Choose Mullvad if privacy is your actual priority rather than a nice-to-have, you don’t need hand-holding, and you’d rather pay a fair flat price to a company that treats privacy as a principle than a discounted one to a company that treats it as a feature.
The Australian angle
Why does any of this read differently from Townsville than from Texas?
The core reason is the one I laid out in the VPN pillar: under Australia’s data-retention regime, your ISP keeps records of your connection metadata. A VPN doesn’t make that regime disappear — it moves the trust. Instead of your Australian ISP being the party with visibility, you’ve chosen the VPN provider to hold that position instead. That’s why which provider, and which jurisdiction, matters so much: you’re not eliminating the trust question, you’re deciding who you’d rather trust with it. All three of these are based outside Australia, which is the point.
The practical note is speed. Distance to a server costs you performance, so for day-to-day use you’ll want a provider with a solid presence in Sydney or Melbourne. All three have Australian servers; the modern protocols they run keep the speed hit modest for local browsing.
If you also run a home lab
One distinction worth nailing down, because people genuinely confuse these: a commercial VPN like the three here is not the same thing as the self-hosted WireGuard tunnel you might run to reach your own home network. The commercial VPN is for privacy and unblocking — hiding your traffic from your ISP and appearing elsewhere. The self-hosted tunnel is for reaching your own services remotely, and it gives you none of the privacy benefits. If you self-host, you’ll likely want both, for different jobs. Don’t expect one to do the other’s work.
The bottom line
There’s no single winner here, and any comparison that crowns one is selling you something. There’s the right answer for you.
For most people: NordVPN. Fast, capable, good value, sensible jurisdiction. The default that won’t let you down.
For those who’ll pay for polish: ExpressVPN. The smoothest experience in the category, premium price, one ownership question to satisfy yourself on first.
For privacy purists: Mullvad. The most principled option here, the strongest data-minimisation posture, and the one that earns me nothing — which is exactly why you can trust me when I say it’s the right pick for the right person.
Match the philosophy to yourself rather than chasing a discount, and all three are genuinely good. That’s the honest version of this comparison, and it’s the only kind worth writing.
This article contains affiliate links. Where a link is marked as an affiliate link, Plain Text Security may earn a commission if you sign up — at no extra cost to you, and it never changes what gets recommended. Mullvad is recommended here without an affiliate link. See our affiliate disclosure for the full picture.
