While the term "VPN" might make you think of commercial services that allow you to hide your IP address and browse anonymously, Radmin VPN offers something different. Although it’s getting a lot of discussion in VPN circles as a free VPN, it’s not actually the same tool you’d get as when you subscribe to a service on our best free VPN list.
Instead, Radmin VPN is a tool that enables you to create your own private virtual local area network for activities like gaming and file sharing. Technically, Radmin VPN is a type of virtual private network, but it doesn’t function like a traditional VPN.
To give you a better idea of what Radmin VPN does (and doesn’t) do, I’ll be evaluating it on several fronts: pricing, privacy, performance, streaming, app coverage, and additional features. Read on and you’ll see how Radmin VPN compares to the rest of the VPN market.
Pricing
Radmin VPN is actually completely free to download and use. Unlike most free VPNs that subsidize your usage by selling ad space or collecting and selling your data, Radmin VPN is a truly free piece of software. This is possible because it integrates into Famatech’s Radmin suite, which is a remote access administration tool. The total suite is sold at $49 per computer license, with discounts available for bulk purchases. However, Radmin VPN itself is free to use.
Generally, I’d caution against using free VPNs. While it seems like Radmin VPN is safe to use, most free VPN providers make you pay for the service by inserting intrusive ads into either your VPN app or your browsing traffic, meaning that marketing companies have both a direct avenue to serve you ads and a pretty good idea of what you’re doing online.
I’ve also seen some free VPNs subsidize their services by selling your bandwidth to a third party (or directing other VPN users through your connection), and the worst ones just straight up harvesting and selling your data to third parties.
Privacy and logging
A good commercial VPN should protect your internet traffic from snooping hackers and surveillance from your ISP. There’s two ways you can be sure a VPN really does this: strong encryption, and an audited no-logs policy. The encryption makes sure nobody outside your VPN provider can read your traffic, and the no-logs policy makes sure nobody inside your VPN provider is tracking or storing your data.
As Radmin VPN is not a commercial VPN, it lacks many of the privacy protections that other VPNs offer, such as IP address masking and full traffic encryption. Instead, Radmin VPN creates a virtual local area network allowing you to connect with other computers as if they were on the same local network, bypassing the internet. The connections you make over Radmin VPN are covered by AES-256 encryption to ensure they can’t be snooped on, but that won’t cover all of your internet traffic.
As far as logging goes, Radmin VPN claims a no-logs policy that doesn’t record any of your internet traffic or passwords while using the service. It’s hard to say how legitimate this guarantee is, as it hasn’t been audited by a third-party. However, Famatech is headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, which is a privacy-friendly jurisdiction. Ultimately, while I think it’s doubtful Radmin VPN would be logging your data, I think it’s another reason you should check out Meshnet instead.
You should be aware that there are some security issues you might have to take into account when using Radmin VPN. Since devices on a local network are often deemed more trustworthy than internet devices, this can potentially allow hackers to bypass your firewall and deploy threats that might otherwise be blocked by your ISP or computer security policies.
You also may be aware already that some virus scanners will flag Radmin VPN as riskware. Radmin VPN itself is not inherently harmful, but will sometimes be deployed on your computer by hackers who already have a foothold to facilitate further exploitation of your network. If Radmin VPN suddenly appears on your computer, you should definitely start running virus scans.
Performance
Radmin VPN works differently to a normal VPN in that it doesn’t encrypt all of your internet traffic. It just provides a portal to other devices across the internet you want to interact with. Therefore, most of the time Radmin VPN is going to have no impact on your top internet speeds whatsoever. It’s only when you run a program through Radmin VPN that you’ll run into any speed caps. This isn’t surprising, as most free VPNs limit your bandwidth to encourage you to upgrade your subscription and reduce the impact of free users on the service.
Radmin VPN is capped at 100Mbps when you’re communicating with another device, which is more than good enough for file-sharing or gaming but might be a little restrictive if you’re working from an office and can’t quite hit the top speeds on your internet connection.
It’s worth noting that NordVPN has a similar feature called Meshnet which doesn’t have any of the speed caps associated with Radmin VPN. Although you might take a slight performance hit due to the encryption on NordVPN, you’ll get overall faster speeds if you have a connection above 100Mbps. To get an idea of exactly how fast NordVPN is, you can check out our fastest VPN page for more.
Streaming
Most VPN providers claim they can unblock a variety of streaming services, but it’s hard to know who is telling the truth and who is inflating their marketing claims. We usually test these claims by connecting to the VPN and trying out streaming services such as Netflix in the US, UK, Canada, Japan, and Australia, as well as BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Channel 4, ITVX, 10play, and 9Now.
However, as mentioned earlier, Radmin VPN does not offer traditional VPN capabilities. Therefore, it cannot be used to unblock any streaming services.
Apps
Radmin VPN has a basic, no-frills app that gets the job done. It’s not particularly flashy, but it doesn’t need to be. You can easily create a new network from the drop-down menu and see which VLAN you’re already connected to from the main interface. There’s also hundreds of pre-made gaming networks already set up if you’re looking to run a LAN game over the internet.
It’s pretty self-explanatory if you’ve ever used a VLAN tool before, but it’s not friendly for first time users at all. It’s also only available on Windows 7 onwards, so you’re out of luck if you’re running MacOS or Linux. Unless you know what you’re doing with Radmin VPN, I’d steer clear and look at something a little more user-friendly like Meshnet (which works on all desktop OSes, as well as Android and iOS).
Extra features
VPN providers need to go above and beyond to justify their subscription prices, as most have perfected the standard VPN services. Many of the best VPNs now offer various privacy protocols to stay ahead of the competition.
While Radmin VPN doesn’t provide traditional VPN services, it does come with a built-in firewall for its gaming networks, filtering out some of the security risks associated with allowing random devices onto your local area network.
Should you get Radmin VPN?
Radmin VPN is not a bad product, but its name is a little misleading. If you're searching for a commercial VPN to block your IP or encrypt your data, you'll be disappointed. There are many VPN services out there that are both far more secure and offer a much wider range of features while also allowing you to create the same VLAN environment you’d get using Radmin VPN. Simply put, you’d be best off considering a VPN from our best VPN list instead of Radmin VPN.
However, before you check out those I’d recommend you give NordVPN a shot as it’s the #1 on our list. As I’ve mentioned before, the Meshnet feature in NordVPN does basically the same thing as Radmin VPN, except it also uses the same military-grade encryption as the rest of NordVPN’s servers.
Not only that, but it’s also incredibly fast and unblocks nearly every streaming service, including some obscure ones I haven’t seen elsewhere. This is all thanks to NordVPN’s global server presence, with multiple locations in over 100 different countries. I could go on, but you can try it out for yourself with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
