Head to head
The gap
The security score is not a total of good things. It starts at 100 and eight channels each take a share of what is left, so one channel can settle a record on its own. Both records are drawn here on the same scale — the model’s own cap of 0.9 — rather than on a scale fitted to this pair, which would make every comparison look equally dramatic.
Line by line
Every field the contract publishes about a provider, in the contract’s own groups, including the rows where the two agree — a table that printed only differences would invent a disagreement, and one that printed only the interesting rows would be us choosing what is interesting. Open a group to read its rows; each one says how many it holds and how many of them the two records answer differently.
A green cell means the methodology itself prices that value below the other one, not that we prefer it. Rows the model does not price carry no mark at all: price is never marked, because nothing in the model says cheaper is safer, and neither is coverage, platform count or devices. Where a value was never established the cell says so instead of showing a zero.
What actually happened
Other pairs
Pairs within the top ten get a page — 80 comparisons in all. Records below that are not paired here: a comparison earns a page where the choice between the two is a real one, and that choice is made near the top of the register.
Security
Usability
Rank 10 of 68 in the register
Not published · Commercial VPN
Exits in 25 countries
Security
Usability
Rank 2 of 68 in the register
Sweden · Commercial VPN
Exits in 50 countries
No demand on the public record
1 documented demand, none of which produced data
Notes
On the record as a whole.
The Securitum engagement (20 Apr–7 May 2026, nine person-days, whitebox) inspected four production servers across four of CactusVPN's ~25 listed server countries and the VPN client's connection behaviour (including a Linux app used for testing, which is not among the platforms the downloads page currently lists — apparently manual/legacy client access rather than a listed product).
The report is a bespoke Securitum security assessment, not an ISAE 3000 or SOC 2 engagement, so V07/V15 record that rather than guessing an assurance tier.
Pricing carries a renewal-rate guarantee: the annual ($70/yr) and 2-year ($95/2yr) plans are both stated to renew at the same locked price "for life," which is unusual among providers in this catalogue and is not a lifetime one-time-fee scheme (X07=no).
On the record as a whole.
The April 2023 search warrant is the strongest single item in this record: police attended the office and left with nothing, which is practice evidence rather than paper and ages far more slowly than an audit. Pricing is a flat 5 EUR/month on every term; U04_price_monthly carries 5.80 (the USD equivalent Mullvad states on its own page); U04b_price_yearly is 69.60, the full year at that rate.
Recent changes
No change logged on this record
Open questions
Still open on this record.
Jurisdiction. The about-us page says CactusVPN "started as a small company in Moldova" but that is company narrative, not a registration statement, and the Terms of Service state no governing law or incorporation country at all; the Securitum report names the client only as "Cactus VPN LLC" with no jurisdiction attached. M06 and the fields derived from it stay unknown until a registry record or an explicit jurisdiction clause is found.
Mandate hosting. All 25 countries in the published server list carry a data-retention mandate in this catalogue's own table, so C09b is not a narrow question here, but the server-locations page does not distinguish physical exit points from virtual ones for any location, and no per-country hosting fact was established this session.
App-level identifiers and store declarations. C07a, C12 and X12 stay unknown: no Play Store data-safety form or Apple privacy label was read this session, and the Securitum audit's whitebox scope covered server-side configuration and DNS/traffic handling, not what the mobile or extension clients transmit to app stores or analytics SDKs on their own.
Transparency and canary. No /transparency, /transparency-report, /warrant-canary or /canary path resolves on the site, and no such page turned up in the sitemap; that is an absence found by looking, not a sourced "none", so both fields stay unknown rather than being marked none.
Still open on this record.
The audit cadence. Mullvad publishes an audit index in the app repository and it is honest about cadence: the index states outright that the main app audits happen every two years, with extras in between, which is why regularity is recorded as repeated at no fixed interval rather than as an annual series — no annual cadence is claimed by anyone.
Two reports, one date. Two separate engagements share 2026-02-17 and the record names both: Assured's code review of GotaTun, the userspace WireGuard implementation (no critical, high or medium issues; two low and nine notes), and Leviathan's Mobile App Profile assessment of the Android app, whose compliance report gives February 17, 2026 as its date of evaluation and AL2 as its assurance level. One date, two reports, no contradiction.
Why the count reads eight. The audit count is eight because the GotaTun review sits outside the app repository's own list. Before them, a 30 person-day X41 D-Sec review across all five platforms found six vulnerabilities — three high, two medium, one low, none critical.
What no engagement covers. What none of these engagements covers is the server fleet: every one of them examines the app or the tunnel protocol, which is why fleet coverage is recorded as not applicable rather than as a sample. The no-logs claim on the infrastructure side therefore rests on the April 2023 search warrant — Swedish police came for customer data and left without it — and not on any audit.
Reproducible builds, Android only. Reproducible builds are Android-only, from version 2025.2 onward, so the field stays partial; the desktop and iOS builds are not verifiable bit-for-bit. Turkey is the one mandate country on the offered list and the hosting behind it is not established.
Nothing published about demands. Nothing on record rests on anything the provider publishes about demands it receives: there is no transparency report and no warrant canary, so the April 2023 seizure carries that ground alone. Kill-switch coverage and P2P policy are unestablished; the latest audit is a protocol code review, not a no-logs engagement, so V11 is silent and retention leans on the declaration.
25 Sep 20261 changes
Monthly price USD, month-to-month plan, as chargedU04_price_monthly
5.8 changed to 5.69
12 Sep 20264 changes
Security scoresecurity.score
65 changed to 64
Security scoresecurity.score
64 changed to 60
Works under active censorshipU06_censorship_circumvention
none changed to claimed
Usability scoreusability.score
55 changed to 64
By circumstance
| CactusVPN | Mullvad VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Torrenting | Allowed yes | — not established |
| Streaming | Reachable yes | — not established |
| Devices at once | unlimited | 5 |
| Under censorship | Claimed to work claimed | Claimed to work claimed |
| Exits in mandate countries | 2 India, Russia | 1 Turkey |
| Hosting in those countries | — not established | — not established |
| Company under a mandate | — not established | No such mandate no |
| Secret orders | No secret-order regime on record none_known | Orders go through a judge judicial_only |
| ChannelPressure taken from what was left | CactusVPNDominant channel: Ignorance0 to 0.9, longer is worse | Mullvad VPNDominant channel: Retention0 to 0.9, longer is worse |
|---|---|---|
| IgnoranceHow much of this did nobody establish? | 0.333 | 0.103 |
| RetentionDoes a record exist that links traffic to a person, and who checked? | 0.299 | 0.218 |
| HygieneWhat identifying material is collected in passing, and can the client be checked at all? | 0.280 | 0.050 |
| SilenceTen years, millions of users and nothing on record? | 0.225 | 0.000 |
| IntegrityHas it been caught saying one thing and doing another? | 0.155 | 0.000 |
| JurisdictionCan someone compel what exists, without the provider getting a say? | 0.079 | 0.050 |
| ArchitectureWho operates the exit, and what does it do to the traffic? | 0.000 | 0.050 |
| DisclosureHas it already handed something over? | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| What is left of 100The channels multiply: each one takes a share of what the one before it left standing | 20 | 60 |
CactusVPN and Mullvad VPN were assessed by the HushFleet team: CactusVPN scores 20/100 for security, in the Insufficient band, and Mullvad VPN 60/100, in the Acceptable band. They share an independent audit and independent ownership. The 40-point gap opens widest on Hygiene — “What identifying material is collected in passing, and can the client be checked at all?” — taking 28% from CactusVPN and 5% from Mullvad VPN.
| CactusVPN | Mullvad VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Security | 20 insufficient · rank 10 of 68 | 60 acceptable · rank 2 of 68 |
| Usability | 66 out of 100 | 64 out of 100 |
| Record completeness | 63% usability 100% | 87% usability 75% |
| CactusVPN | Mullvad VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Who operates the exit | Run by the provider itself provider_operated | Run by the provider itself provider_operated |
| Retention as declared | Nothing that links traffic to a person none_linkable | Nothing that links traffic to a person none_linkable |
| RAM-only diskless servers | — not establishedno source published | Yes, on the provider's word yes_declaredBmullvad.net · |
| IP allocation model | Exit address shared between users shared | Exit address shared between users shared |
| Signup without email | No, an email address is required noBcactusvpn.com · | Yes, on the provider's word yes_declaredBmullvad.net · |
| Anonymous payment options | Cryptocurrency through a processorBcactusvpn.com · | Cash · Cryptocurrency paid directly · Prepaid voucher or gift cardBmullvad.net · |
| Own DNS inside the tunnel | Yes, checked by someone independent yes_verifiedAsecuritum.com · | Yes, on the provider's word yes_declaredBmullvad.net · |
| Worst third-party SDK category in the app | — not establishedno source published | No third-party SDK noneBmullvad.net · |
| Worst third-party tracker category on the site | Analytics analyticsBcactusvpn.com · | No third-party tracker noneBmullvad.net · |
| Who owns the hardware | — not establishedno source published | Owned and rented both mixedBmullvad.net · |
| Offered countries that sit under a logging mandate | 2 India, RussiaBcactusvpn.com · | 1 TurkeyBmullvad.net · |
| Hosting in the mandate countries it offers | — not established | — not established |
| Incorporation country mandates retention | — not establishedno source published | No such mandate noBmullvad.net · |
| Beneficial owner sits under a retention regime | — not establishedno source published | No such regime noCmullvad.net · |
| Persistent device identifier | — not establishedno source published | None held noneBplay.google.com · |
| Weakest protocol still offered | PPTP pptpBcactusvpn.com · | — the question does not ariseBmullvad.net · 2 sources · |
| What the exit does to passing traffic | Traffic passes through unaltered noneBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
| CactusVPN | Mullvad VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| At least one independent audit | Yes, and the report was read yes_verified | Yes, and the report was read yes_verified |
| How the report is published | The full report is published full_pdf | The full report is published full_pdf |
| Subject of the audit | The no-logs claim itself · The infrastructureAsecuritum.com · | The protocol · The app's securityAassured.se · 2 sources · |
| Server fleet coverage | A sample of servers sampleAsecuritum.com · | — the question does not ariseno source published |
| Auditor name | Securitum |
| CactusVPN | Mullvad VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Server seizure by law enforcement | No seizure on record none_knownno source published · | Seized, and nothing usable was on it seizure_no_dataBmullvad.net · |
| Actual disclosure history | No disclosure on record none_known | No disclosure on record none_known |
| Court record of compelled production | No court record none_known | No court record none_known |
| Response to a national logging mandate | — not establishedno source published | Was never present in that country no_presenceBmullvad.net · |
| Transparency report | — not established | — not established |
| CactusVPN | Mullvad VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Documented gap between claim and behaviour | — not establishedno source published | No documented lie noneCgithub.com · |
| Marketing against audit findings | No gap on record none | No gap on record none |
| Ownership structure transparency | Ownership is stated and checkable clear | Ownership is stated and checkable clear |
| Adverse events on the owner group record | — not establishedno source published | Nothing adverse on record cleanCmullvad.net · |
| How the service is paid for | Paid subscriptions only paid_only | Paid subscriptions only paid_only |
| Claims of 100% anonymity or military-grade crypto |
| CactusVPN | Mullvad VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Cactus VPN LLCAsecuritum.com · | Mullvad VPN AB, Box 53049, 400 14 Gothenburg, SwedenBmullvad.net · |
| Where the company sits | — not establishedno source published | Sweden SEBmullvad.net · |
| Year the service launched | 2011Bcactusvpn.com · | 2009Bmullvad.net · |
| User base scale (mass >=10M, mid >=1M, niche <1M) | — not established |
| CactusVPN | Mullvad VPN | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms with a client | 7 Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Android TV, Fire TV, Browser extensionBcactusvpn.com · | 5 Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, WindowsBmullvad.net · |
| Countries with an exit | 25 countriesBcactusvpn.com · | 50 countriesBmullvad.net · |
| Paying monthly | $15.00 per monthBcactusvpn.com · | $5.69 per monthBmullvad.net · |
| Assured Security Consultants (GotaTun code review) and Leviathan Security Group (Android Mobile App Profile assessment) — two engagements, both reports dated 2026-02-17Aassured.se · 3 sources · |
| Auditor category | A security specialist security_specialist | A security specialist security_specialist |
|---|
| Assurance standard | Another standard other | Another standard other |
|---|
| Date of latest report | 2026-05-08Asecuritum.com · | 2026-02-17Aassured.se · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Audit cadence | One-off one_offAsecuritum.com · | Repeated, at no fixed interval repeated_irregularBgithub.com · |
|---|
| Total published audits | 1Asecuritum.com · | 8Bgithub.com · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Retention as the report states it | Nothing that links traffic to a person none_linkableAsecuritum.com · | The report does not address retention not_statedBgithub.com · |
|---|
| Client source code published | None noneAsecuritum.com · | Every client allBgithub.com · |
|---|
| Reproducible builds | — not establishedno source published | On some platforms partialBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Separate pentest | — not establishedno source published | Yes, and the report was read yes_verifiedAx41-dsec.de · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Strength of the assurance opinion | — not establishedno source published | — the question does not ariseno source published |
|---|
| Reported numbers plausible for this scale |
|---|
| — not establishedno source published |
| — the question does not ariseno source published |
| Warrant canary discipline | — not established | — not established |
|---|
| Requests received | — not established | — not established |
|---|
| Requests that produced data | — not established | — not established |
|---|
| Secret-order regime | No secret-order regime on record none_knownno source published · | Orders go through a judge judicial_onlyBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Chronology of documented enforcement events | — not establishedno source published | 1 documented demandBmullvad.net · |
|---|
yes| — not establishedno source published |
| Aggressive lifetime subscriptions | Does not no | Does not no |
|---|
| Coverage exists only on affiliate sites | Covered only on sites paid to cover it yesCcactusvpn.com · | Covered outside affiliate sites too noBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Security incident and how it was disclosed | No incident on record none_knownno source published · | Disclosed by the provider, promptly self_disclosed_promptBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Affiliate programme and payout tier | A standard payout standardBcactusvpn.com · | No affiliate programme noneBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Owner-run review media discloses the tie | — not establishedno source published | — the question does not ariseno source published |
|---|
| App store declaration | — not establishedno source published | The store form matches the published policy matches_policyBapps.apple.com · 3 sources · |
|---|
Mid: a million users or more midBmullvad.net · |
| Ultimate beneficial owner as written | Independent; founded and run by co-founders (Sergiu Candja, Pavel Bodeanu, and colleagues), who state they have refused outside buyout offersBcactusvpn.com · | Amagicom AB, 100% owned by founders Fredrik Stromberg and Daniel BerntssonBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Other businesses of the owner group | None disclosed | None disclosed |
|---|
| Country of the ultimate beneficial owner | — not establishedno source published | SEBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Owner group | independent | independent |
|---|
| Date the current owner took control | — the question does not arise | — the question does not arise |
|---|
| Role of this brand inside the group | The group's principal brand principal | The group's principal brand principal |
|---|
| Infrastructure shared with cluster siblings | Separate infrastructure separate | Separate infrastructure separate |
|---|
| Paying yearly | $70.00 a year at renewal, billed onceBcactusvpn.com · | $69.60 a year at renewal, billed onceBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Usable free tier | No free tier none | No free tier none |
|---|
| Works under active censorship | Claimed to work claimed | Claimed to work claimed |
|---|
| Protocols offered | 8 OpenVPN, WireGuard, IKEv2, L2TP, PPTP, SSTP, A vendor protocol with published source, An obfuscated protocolBcactusvpn.com · | 1 WireGuardBmullvad.net · 2 sources · |
|---|
| Kill switch coverage | On every platform all_platformsBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
|---|
| Split tunneling available | Available yes | Available yes |
|---|
| Simultaneous connections | unlimitedBcactusvpn.com · | 5Bmullvad.net · |
|---|
| Friction to start using it | An email address only email_onlyBcactusvpn.com · | No account needed no_accountBmullvad.net · |
|---|
| P2P allowed | Allowed yesBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
|---|
| Major streaming services reachable | Reachable yesBcactusvpn.com · | — not establishedno source published |
|---|
