VPNs and streaming: what you should know before Black Friday

Black Friday – the big post-Thanksgiving sales jamboree – is an excellent time to upgrade your TV streaming on the cheap. Yes, that could involve looking for Fire TV Stick bargains or browsing the best Black Friday streaming deals, but it can also involve improving what you already have with the help of a VPN.

With the best Black Friday VPN deals, you'll be able to snap up the best VPN to help you unlock a wealth of region-locked content and make your streaming subscriptions go further than ever. But before you look for the cheapest Black Friday VPN deal you can find, there are a few things you need to know about using such services for streaming.

How VPNs unblock streaming sites

So how can a VPN improve your streaming experience? It all comes down to how streaming companies operate across global markets. A user opening Netflix in Osaka will get a very different set of shows to stream than someone opening it up in, say, Michigan.

There are a number of possible reasons for this, from regional tastes (there’s no point in showing English-speaking audiences foreign content that 99% of the audience won’t want) to licensing quirks (the streamer may own the rights to broadcast a show in the U.K, but not in the U.S, for example).

But, by spoofing your current geographical location to a different one, VPNs can get around this, making the streamer think you’re anywhere from London to Cape Town. In other words, you can watch whatever you want from a service, wherever you are.

For obvious reasons, companies like Netflix would prefer you didn’t do this, and have tried to crack down, but the best VPNs obscure themselves in ways that consistently remain undetected in the ongoing game of cat and mouse.

The best streaming VPNs

With streaming platforms trying to prevent users from seeing content from other regions, not all VPNs are created equal. As you might imagine, free VPNs consistently struggle to bypass streaming services’ blocks, and even if you have one that works now, you may find it fails at a later date, just as you’ve got invested in a show. Not ideal.

Fortunately, our testing has revealed three paid providers that have everything you could want from a streaming VPN: NordVPN, Surfshark and ExpressVPN.

What makes these three stand out above the competition? Well, first, they’re able to unblock both regional and global streaming services without fuss. They’re easy to use, and consistently provide users with unfettered access to Netflix libraries around the world.

But perhaps equally importantly, they do so without impacting speeds, meaning you won’t suffer from buffering issues while you’re streaming.

Is it illegal to use a VPN while streaming?

Unless you’re in a repressive country where VPNs are banned as a matter of course (think China, Russia, North Korea, etc.) using one to access streaming sites is perfectly legal.

But just because it’s permitted in the eyes of the law, doesn’t mean that the streaming sites you’re using will be terribly pleased, and it’s very likely against the terms and conditions you skipped over when you signed your contract.

If that’s the case, that means that you can theoretically be banned if detected – though it’s more likely it simply won’t work and you’ll be asked politely to turn it off (cutting off paying customers is very much a last resort!).

Black Friday VPN deals

The good news is that every single service listed in our guide to the best streaming VPNs has some kind of discount available this Black Friday.

Though you may (understandably!) wish to subscribe to the cheapest option available, we’ve listed them in the same order of preference that you can see on that page at the time of writing. So as a rough rule of thumb, this is in order of performance, but as all are recommended, a good price may legitimately trump quality for you.

• NordVPN: $2.99 per month
• Surfshark: $1.99 per month
• ExpressVPN: $4.99 per month
• Proton VPN: $2.99 per month
• PIA: $2.03 per month

Black Friday streaming service deals

What about streaming services you can use with your new shiny VPN? Here’s a selection of solid Black Friday deals on streaming services that you may want to check out.

• Hulu: first month free @ Hulu
• AMC+: first two months $2.50 w/Prime
• STARZ/Prime bundle: first two months $5.50 w/ Prime
• Paramount+/Prime bundle: first two months $5.98 w/ Prime
• DAZN: 50% off all plans @ DAZN
• Sling TV: 50% off first month @ Sling
• Disney+/Hulu/Max bundle: was $51 now $29 per month at Hulu
• Fubo 1-month subscription: was $79 now $49 @ Fubo
• Max: $41 off Ultimate Ad-Free plan @ Max
• YouTube TV: $46 off first two months @ YouTube

Streaming VPNS: bottom line