With these results, you won’t notice any download or upload speed loss in regular use. Atlas VPN is more than fast enough for streaming and torrenting large files.
International Speed Test Results
We also measured Atlas VPN’s speeds when connected to premium servers in different continents around the world.
In general, the further away a VPN server is, the slower the speeds will be. However, we make sure to measure these as international speed performance is key for unblocking geo-restricted content libraries.
As you can see from our results, Atlas VPN is fast in every location. Its performance in the US was particularly impressive, with barely any speed loss. This meant we could stream US Netflix with ease.
Download speeds were slower in Japan and Australia, but still above what we typically see – even from more established VPNs that cost a lot more.
Upload speeds dropped significantly in some locations, as much as 79% in Australia. That said, upload speed is far less important on international connections than it is on local ones. However, it performed better on cloud gaming services. As these are streamed, Atlas VPN’s fast download speeds made the experience almost identical to when we played locally on the device.
We were also able to access geo-blocked cloud gaming services, like Google Stadia and Xbox Game Pass.
Atlas VPN’s Ping Is Too High for Gaming
We found that Atlas VPN is too laggy for gaming on faraway servers. We tested the VPN when connected to a server in New Jersey to access a US gaming lobby.
Our ping increased from 1ms to 82ms, which was far too high for fast-paced games like CS:GO. This is much worse than the best gaming VPNs, like ExpressVPN and Windscribe. These VPNs have an average ping of 3ms, making them better options for lag-free online gaming.
Atlas VPN Free Speed Tests
Atlas VPN Free is fast for a free VPN service. In our tests, we measured a speed loss of just 3% when connected to our nearest server location in the Netherlands. As it stands, this is the fastest local speed result of any free VPN we’ve tested.
However, as there are only two countries that you can connect to, your experience will vary significantly based on where you are. For example, if you’re located in Japan, your nearest Atlas VPN free server is 8,000 miles away, which will cause slower and less reliable speeds.
Here are the full results we recorded when connecting to all three Atlas VPN Free server locations from London, UK with a 100Mbps internet connection:
Server Location Download Speed (Mbps) Upload Speed (Mbps) Ping (ms) Distance (miles) No VPN 100 100 1 0 mi Netherlands 96.61 95.72 17 328 mi US (New York) 49.63 22.66 115 3,459 mi US (Los Angeles) 72.75 18.10 148 5,437 mi
Atlas VPN Free’s international speeds are above what we expect from a free service, but it doesn’t come close to its premium speeds.
Atlas VPN told us that it does not throttle its free servers and that all of its free servers are identical to its premium ones. As a result, the slower speeds we experienced can only be down to server congestion. This is when too many people have connected to a server at once.
What stood out from our results is that, despite being further away from us, the Los Angeles server repeatedly outperformed the New York server. As more users instinctively connect to New York, this further suggests that Atlas VPN’s free servers have an issue of overcrowding.
Unfortunately, unlike other free VPNs, like Windscribe and Proton VPN, the Atlas VPN app doesn’t provide any information about server load nor does it have multiple servers to connect to in these locations.
In a future update, we’d like Atlas VPN to provide more server options for free users. Or at the very least, provide information about server load so users can manually connect to a less-congested server.
