The Hidden Monopoly of the VPN Market

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At first glance, the VPN market might seem infinitely diverse, filled with various companies competing in a free market for a slice of the growing VPN consumer pie. However, this seeming diversity is deceptive. As studies show, behind most VPN brands, the same people are at work: 105 of the most well-known cross-platform or purely mobile VPN services are owned or managed by just 24 companies. Read on to find out who owns ExpressVPN, NordVPN, and other famous services and what they might be hiding in their past.
In general, according to VPNpro’s analysis, there are 9 major entities distinguished in the VPN market in 2023.
In first place are Chinese VPNs. A third of popular mobile-only VPN apps are either owned by Chinese entities or are based in China. Due to the lack of transparency in the Chinese market (“How We Learned to Bypass VPN Blocks in China”), more precise data on how they might be connected to each other is unavailable, so we have grouped them into one conditional general cluster.

• Kape Technologies: Brands include ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, and Intego Privacy Protection. Kape changed its name from Crossrider in 2018 due to suspicions that Crossrider injected advertising and malware into user devices and collected personal data.
• Ziff Davis: Owns a minimum of 9 VPN services. Formerly j2 Global, it officially claims ownership of 8 VPN services but also provides white-label services for FastVPN and may manage other VPN products whose connection to Ziff Davis is not publicly known.
• Aura (Pango group, AnchorFree): Owns 14 VPN services. Officially, they only own Hotspot Shield, TouchVPN, and JustVPN but conceal their ownership of products like Betternet and VPN rating sites such as vpnranks.com, bestvpnservice.com, bestvpn.co, and several others.
• Gaditek: Owns 5 VPN services. The company claims to own only PureVPN and Ivacy VPN, but there is data on two more products.
• Nord Security: Owns 4 VPN services: NordVPN, NordLayer, Atlas VPN, and Surfshark.
• Innovative Connecting: 16 VPNs
• Actmobile Networks: 6 VPN services, including 3 mobile applications, as well as Free VPN LLC.
• SuperSoftTech: 5 VPN services. Officially owns only four.”

The market is generally divided into two types of companies:
Multi-brand conglomerates offering paid services, such as Kape Technologies or Nord Security, which invest in branding and strive to attract as many users as possible.
Chinese companies that focus on a scattering of free, mobile-only VPNs, VPN “one-day wonders” of dubious quality. In the “best” case, these services simply profit from showing ads, but almost certainly (because nothing stops them) they also sell user data. Plus, due to their location in China, there is also political risk - the collection and storage of personal data by Chinese law enforcement agencies. If you are not a Chinese dissident, then this is not the worst thing, unless you hope to one day travel to China, where the party will give you one cat-wife - in this case, do not write anything critical about the Chinese leadership using Chinese VPNs.
It is not possible to tell more about the market for Chinese no-names and fly-by-nights - that is why they are one-day wonders, one can only advise to avoid brands that do not have a long history traceable on the Internet. Let’s take a closer look at who manages most of these brands.

1. Ziff Davis (formerly j2 Global) – 9 VPNs

Ziff Davis, which also owns the tech publication PCMag, acquired StackPath’s VPN products in 2019. In an attempt to expand its offerings, StackPath acquired Highwinds in 2017, along with IPVanish, StrongVPN, and Encrypt.me (formerly Cloak).
In July 2019, j2 Global (now Ziff Davis) announced the purchase of Israeli company Safer Social Ltd., and in November 2019, Encrypt.me merged with Buffered VPN. Another product from Safer Social, SaferVPN, gradually merged with StrongVPN. In fact, SaferVPN is still available to its old users, while new users are redirected to the StrongVPN website. To date, Perimeter 81 remains the only secure VPN.
Through WLVPN, owned by VIPRE, which StackPath acquired in 2016, it offered VPN services for both VPNHub (VPN Pornhub) and Namecheap VPN.
Ziff Davis also owns VIPRE and Ookla, and they are available on Android and iOS devices. There is also netDNA, formerly owned by StackPath.

• Thus, Ziff Davis offers at least nine applications.

1. AnchorFree first introduced its VPN product, Hotspot Shield, in 2008. In February 2015, AnchorFree acquired JustVPN and TouchVPN. JustVPN has only one VPN product – justvpn proxy for Android and JustVPN for iOS (under the name 1133 Group Ltd.).

TouchVPN offers three different applications: for Android (Touch VPN) and for iOS (Touch VPN, VeePee VPN Proxy). Although TouchVPN initially owned VPN 360 under its name, it can now be found under the name Pango in both the Google Play and Apple App Store.
In November 2016, AnchorFree acquired Betternet Technologies. Betternet creates the following mobile applications: VPN Betternet, Ultra VPN Secure, USA VPN Proxy (formerly HexaTech VPN), Ultra VPN Secure Proxy (formerly HexaTech Unlimited VPN), etc. The Betternet developer was caught logging and selling user data to third parties, as well as embedding third-party trackers in its Android application.
In 2020, Pango, the company that created Hotspot Shield, was acquired by Aura, a digital security company. In 2021, Pango merged with AnchorFree, surpassing the latter’s offerings on Google Play under the management of Pango GmbH.

• Currently, the Pango Group has Hotspot Shield, Betternet, Ultra VPN, and VPN 360, as well as other cybersecurity products. In addition, Pango bought OVPN. Aura also promotes its own Aura VPN.

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