How to Unblock Netflix With a VPN

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If you're trying to view the latest hit Netflix show while traveling overseas, or you want to watch a show Netflix only provides on the other side of the globe, you're in for a tough time. But with a VPN service and a little persistence, you should be able to see most of what you want to watch wherever you are. We're here to show you how.

The Netflix You See Is Different from Netflix Abroad

It's easy to assume the video streaming services we watch are the same everywhere, but that's not true. What's available can vary wildly from country to country, as streaming services like Netflix make different agreements with the studios in specific markets. A good example is Rick & Morty: It used to be available on Netflix in the US, but now you need a Hulu or Max account to follow their misadventures due to local licensing deals between the streamers and Warner Brothers. However, people in Australia and several other countries can still enjoy their hijinks on Netflix.

Netflix subscribers can only watch libraries customized to the country they're connecting from. The company reads the IP address of your connection, determines your location via the location of that IP address, and presents a library filled with region-specific content. Each region has different deals with different studios, meaning no two Netflix libraries connecting from opposite ends of the world will be the same.

While those libraries will often share many shows, there will be just as many they don't share. The only way to ensure consistent access to your favorite shows, no matter where you're connecting from in the world, is to spoof your location using a VPN.

But of course, the engineers at Netflix thought of this workaround, too. Netflix blocks a VPN when it detects one, which the company does in a few ways. The easiest is to look for patterns in the traffic. If a group of IP addresses from the same server farm connect at all hours of the day, Netflix can examine the traffic to determine if it belongs to an individual customer or a VPN. If the system detects an IP address block as belonging to a VPN service, that block could be banned from Netflix altogether. The alternative is having your VPN's access quarantined to a Limited library, which we'll explain in more detail below.

The Best VPNs for Watching Netflix in the US

In writing this article, we considered two possible use cases for a VPN and Netflix. In the first case, you're traveling overseas and can't continue watching a show you started in your home country. That's a real problem, but we imagine just as many of you (if not more) are more interested in the second case—accessing Netflix content unavailable in their home countries.

This does raise a thorny question of ethics. Using a VPN for Netflix (or any other streaming service) and watching content the streamer already paid to license in another country is different from downloading copyrighted content without paying for it. After all, you are paying for Netflix. Regardless of how you feel about it, watching content that's unavailable in your home region still breaks the rules—even when it isn’t available in your country at any price.

How We Test Netflix on VPNs

For testing, we installed each VPN and attempted to access Netflix while connected to different servers. In these tests, we connected to VPN servers in Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK, and the US. While these are far from the only countries serviced by Netflix, we chose them due to the population of each respective market and the differences in their content licensing agreements.

For each VPN service, we used any unblocking tools the desktop application supports. We started with a Chrome browser that was signed into a single Netflix account and loaded a new Incognito window every time the VPN was connected to a new location. Each VPN was given five attempts to load the content from a specific location, and we used a different IP address each time. Sometimes, this meant switching to a different server in the same location. For others, it meant trying an entirely different location within the same country. If the VPN provides servers specifically for streaming, we tried those first.

What Is Blocked, Open, and Limited Streaming Access?

In testing, we found Netflix returned one of three different results. The first state is as if we are connected normally within a given country. We can see all the content available in that region's library and stream it without being blocked. We call this state Open.

The second state, in which trying to stream content generates an error message, is what we call Blocked.

The third state is a kind of limbo where we can only see and stream a subset of movies and shows, all of which are Netflix Originals. The options offered on the homepage change depending on the region, but upon searching, we only find the same selection of Originals. We denote this state as Limited.

Comparing our results from previous years with this year's, it's interesting to note that VPNs are now rarely Blocked outright; 20 of the 23 VPNs we evaluated were either Open or Limited in every region we tested. We found this to be the case most frequently on either Australian or Japanese VPN servers. Conversely, many of the VPNs we tested were Open in the US, the UK, and Canada.

While frustrating for people trying to access region-restricted content in Australia or Japan, this is an improvement for most customers trying to get around local Netflix restrictions. Netflix seems to be acknowledging it can't stop people from using VPNs outright and is instead choosing the lesser of two evils, giving you a reason to keep your monthly subscription going with enough Originals to choose from.

How Does a VPN Affect Netflix Playback?

Streaming video can take up some serious bandwidth, especially if you want HD quality or better. To get 4K video, Netflix recommends a connection that can sustain a 15Mbps download at minimum, while 1080p needs at least 5Mbps.

To get the speed results in the chart above, we recorded the percentage change between speeds without the VPN connected on an Intel NUC 13 Extreme Kit ('Raptor Canyon') benchmark PC and those with the VPN turned on. Note that your results will likely differ from these, as every VPN provider reports different bandwidth peaks depending on where you're connecting from, trying to connect to, and even the time of day.

For example, while we might have seen peak speeds in our tests, that's likely because many VPN providers host servers in Manhattan, where we also test from. However, if we wanted to stream a show in NYC that's only available in the UK, all the data we want to stream must hop between the UK and the US before it makes it to your device. Added distance often means slower speeds, and our results only reflect what you should expect on a local connection in high-population centers.

How to Unblock Netflix With a VPN

If you want to try this for yourself with the highest chance of success, you have a few options. The first is simply to use one of the servers the VPN provider has marked for streaming. VPN companies know their subscribers want to stream content, and several offer servers built specifically for streaming access in popular regions. These are the most likely to return Open libraries on the VPN's network.

The second is to purchase a static IP address. Instead of your IP address being obfuscated to whichever IP address is assigned to the VPN server, you'll have the same IP address every time you switch on your VPN. The downside is that you'll lose some anonymity. The static address is yours, and only yours, so savvy observers could easily correlate online activities to you directly. But because Netflix has an easier time banning IP access in blocks, a static IP could go much longer without being Blocked or Limited by the streamer. These can be pricey, though, so it's a bit of a risk if you're only concerned about streaming online content.

Once you've found the right server type, simply enable the VPN on your device and access Netflix as you normally would.

We should take a beat to say that accessing Netflix through a VPN is always, ultimately, a moving target. What works today could be banned tomorrow, and the only way to know for certain is to try it yourself. We recommend using a short-term subscription for VPNs, or better yet, a free trial, to test things out first. Just about every VPN offers steep discounts for long-term commitments, but if you start at least with a month-to-month plan, you can test how well it unblocks Netflix in the regions you want to watch from before locking in to a more expensive subscription.

When it comes to free VPNs, these are often the worst offenders for gaining Netflix access. As free servers are usually the most popular choice on the network of any VPN that offers them, their high usage patterns stand out like a sore thumb to Netflix. They use IP addresses that get blocked the most early and often, and likely won't be representative of the full unblocking experience you'd get with access to the paid servers offered by a VPN provider.

Editors' Note: Max Eddy contributed to this article.