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Headsup Mullvad Users - OpenVPN is scheduled to be removed by 2026
Mullvad VPN seems to plan on removing OpenVPN in 2026.
I sort of get why Wireguard may become more popular by the day, but don't really agree that a VPN company should remove openvpn.
That said, I've only bought a short time of Mullvad recently to try it, after a friend recommended them, so I won't be affected as I don't plan to renew.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-openvpn-15th-january-2026
Comments
So when will they reduce price? They are cutting features left and right.
Haven't used them in the past, but read that Pf was removed which a lot of users used?
Wireguard is better than OpenVPN in literally every way, as far as I can tell (beyond I guess very old systems) so I don't mind this.
A bunch of VPN services removed port-forwarding because people were hosting criminal content using it, causing (I assume) law enforcement complaints to their hosts/datacenters.
Yeah, I can see why pf was removed as it is sort of linked to torrenting all kinds of stuff. Still, that was probably one of the reasons many people used Mullvad in the past. PureVPN e.g. also still has pf.
As for Wireguard, I use it as preferred protocol most of the time these days, but I don't really like the idea of options being removed rather than added.
Damn shame as OpenVPN is the only protocol that works well at my school.
Their explanation doesn't really make sense outside of wanting to do less work. Having options is always better than being stuck with one thing in particular. If something people use is still secure and the overhead isn't much - why bother cutting anything?
Wireguard is UDP only (out of the box) and OpenVPN is TCP/UDP. Flexibility.
OpenVPN is considerably slower but outside of that, I much prefer OpenVPN to Wireguard.
OpenVPN is great and is working perfectly fine. The coding is not obsolete and the project is constantly in development.
Removing such feature is just stupid. Maybe they want to cut costs or something.
Wireguard = less server load
Iirc wireguard isn't designed for "anonymous" use because it assigned static IP's or something like that but VPN's found a workaround around it, but this is something I vaguely remember from years ago, I stick to OpenVPN myself aswell.
What @egoror suggests could also be a good point, OpenVPN uses a single thread or so while also using more CPU power compared to Wireguard, but I haven't really looked into it.
Maybe they want to cut costs. But then again, they already seem to have a user base that is willing to pay more than the avg Joe would for one of the mainstream VPNs (or lifetime vpn). If they really ran out of money, I'm sure many of their fans would follow them even if price increased as they are pretty unique in their approach to privacy. Cutting features like openvpn support of a, as you said, non obsolete project, seems the wrong approach.
If people have been paying for both, they should get both.
If you reduce overhead while simultaneously removing features, who's getting the better end of that deal? Surely they're not going to cut their normal monthly costs dramatically to make up for their resource windfall.
I've always been a big fan of Mullvad and have used it for years. I've tried so many others and still stuck with Mullvad. I honestly don't understand this move either. Unless there is some big security vulnerability, there is no reason to drop support for it.
I'm not a VPN expert, but OpenVPN has helped me circumvent some sites' VPN-blocking. Since I don't know what about OpenVPN allowed for thiis, forgive my ignorance, but how can I achieve a similar result with WireGuard?
Could it be caused by the VPN server's IP address being different? Websites shouldn't be able to distinguish whether you're using WireGuard or OpenVPN.
This feature should help in some of those situations: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/introducing-shadowsocks-obfuscation-for-wireguard
I've yet to try it on other servers, but at least for the Sweden locations the specific site I visited still blocked me even with shadowsocks activated.
Oh right sorry I misunderstood, thought you mean VPN being blocked from connected not websites blocking VPNs based on IP (which in hindsight, is exactly what you said so the failing is on my part)
That problem is a tricky one to solve but @tototo is right that it's going to depend more on the IP of the server used rather than anything specific about the connecton type
Got it, thanks to both of you.