The assumption that a VPN will ruin your online gaming connection has long been treated as settled fact among competitive players. New hands-on benchmark data collected across multiple VPN providers tells a more complicated - and in some cases flatly contradictory - story. In controlled tests running Counter-Strike 2 on UK servers, several VPNs either matched or beat a bare connection's latency, with Windscribe returning an average ping of 12.34 ms against a no-VPN baseline of 12.58 ms.
Why Routing Matters More Than Most Players Realise
Latency in online gaming is not simply a function of how fast your connection is. It is a function of the path your data takes to reach a game server. Your internet service provider determines the default route - and ISPs optimise their infrastructure for general traffic patterns, not specifically for the route between your home and a particular game server in a particular data centre. A VPN introduces a different routing point. If that VPN server sits closer to the game server, or if the VPN's upstream network peering agreements allow for a more direct path, the round-trip time for your data packets can actually decrease.
This is not a theoretical edge case. It is a structural feature of how internet routing works, and it explains why results vary so sharply by location and provider. A VPN that delivers lower ping in the UK connected to a UK game server may add latency for a user elsewhere. The benchmark data here reflects one tester's specific geography and ISP - which is precisely why the results should not be read as universal rankings, but rather as evidence that the blanket dismissal of VPNs for gaming is not well-founded.
What the Numbers Actually Show
The benchmark data covers four distinct performance dimensions: local ping, jitter, download speed, and distance ping. Each measures something different, and the results across them are not uniform.
- Local ping (CS2, UK to UK): ExpressVPN returned the lowest average at 12.22 ms, followed by Windscribe at 12.34 ms. ProtonVPN was the outlier at 13.8 ms - meaningfully above the no-VPN baseline.
- Jitter: ExpressVPN again led at 12.07 ms, while ProtonVPN registered 20.7 ms - nearly double the no-VPN figure of 10.66 ms. Jitter, the variance in latency between packets, is often more disruptive to online gaming than raw ping, because it causes inconsistent response times rather than a steady, predictable delay.
- Download speed (15.3 GB via Steam): Performance differences were minimal. The no-VPN baseline completed the download in 271 seconds; most VPNs landed between 275 and 276 seconds. ExpressVPN was the slowest at 287 seconds - a 6% difference that most users would not notice in practice.
- Distance ping (UK to USA): All VPNs clustered tightly between 85 and 88 ms, with NordVPN and ExpressVPN performing marginally better. At these distances, physical geography dominates and VPN routing has less room to improve on the baseline.
The broader takeaway is that ISP throttling - a documented practice in which some providers selectively reduce bandwidth for specific traffic types, including gaming - can make a VPN genuinely beneficial even when a user already has a fast connection. Bypassing ISP traffic management is a legitimate use case, not a niche one.
Compatibility Remains the Practical Obstacle
Raw performance is only part of the picture. Anti-cheat software and platform security systems used by major titles increasingly flag or block VPN traffic. In this testing, Windscribe and Surfshark both prevented Valorant from running entirely - not just slowing it down, but blocking login to the Riot Games client and access to the company's website.
The standard workaround is split tunnelling: a feature built into most modern VPN clients that allows specific applications or traffic to bypass the VPN entirely while everything else remains encrypted. Configuring Valorant's executable and the Riot launcher as split-tunnel exceptions restored functionality. It requires some technical comfort - locating the correct process name in a system task manager, for instance - but it is a one-time setup rather than an ongoing inconvenience.
NordVPN emerged as the most broadly compatible option across all tested titles, making it the practical default for users who want a single VPN that works without per-game configuration. The ping cost is real but small: 12.73 ms versus 12.58 ms at baseline. For most players, that 0.15 ms difference is not perceptible.
Balancing Privacy and Performance Is No Longer a Binary Choice
The traditional trade-off framing - privacy or performance, pick one - does not survive contact with current VPN capabilities. The infrastructure that major commercial VPN providers operate has matured substantially. Many now maintain their own high-capacity server networks rather than renting commodity hardware, and some have invested in optimised gaming or low-latency server configurations specifically to compete on this use case.
None of this means every VPN is appropriate for gaming, or that any VPN will improve every user's connection. Geography, ISP, game server location, and VPN server load all interact. What the data does establish is that the performance penalty of using a reputable VPN for gaming is, in many configurations, either negligible or non-existent - and in some, it runs the other direction entirely. The assumption that competitive play and a VPN are incompatible deserves to be retired.
