Best VPN for BBC iPlayer for 2024: Streaming British TV From Anywhere
Quick Answer: The Best BBC iPlayer VPN
If you’re pressed for time, the best VPN for BBC iPlayer is ExpressVPN. It’s got plenty of fast servers in the U.K., all of which easily get around geoblocks. Try ExpressVPN for free with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
BBC iPlayer is every anglophile’s dream: page after page of dramas, comedies, period pieces, sci-fi, reality shows and more from the United Kingdom. Sadly, if you don’t live in the U.K., you have no way to access this bounty of Britcoms — unless you use a VPN for BBC iPlayer.
With a virtual private network (VPN), you can get a U.K. IP address, making it appear as though all your internet traffic is coming from a London postcode (or thereabouts). As long as your VPN is fast enough to stream video, you can enjoy Peaky Blinders, Doctor Who, Killing Eve and more great shows from a single platform.
I’ll walk you through my favorite VPNs for BBC iPlayer and help you figure out which one is right for you. By the end, your IP address will be as British as fish and chips — all at cheap VPN prices even a Dickensian orphan child could afford.
Which VPN Still Works With BBC iPlayer?
ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Surfshark are three reliable VPN services that can get you into the BBC iPlayer app. Proton VPN is a good alternative. Windscribe is the best free option.Can I Watch BBC iPlayer in the USA?
Not under ordinary circumstances, but if you use a VPN to change your IP address to one in the U.K., you can watch all you want with a BBC iPlayer account.Is It Legal to Watch BBC iPlayer With a VPN?
It’s completely legal to use a VPN to watch BBC iPlayer. It’s a violation of the terms of service, but unless your VPN is extremely leaky, that will never get back to you.
The Best VPN for BBC iPlayer
The U.K. is one of the most common locations for VPN servers, so this list had a lot of competition. After testing the top contenders (partly by watching the first 10 seconds of Normal People more times than I care to admit), I came away with five clear leaders.
The Top 5 Best VPNs to Watch BBC iPlayer
- Best for BBC iPlayer
My first criteria for a winning VPN was whether it could work with BBC iPlayer. Even some otherwise high performers don’t manage to stay ahead of the geoblocks. I also needed it to have fast enough download speeds to stream with high video quality.
Download speed was doubly important this time, since I know many of you are reading from the U.S., Canada, Australia and elsewhere. Internet connections tend to suffer across long distances, so it’s paramount for a BBC iPlayer VPN to keep its speeds up from afar.
The VPN had to be relatively affordable and easy for a newbie to use. Of course, I also put a high priority on security. I looked for the ability to work on smart TVs, whether through direct installation, smart DNS or a router install. Streaming-focused servers were a nice bonus, but not necessary.
Checking all those boxes might sound like a tall order, but we’re still spoiled for choice in the VPN market. I managed to find so many good services that I had to eliminate some runners-up. Let’s see what the best VPNs for BBC really are in 2023.
Top 5: Best VPN to Unblock BBC iPlayer in 2024
Every service on this list is a perfectly good choice for watching BBC iPlayer. The “top five” framing just means I like some slightly more than others. I’ll explain my reasoning in each entry.
1. ExpressVPN
- Extremely fast & easy to use
- Servers in 105 countries
- Kill switch, split tunneling & no logs
- Unblocks all major streaming services
- Excellent security record
- Expensive
- Uses some virtual servers
Let me tell a story that might go some way toward explaining why I’m always rushing to sing ExpressVPN’s praises. While writing this article, my browser kept lagging no matter how many tabs I closed. I booted up ExpressVPN, connected to a nearby server and immediately clocked a download speed of over 50 Mbps.
It turns out my local ISP has a habit of throttling in the mid-afternoon, which ExpressVPN lets me dodge, saving my work day. That should tell you a lot about ExpressVPN: in the real world, it’s ready to use any time and it always does its job. How much other technology can you say that about? There’s a reason it also tops my best Disney Plus VPN list, among others.
Accessing BBC iPlayer is no different. ExpressVPN’s U.K. servers are well-built and never overloaded, and each one gets into BBC iPlayer on the first try. The menu to change your location is directly accessible from the main control panel, so there’s no tech savvy required for success.
ExpressVPN Security Features
Other than its speed and server network, ExpressVPN’s biggest perk is its variety of additional security features. It comes equipped with Network Lock, a programmable VPN kill switch that monitors your internet traffic to ensure you’re never online without protection.
It also includes split tunneling for every platform. Split tunneling lets you run certain apps through the VPN while keeping others unprotected. As long as you’re careful, it’s excellent for keeping a torrenting client secure in the background while you enjoy the (usually) higher speeds of an unprotected connection.
Threat Manager is also worth mentioning. This add-on prevents your browser from communicating with any third-party entity that wants to track your activity, from advertising cookies to malware. Even when you’re not watching BBC iPlayer, ExpressVPN is a fantastic tool to keep around — our ExpressVPN review can tell you more.
If you’re thinking of picking ExpressVPN to stream iPlayer, check out our ExpressVPN price guide to help make the decision. Otherwise, you can also try ExpressVPN with its 30-day money-back guarantee.
| Website | expressvpn.com |
| Pricing | $6.66 per month annually (15 months for $99.95); $12.95 monthly |
| Free trial available | No |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 Days |
| Desktop OSes | Windows, MacOS, Linux, Chromebook, smart TVs |
| Mobile OSes | Android, iOS, Kindle Fire |
| Worldwide Server Amount | Over 3,000 servers in 105 countries |
| Simultaneous Connections | 8 |
| Streaming Access | Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ |
2. NordVPN
- Easy to operate
- Unblocks every major streaming service
- Great savings on one- & two-year plans
- Includes a kill switch & ad blocker
- Strict no-logs policy
- Suffered a security breach in the past
- Split tunneling isn’t available on all OSes
Wherever ExpressVPN goes, NordVPN is sure to follow close behind. As I expected, our top pick’s closest competitor is also great at unblocking BBC iPlayer, with every U.K. server I tried getting me in and streaming video without incident. NordVPN is a winning choice for almost any other streaming service, too, including Amazon Prime Video.
The two champions are about equally fast, with the better speeds and latency trading off by the day. However, when trying to access BBC iPlayer, NordVPN does have one distinct advantage over its rival: it lets you choose between its servers individually, rather than just connecting to the best option in any location. My NordVPN review can tell you more.
This means that, on the off-chance a NordVPN server gets detected by BBC iPlayer’s geoblocks, you can just switch to another one and keep trying. On ExpressVPN, you run out of choices more quickly. I do say “off-chance,” because I’ve never seen either one fail to unblock iPlayer, but it’s still nice to have plenty of backups available.
NordVPN Meshnet
NordVPN comes with a standout feature that’s especially helpful for Brits who want to catch up on their favorite shows while traveling outside the country. Meshnet is a way to secure a connection between two devices without going through a VPN server first. It’s useful for remote desktop access, file sharing and remote LAN parties.
All the above functions are free and usable without a NordVPN account, but a paid subscription unlocks one more power: you can use a friendly device as a personal VPN server, accessing the internet through that device’s IP address. As our NordVPN price guide shows, this isn’t hard to fit into a budget.
You can probably see where this is going. As long as you have an online device at home in the U.K., you can connect to it on your travel device and watch BBC iPlayer as though you were on your own sofa. All you have to do is click your own device in the server list instead of a NordVPN server, and you’re good to go. You can also try NordVPN with its 30-day money-back guarantee.
| Website | nordvpn.com |
| Pricing | $4.13 per month for a 2-year plan ($99.12 for two years); 11.95 monthly |
| Free trial available | Mobile only |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 Days |
| Desktop OSes | MacOS, Windows, Linux, Android TV, Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS. |
| Mobile OSes | Android, iOS |
| Worldwide Server Amount | Over 5,400+ servers in 59 countries |
| Simultaneous Connections | 6 |
| Streaming Access | Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ |
3. Surfshark
- Very good price-performance ratio
- High security level
- Netflix-compatible
- Unlimited simultaneous connections
- Great support with live chat
- No information on individual servers
- Can have issues establishing a connection
Surfshark merged with NordVPN in 2022, but the two services maintain distinct identities. Although both provide a balance of friendliness and innovation, NordVPN aims more toward a premium audience, while Surfshark is the budget friendly option. Worry not, though: for Surfshark’s excellent price, there’s very little trade-off.
As my Surfshark review will tell you, Surfshark is often just as fast as NordVPN and ExpressVPN, even at a distance — so don’t worry about lag when you sit down for your Call the Midwife fix. It also comes with unlimited simultaneous connections on each account, so your whole household or friend group can enjoy BBC iPlayer access on just one subscription.
Surfshark does have its problems, but they’re almost never relevant to streaming BBC iPlayer. Though latency is an issue at long distances, download speed (which is a lot more important for streaming video) stays constant. You can’t torrent on all servers, but you’re not here about BitTorrent. Surfshark is a tool well-matched to the task at hand.
Surfshark Dynamic MultiHop
Like all my top picks, Surfshark comes with a decent range of features that take it above and beyond typical VPN functionality. Some of the best include CleanWeb, which deftly blocks both ads and malware sites from loading, and NoBorders mode, which detects network restrictions and picks servers to circumvent them.
But Surfshark Nexus has to be its most unique and boundary-pushing offering. Nexus is an ongoing effort to link all of Surfshark’s VPN servers together in a massive web, borrowing the structure of Tor but replacing its decentralized model with central management. Nexus can rotate a user’s IP address intermittently, among other tricks.
Most relevant to streaming foreign libraries like BBC iPlayer, one of those tricks is Dynamic MultiHop. Many VPNs can route connections through two servers for extra security, but Surfshark is one of the few where you can choose which two. Add your location of choice before a U.K. server and your chances of unblocking BBC iPlayer rise even higher.
| Website | |
| Pricing | $2.21 $12.95 per month, $6.49 per month for 6 months, $2.49 per month for 24 months |
| Free trial available | 7 Days |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 Days |
| Desktop OSes | Windows, MacOS, Linux |
| Mobile OSes | Android, iOS |
| Worldwide Server Amount | 1700+ Servers in 63 Countries |
| Simultaneous Connections | unlimited |
| Streaming Access | Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ |
4. Proton VPN
The best part of Proton VPN is its free plan, the only trustworthy free VPN that doesn’t cap how much data you can use. Unfortunately, there are no free servers in the U.K., but that’s OK: as I said in my full Proton VPN review, this service is worth paying for (and the free plan is perfect for geo-restricted U.S. services like Hulu).
For one thing, it’s got an incredibly crisp user interface that manages to be concise without cutting too much detail. It has a long menu of U.K. servers in Manchester and London; each entry on the server list comes with a real-time indicator showing how overloaded it is at that moment, so you can pick one with plenty of bandwidth for streaming.
Download speeds are fantastic as well. In my most recent test, Proton VPN cost less than 10 percent of my unprotected speeds, and I’m coming from the west coast of the U.S. — nearly 5,000 miles away. Like Surfshark, it has some problems with latency, but that won’t matter much if you’re just streaming Britcoms.
Proton VPN Profiles
Proton VPN has a ton of security features, including one that routes your connection through a data center in a literal fortified castle. For sheer convenience, though, my favorite perk has to be the profiles feature. With profiles, you can save a set of preferences that optimize Proton VPN for a certain purpose, such as speed, security or streaming from a certain region.
You can set up and manage these from a tab on the front page — no need to mess around in the settings menu. The two defaults give a good sense of what profiles can do: “random” picks a different server every time for greater concealment, while “fastest” picks the best speed, regardless of location.
If Proton VPN is your service of choice for BBC iPlayer, you can set up a profile to connect to whichever U.K. server is offering the best download speeds at the moment. It takes a bit of work to build, but once you have the profile, there’s no faster way to get a British IP address. You can try the paid version of Proton VPN with its money-back guarantee, as well.
| Website | |
| Pricing | $3.29 per month for a 2-year plan ($79 for two years) |
| Free trial available | Yes |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 30 Days |
| Desktop OSes | Windows, MacOS and Linux |
| Mobile OSes | Android, iOS |
| Worldwide Server Amount | 1500 Servers in 61 Countries |
| Simultaneous Connections | 10 |
| Streaming Access | Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ |
5. Windscribe
- Dedicated streaming servers
- File sharing services allowed
- Anonymous payment via BitPay
- Unlimited simultaneous connections
- Browser extensions
- Free account with up to 10 Gigabyte per month
- Slow speeds
Proton VPN is the best free VPN, but since it doesn’t have free U.K. servers, Windscribe stands unchallenged as the best free VPN for BBC iPlayer. Windscribe’s free plan comes with servers in 11 locations, including the U.K. The plan gives you 10GB of free data per month and 15GB if you tweet about it — plenty for a bit of streaming, as my Windscribe review covers in more depth.
If you’re hoping for a more permanent solution, Windscribe offers the unique opportunity to build your own plan for $1 per server per month. Each server comes with an additional 10GB monthly, or you can remove the caps altogether for $1. Custom plans are $3 minimum, so you can grab two U.K. locations and unlimited traffic.
Windscribe’s download speeds are good on average, but it doesn’t handle long distances as well as the four providers above. Our tests saw U.K. speeds wobble all over the place, which means you may see your shows stutter more often than you’d like. Windscribe performs nicely for a budget option, but never forget that’s what it is.
Windscribe R.O.B.E.R.T.
Windscribe comes with two other features worth mentioning. R.O.B.E.R.T. is a customizable everything blocker. The free version prevents ads and malware from loading. The paid version goes a lot farther: If you want, you can have it block clickbait, fake news, social media, crypto miners and up to 1,000 specific domains.
The other feature of note is its browser extensions for Firefox and Chromium browsers. All the BBC iPlayer VPNs on my list have browser extensions, but Windscribe makes its integral to the experience: You need the extension to apply Windscribe’s full power to a browser.
Among other things, you can get a multi-hop connection by choosing one server on the extension and another on the desktop app. The extension also applies R.O.B.E.R.T. blocks to the browser, blocks trackers and scrambles your device fingerprint to foil advertisers.
| Website | |
| Pricing | $9 month for a 1-year plan ($49 per year) |
| Free trial available | Free plan |
| Money-Back Guarantee | 3 Days |
| Desktop OSes | Windows, MacOS, Linux |
| Mobile OSes | Android, iOS, Android TV |
| Worldwide Server Amount | Servers in 55 Countries |
| Simultaneous Connections | Unlimited |
| Streaming Access | Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ |
Do You Need a VPN to Access BBC iPlayer?
If you live outside the U.K., you can’t stream BBC iPlayer without changing your IP address — otherwise, the site will detect your filthy foreign internet right away. Now, a VPN isn’t the only way to change your IP address, but it’s by far the most problem-free.
One other option is to use a proxy server to get a U.K. IP address. However, the BBC appears to be better at finding proxy addresses than VPN addresses, so most of the easiest proxies to use are now blocked. You can always use a manual proxy switcher, but if you’re not careful, this can lock you out of streaming services in your own country.
Accessing BBC iPlayer with Tor Browser
Tor Browser with a U.K. exit node is another option. This secure browser disguises internet traffic by bouncing it between several nodes to conceal its origin point.
The problem with Tor is that since nodes can easily be corrupted, I always recommend using a VPN alongside it. Since a VPN can unblock BBC iPlayer on its own, there’s not much reason to use Tor, especially as there are cheap and even free BBC iPlayer VPNs you can use.
Conclusion: The Best VPN for BBC iPlayer
Although changing your IP address to watch British TV shows feels like advanced-level hacking, it’s one of the simplest tricks in the book. The VPN does all the work for you, and I’ve done all the work of picking a VPN. All you have to do is relax and let the charming accents wash over your soul.
ExpressVPN is the best VPN that unblocks BBC iPlayer. It works every time, it’s easy to use and it won’t drag on your connection from almost any distance. I recommend NordVPN if you feel the need for speed, Surfshark if your whole family wants to join in, Proton VPN as a backup and Windscribe if you’re on a tight budget.
Did I miss your favorite candidate for the best BBC iPlayer VPN? Have any tips for accessing BBC shows from outside the sceptered isle? Or do you just want to get into the local spirit by yelling about football? Leave a comment below, and thanks for reading!
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