IVPN vs Mullvad: two no-email VPNs you can pay in Monero
Published 5 Nov 2026
IVPN vs Mullvad for people paying in Monero: account model, logs, audits, price and what each checkout keeps. Plus cryptostorm, the token option.
If you are weighing IVPN vs Mullvad and plan to pay in Monero, both pass the test many VPNs fail: neither asks for an email, both generate a random account for you, and both take XMR into a wallet they run themselves. The differences come after checkout: price, refunds, protocols, and what each company keeps about your payment. Here they are row by row, with cryptostorm as a third option for people who want no account at all.
Checked on 1 October 2026.
Why pay for a VPN in Monero
A VPN moves trust from your ISP to the VPN company. A good one keeps no activity logs, but it still knows that somebody paid for the account, and the payment is the easiest place for an anonymous VPN setup to leak.
Pay by card and the processor holds card details that lead straight to your name. Pay by PayPal and, as Mullvad's own privacy policy lists, the VPN can see your name, email address, country and a transaction ID. Bitcoin sits on a public ledger: if the coins came from an exchange that verified you, the path from your passport to the VPN's address can be followed on-chain.
Monero hides the sender, the receiver and the amount of every transaction by default (getmonero.org). Mullvad and IVPN both accept it directly, with their own node and wallet and no processor in between. If you do not hold any yet, buying Monero without KYC covers the routes.
IVPN vs Mullvad side by side
Every row comes from the providers' own pages. Prices change, so the checkout has the last word.
| Mullvad | IVPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Signup asks for | Nothing: a 16-digit account number is generated | Nothing: an account ID (i-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) is generated |
| Monero payment | Own wallet and node, since May 2022 | Own wallet and node, since January 2021 |
| Price | €5 a month for any length, 10% off in crypto | From $2 a week, $6 a month or $60 a year (Standard) |
| Refund on a Monero payment | None: crypto and cash are excluded | Within 30 days, to a Monero address you give |
| Devices | 5 | 5 (Standard, Plus), 10 (Pro Suite) |
| Protocols | WireGuard only, since 15 January 2026 | WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2 (iOS app or manual setup) |
| Obfuscation | QUIC and other modes; DAITA against traffic analysis | V2Ray, obfsproxy |
| Multi-hop | Yes | Yes, on all three plans |
| Port forwarding | Removed 1 July 2023 | Removed 30 September 2023 |
| Servers | 536 WireGuard servers in 50 countries, RAM-only | 58 locations in 41 countries |
| Audits | Infrastructure in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024; payment backend in late 2025 | Annual Cure53 audits since 2019; one no-logs audit, March 2019 |
| Company | Mullvad VPN AB, Gothenburg, Sweden | IVPN Limited, Gibraltar |
Mullvad: a numbered account and one flat price
Sign up and Mullvad hands you a 16-digit number. It is the username and the password at once: no email, no separate password, nothing to recover it with. Lose it and you lose the time you paid for.
The price is €5 a month whether you buy one month, a year or a decade, and crypto gets 10% off, so Monero works out at €4.50 a month. The catch is in the terms of service: cash and crypto are excluded from the 14-day money-back guarantee, so a Monero payment is final.
What you get for it:
- WireGuard only. The apps dropped OpenVPN during 2025 and the last OpenVPN servers went offline on 15 January 2026. The Mullvad app or any WireGuard client works; an old router or third-party client set up for OpenVPN no longer connects.
- Tools for hostile networks. DAITA adds padding and cover traffic against AI-guided traffic analysis. QUIC obfuscation, added in 2025 to the desktop, iOS and Android apps, makes the tunnel look like web traffic. Multihop chains two or more servers.
- RAM-only servers since September 2023, with nothing written to disk.
- Cash by mail, for a payment that touches no blockchain. You post the bills with a payment token generated on the site, not your account number.
The Mullvad unit page has the short version.
IVPN: no email, short plans, multi-hop
IVPN's signup also asks for nothing. You get an account ID of the form i-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. You can add an email later in the client area if you want to be contacted, but nothing requires one.
Where Mullvad has one price, IVPN has sold three tiers since May 2026:
| Plan | Week | Month | Year | Devices |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $2 | $6 | $60 | 5 |
| Plus | $3 | $8 | $80 | 5 |
| Pro Suite | $4 | $10 | $100 | 10 |
Standard already includes multi-hop, the AntiTracker blocklists, a SOCKS5 proxy and V2Ray or obfsproxy obfuscation. Plus adds modDNS filtering and Mailx email aliases, and Pro Suite the Portmaster Pro firewall for Windows and Linux. The one-week plan is the cheapest test: $2 in Monero and you know whether it works on your network.
The other differences:
- Protocols: WireGuard and OpenVPN in every app, plus IKEv2 in the iOS app or by manual setup. If your router only speaks OpenVPN, IVPN still does.
- Refunds: 30 days, once per account, Monero included. Per its refund page, you send your account ID and a Monero address.
- Servers: 58 locations in 41 countries. A move to RAM-only servers, announced in May 2025, has not been reported finished.
- Company: IVPN Limited, registered in Gibraltar, running the service since 2009.
More on the IVPN unit page.
What each Monero checkout keeps
No-logs claims cover VPN traffic. Payment records are a separate question, answered in writing by both.
Mullvad stores the account number and its expiry date. For a Monero payment, its no-logging policy lists the amount, the currency and a timestamp cut down to the date after 20 days, plus the transaction hash, kept longer so the same payment is never credited twice. The policy adds that Swedish accounting law requires some payment data to be held for seven years.
IVPN stores the account ID, creation date, plan and device limit, and for each payment an ID, the amount, currency, timestamp and transaction ID, per its privacy policy. An ended account is deleted after 90 days, or at once with the delete button in the client area. What remains is accounting data (date, amount, method, transaction ID) with no link to an account ID.
What that means in practice:
- The transaction hash is public anyway. It sits on the Monero blockchain and does not reveal your wallet on its own. It becomes a link only if something else ties that transaction to you, most often an exchange that sent the coins straight to the VPN. Withdraw to your own wallet first, then pay from there.
- The web server sees your IP. Generate the account and pay over Tor.
- Self-hosting has its own risk. In August 2026 IVPN disclosed that a BTCPay Server flaw, exploited before it was made public, let an attacker take its Lightning node credentials and move 0.6168 BTC of IVPN's own funds. IVPN says no customer data was accessed, the payment server kept no request logs, and Monero payments worked throughout. (ivpn.net)
cryptostorm, the token option
cryptostorm has no accounts. You buy an access token and connect with a SHA-512 hash of it, so the VPN servers never see the token itself. The Monero checkout needs no email, no JavaScript and no third party: the token appears in your browser. Its privacy policy says it keeps the token delivered and a transaction ID, with a button to delete the plaintext token.
Paid in Monero, a token costs $1.86 for a week or $6 for a month on one device, $16 for three months on two, $28 for six on three, $52 for a year on four and $94 for two years on five. Device limits are tight, but cryptostorm still supports port forwarding, offers WireGuard and OpenVPN, and tunnels over SSH, HTTPS or obfs4 on restrictive networks. Refunds are possible if you have used half the token or less, within 180 days of ordering. The entity named on its site is Cryptostorm LLC in Dover, Delaware, and it points to its public server-side configuration files rather than to a third-party audit. See the cryptostorm unit page.
Which one to pick, and when to run your own
- Pick Mullvad for one price and no decisions, servers in more countries (50 against 41), RAM-only infrastructure and defences against traffic analysis, if you accept that a Monero payment is final.
- Pick IVPN for a $2 test week, OpenVPN or IKEv2, a refund window that covers Monero, or email aliases in the same subscription.
- Pick cryptostorm for no account at all, or a forwarded port.
- Run your own if you mainly need to get off a hostile network and do not need to blend in with other users. A WireGuard server on a VPS paid in Monero costs a few dollars a month and you control every log, but the IP is yours alone, so everything leaving it points to a single customer of a single hosting company. The self-hosted VPN guide walks through the setup.
Whichever you choose, it is also the tunnel to use when you rent a VPS or RDP without KYC. All three sit in our VPN and proxies bay, next to the servers, domains and mailboxes in our list of hosting providers that accept Monero.
FAQ
Does Mullvad VPN accept Monero?
Yes, since May 2022. Generate an account number, open the account page and choose Monero. Mullvad runs its own node and wallet for it, takes 10% off crypto payments, and does not refund them.
Which VPN accepts crypto payments?
Of the three here, Mullvad takes Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Lightning and Monero; IVPN takes Bitcoin, Lightning and Monero; cryptostorm takes Monero directly and other coins through payment processors. Our list of VPNs that accept Monero has the rest, each checked by hand.
Is IVPN better than Mullvad?
Not across the board. IVPN wins on a $2 test week, OpenVPN and IKEv2, and refunds on Monero payments. Mullvad wins on one flat price, servers in more countries, RAM-only servers and traffic-analysis defences. On the core promise, no email and Monero into their own wallets, they are level.
Is IVPN trustworthy?
Trust cannot be proven, but IVPN gives you facts: a named team, a Gibraltar company running the service since 2009, open-source apps, annual Cure53 audits since 2019, and a public account of its 2026 payment server incident. Its only no-logs audit dates from March 2019, and it has said it will not commission another, since such an audit is a snapshot in time.
What is the Mullvad controversy?
Usually one of three events. In April 2023 Swedish police came to Mullvad's Gothenburg office with a search warrant to seize computers with customer data, and left with nothing because no such data existed. In July 2023 Mullvad removed port forwarding, citing abuse, and on 15 January 2026 it dropped OpenVPN. None of them exposed customer data.
The short version
Both ask nothing at signup and take Monero into wallets they run. Mullvad is €4.50 a month in crypto, final, WireGuard only and RAM-only. IVPN starts at $2 a week, refunds Monero within 30 days and still speaks OpenVPN. cryptostorm skips the account entirely. Pay from your own wallet, over Tor, and keep the account number offline.