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Comparing two VPNs usually means comparing two companies. Often it does not, because one company owns both of them.
And there is a second layer underneath. Several of these parent companies also own the websites where people go to compare VPNs, which is a conflict the industry mostly discloses in small print.
Why This Matters Before Any Feature List
Jurisdiction follows the parent, not the brand. A provider that advertises a Panamanian or Caribbean base still answers, ultimately, to whoever owns it and to that owner’s home country.
Portfolio decisions override product decisions. Nord Security shut Atlas VPN down in April 2024 and moved roughly six million users to NordVPN. Nothing was wrong with the product; it simply stopped being the plan.
Two brands under one roof are not two opinions. When a comparison page pits them against each other, the loser and the winner bank in the same place.
The Map
Here is every provider we review, with the company above it.
| Provider | Parent | The parent also owns |
|---|---|---|
| NordVPN | Nord Security | Surfshark |
| Proton VPN | Proton Foundation | Nothing else in this list |
| Surfshark | Nord Security | NordVPN |
| ExpressVPN | Kape Technologies | CyberGhost, PIA, vpnMentor |
| Private Internet Access | Kape Technologies | ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, vpnMentor |
| CyberGhost | Kape Technologies | ExpressVPN, PIA, vpnMentor |
| Mullvad | Amagicom AB | Nothing else in this list |
| PureVPN | Gaditek | Ivacy, absorbed in 2024 |
| TunnelBear | McAfee | Nothing else in this list |
| Norton VPN | Gen Digital | Avast |
| Hotspot Shield | Point Wild | Betternet, UltraVPN, Comparitech |
| IPVanish | Ziff Davis | StrongVPN, Encrypt.me, PCMag, CNET |
| Windscribe | Windscribe Limited | Nothing else in this list |
| IVPN | IVPN Limited | Nothing else in this list |
| AirVPN | Independent, Italy | Nothing else in this list |
| TorGuard | VPNetworks LLC | Nothing else in this list |
| StrongVPN | Ziff Davis | IPVanish, PCMag, CNET |
| StrongVPN | Ziff Davis | IPVanish, Encrypt.me, PCMag, CNET |
| VyprVPN | Certida LLC, Texas | bought from Golden Frog in 2023 |
| PrivateVPN | Privat Kommunikation Sverige AB | one source names Miss Group, 2022 |
| ZoogVPN | Zoog Services, Greece | headquarters reported in Ukraine |
| FastestVPN | Independent, Cayman Islands | Nothing else in this list |
| PrivadoVPN | Private company, Iceland | moved from Switzerland in 2026 |
| Hide.me | eVenture Ltd, Malaysia | Nothing else in this list |
Kape Technologies holds three of them. ExpressVPN, CyberGhost and Private Internet Access, plus ZenMate. The company traded as Crossrider before its rebrand, and that business distributed adware. Two of the three we have compared directly, and they turned out to share an auditor as well as an owner.
Nord Security holds two. NordVPN and Surfshark, merged in February 2022. It held a third until 2024, when it closed Atlas VPN and moved the customers to NordVPN and kept separate teams, infrastructure and roadmaps.
The rest are singles inside larger firms. Ziff Davis owns IPVanish, Point Wild owns Hotspot Shield, Gen Digital owns Norton VPN, McAfee owns TunnelBear, and Gaditek owns PureVPN — having absorbed Ivacy into it in 2024 after a decade of denying the two were connected.
The Reviewers Have Owners Too
This is the part worth reading twice.
Kape owns vpnMentor, WizCase and SafetyDetectives. All three review VPNs, including the three that Kape sells.
Point Wild owns Comparitech and ProPrivacy, and it sells Hotspot Shield, Betternet and UltraVPN.
Ziff Davis owns PCMag and CNET, alongside IPVanish and StrongVPN. It also owns Ookla, whose Speedtest tool appears in a great many VPN speed articles, and the WLVPN platform behind more than a hundred resold VPN services — so one company supplies the product, the measuring tool and the review.
⚠️ Nord Security owns no review site, which is the cleanest position among the large groups. The nuance is that Cybernews discloses that its owner, Mediatech, is backed by Nord Security’s founders — a funding link rather than ownership, and disclosed either way.
These relationships are published, usually on the review sites themselves. Nobody is hiding them; they are simply easy to miss at the bottom of a page you skimmed.
What This Does Not Mean
Being owned by a group is not a finding against a product, and we should be exact about that.
Audits still count. ExpressVPN’s KPMG work and PIA’s court record both happened under Kape, and neither has been undermined — what an audit proves and what it does not is a separate page.
Separate infrastructure is a real claim. Nord Security and Surfshark stated theirs, and independent examination has not contradicted it.
A review site with an owner can still be accurate. Disclosure is what makes it checkable, and the large ones do disclose.
⚠️ The honest version is narrower. Ownership tells you who decides the roadmap, who benefits from a recommendation, and which country’s courts sit above the marketing. It does not tell you whether the encryption works.
The Independents
Several of the providers we review answer to nobody with a competing brand.
Proton VPN has been controlled by the non-profit Proton Foundation since June 2024. That structure is unusual and it is publicly documented — though its jurisdiction is a separate question, and currently an open one.
Mullvad is owned by its two founders, fifty per cent each, with no outside capital.
Windscribe is self-funded, and describes its users as its principal investors.
IVPN went one step further. It has no parent, no sibling brand, and no affiliate programme at all — so nobody writing about VPNs earns anything by recommending it.
TorGuard is bootstrapped as well. Over a decade old, no outside investors, still run by its founder — and the only provider on this list to have been sued by twenty-five film studios.
⚠️ Independence is a structure, not a score. Mullvad is excellent and independent; plenty of independent providers are neither. Read it as one signal beside audits, jurisdiction and price.
Where We Sit
Fair questions deserve an answer about us as well.
VPNFin is independent and owns nothing. No VPN company owns us, we own no VPN, and we run no testing lab.
We earn affiliate commissions when readers buy through our links, which is stated at the top of every page on this site and set out in full on our disclosure page.
We do not test; we read. Audit reports, court filings, pricing pages and published measurements from named laboratories — our method is described in full, including what it cannot tell you.
⚠️ Which means we cite sources owned by VPN sellers. CNET’s speed measurements belong to Ziff Davis, which sells IPVanish and StrongVPN; Comparitech belongs to Point Wild, which sells Hotspot Shield. We name both rather than laundering the figures through a phrase like “independent testing”.
⚠️ Our top five contains two Kape brands and two Nord Security brands. We rank by score rather than by parent, and the ranking is what it is, but you should know that before reading it.
How We Research
This page draws on Tom’s Guide for the Ziff Davis and Mullvad ownership details, on Comparitech for the IPVanish acquisition chain through StackPath and j2 Global, on FrankVPN and PrivacyProof for the consolidated map including the review sites each group owns and the Cybernews funding disclosure, on Cloudwards and Nord Security’s own announcement for the February 2022 merger and the Atlas VPN shutdown, on VPNVertex and vpnMentor’s own disclosure for the Kape holdings, and on Mullvad’s and Windscribe’s published ownership statements. Corporate structures change without notice, so treat every line here as accurate on the date shown rather than permanently. Where our own tables and an outside source disagree, we use ours.
VPN Ownership FAQ
Kape Technologies owns all three, along with ZenMate. The company was called Crossrider before rebranding, and that earlier business distributed adware. Kape also owns the review sites vpnMentor, WizCase and SafetyDetectives, which disclose the relationship on their own pages.
They share a parent. Surfshark merged with Nord Security in February 2022, and both stated the brands would keep separate teams, infrastructure and product roadmaps. Nord Security also shut down Atlas VPN in April 2024, migrating roughly six million users to NordVPN.
Several. Proton VPN has been controlled by the non-profit Proton Foundation since June 2024, Mullvad is owned equally by its two founders with no outside capital, Windscribe is self-funded, IVPN runs no affiliate programme at all, and TorGuard has been bootstrapped for over a decade.
Several do. Kape owns vpnMentor, WizCase and SafetyDetectives; Point Wild owns Comparitech and ProPrivacy; Ziff Davis owns PCMag and CNET alongside IPVanish. Each discloses the relationship, though usually in a place readers skip.
No, and treating it that way would be wrong. Audits, court records and infrastructure claims stand or fall on their own evidence. Ownership tells you who sets the roadmap, who profits from a recommendation, and whose courts sit above the marketing.
The Verdict
Two groups account for five of the providers we review, and five more sit inside firms whose main business is something else. Ownership is one of the five criteria in our privacy ranking, and it is the reason two audited providers do not appear there. Our main ranking states it inside each entry rather than in a footnote.
The sharper point is the second layer. Four of these parents also own websites that review VPNs, so the shortlist and the reviewer sometimes share a bank account.
None of that decides a purchase on its own. It decides how you read the recommendation, which is a different and more useful thing.