Why we publish p95 instead of "up to 500 Mbps"
A short take on why honest metrics sell better than marketing puffery.
The "up to X Mbps" problem
Open any large VPN's site and you'll see: "up to 10 Gbps", "lightning-fast", "unlimited". The fine print says "depends on your ISP, device, and the phase of the moon".
The problem is that the maximum those numbers quote is what one user sees on an empty server in Frankfurt at 3am on a perfect network. Actual working conditions — peak hours, loaded server, mobile 4G — are several times slower.
What we publish instead
We publish p95 — the 95th percentile of speed across all users and all servers over the last 7 days. Meaning: "95% of users get at least this speed."
Example for the current Pro plan (as of 2026-04-01):
- p50 (median): 186 Mbps
- p95: 142 Mbps
- p99 (worst case): 88 Mbps
These update on the status page every hour from real client measurements.
Why it pays off
First, the anti-censorship VPN audience is paranoid — lie once and they won't buy at all. Second, honest metrics set a goal inside the team: p95 is an internal KPI that SRE owns.
What's next
We plan to break p95 down by region (US, EU, Asia) and connection type (home WiFi vs mobile). That'll help users pick a region for their specific scenario.