VPN Comparison and Pricing

[seek.veritas]

I’m trying to decide between Mullvad VPN, IVPN, and Proton VPN. However, I can not decide what the best option is. For context, I use MacOS and iOS as well as proton mail and hopefully calendar/drive if it improves.

I’m not super knowledgeable on what the VPN does, so when DNS is discussed, I get lost. Can someone explain to me the purpose of these two and how I should set these up?

As for the three options listed, I am trying to stay away from Proton VPN since it is the only one where you have to have an email identifier to sign up and I don’t want everything tied to Proton. From my understanding, nearly all VPN providers offer the same things (e.g., no logging, DNS, anti-tracking, etc.). What else am I missing here?

Pricing for Mullvad VPN is $5.50 per month or year (5 devices, $1.1 /device). IVPN Pro = $10 /mo or $100 /yr (7 devices, $1.4 or $1.2 /device). Proton VPN is $11.49 /mo and $71.88 /yr (10 devices, $1.15 /mo or $0.60 /device). Based on this Mullvad and IVPN are very similar for a year and Proton VPN is the most economical option.

Can anyone give me insight on what the best option is and why? On top of this, how do I properly set up the actual VPN settings on MacOS and iOS? What does WireGuard and OpenVPN do and how do I verify it is setup correctly?

[user1]

I think the most notable difference is the port forwarding support by Proton vpn, the other two providers have discontinued it. If that is a deal breaker for you, you should consider to use Proton.
As DNS is concerned I don’t think there is any meaning difference, maybe you should rather take a look at the vpn client that is offered for your platforms.

[seek.veritas]

As far as the DNS is concerned, do I leave DNS over HTTPS on Firefox Privacy and Security Settings? If I use a vpn with it’s own DNS, wouldn’t it defeat the purpose to run DNS over HTTPS on Firefox as well?