IPTV has made it easier than ever to get the television you want over the internet, without dealing with a long-term and expensive cable contract or the hassle of setting up an antenna.
and while IPTV offers a lot of upsides in comparison to traditional cable TV subscriptions it also comes with some downsides that can make your experience frustration, to say the least.
ISP throttling, buffering, and blockage of the streams can turn the convenience of IPTV into a nightmare while watching your favorite shows or sports events.
Why do I need a VPN while streaming IPTV?
You might think, the VPN is useful only if you’re traveling and want to watch some content that’s geo-restricted and while it is indeed useful in these cases but for typical use of IPTV the VPN is a necessity.
all internet service providers around the world censor your web browsing, and they will throttle your connection ( throttling means blocking services or reducing your connection speeds based on the content you stream )
and this, unfortunately, happens a lot with IPTV where they can block/reduce your connection speed at peak times or all the time whenever they want especially since some ISPs do it as a way to force you to buy their cable subscriptions.
The VPN is useful to protect yourself as well since sometimes it can be hard to define if an IPTV provider has the proper licensing for the TV channels and while you should do your research to make sure your provider has the proper licensing it’s better to be safe then sorry and use a VPN either way because if you unknowingly stream from illegal services your IP address can be tracked by the law enforcement which can cause you some serious trouble.
Note: IPTVSOS doesn’t sell IPTV streams or support illegal usage.
What is the best VPN service for IPTV?
The better question here is do all VPN services work well with IPTV? and the obvious answer is no, there are even some cases where the VPN service blocks the connection ( I tested many services and this happened with many of them )
What we need the most from the VPN is high encryption which helps secure your connection and bypass any throttling from your internet service provider.
Normally most premium VPN services will say that they pass your internet traffic into an encrypted VPN tunnel, the issue here is not all of these VPN services have strong enough encryption, and many times your ISP will still be able to throttle your connection even while you’re using a VPN.
IPTV also requires a lot of bandwidth because you’re streaming large videos, and this automatically excludes any free VPN services since they can’t offer you this.
in the many years of streaming IPTV, I have tested many VPN services, and after launching this blog I started testing many others below you will find a list of VPN services that I have tested and used ( be aware that some well-known VPN services can cause issues, in my case I found that Windscribe and other services caused issues while streaming I will be posting another article about the worst VPN services for IPTV. )
keep in mind that all the services I mentioned below, I have personally used and tested, all links below are affiliate links that come with the best discounts available when you purchase through my links you directly support my blog to keep improving the content.
Best VPN services for IPTV: keep in mind that it’s best to go with VPN services that have servers in your country or neighbor countries the closest to your location the best.
1 – ExpressVPN (with 160 servers in 94 countries )
This is my top recommendation as I have been using it for the past two years and it never disappointed me even though, my ISP is well known to block IPTV streams. this affiliate link comes with the best discount ( you will get 49% off + 3 additional months for free )
2 – NordVPN: with more than 5200 servers in 60+ countries
Another great option especially since they have more VPN servers. there are more than 5200 servers available across 60+ countries. what I like most about NordVPN is their availability on more devices, for intense you will need to sideload ExpressVPN on a Chromecast with google TV while NordVPN has an optimized app for TVs already available for installation in the play store. with my Affiliate link, you will get ( 68% off )
Conclusion
With more and more ISPs around the world applying restrictions on IPTV and throttling the streams using the best VPN service has become a necessity to securely stream your favorite channels buffering free.