Explainer
Both make a request from another address. A VPN normally carries all your device's traffic and encrypts it; a proxy usually handles one app and may encrypt nothing at all. Here is how to tell which one you have.
A proxy and a VPN both forward your requests, so a site sees their address instead of yours. The difference is how much they cover and whether they protect the traffic on the way.
A VPN normally works at the level of the device: all your apps go through it, encrypted. A proxy normally works at the level of one app, such as a browser, and many proxies do not encrypt anything between you and them.
| Compared | VPN | Proxy |
|---|---|---|
| What it covers | Normally all traffic on the device | The app configured to use it |
| Encryption to the server | Yes, by design | Depends on the type; often none |
| What your network sees | An encrypted connection to one server | Without encryption, the proxy and the sites you request |
| Who you trust | The VPN provider | The proxy's operator |
| Name lookups | Should go through the tunnel | May still go through your own connection |
| Setup | An app that changes the device's routing | A setting in one app, or an extension |
A proxy can be enough when you only need one app to appear from another address, and what it carries is not sensitive. Testing how a website looks from another country is a typical case.
A VPN fits better when the point is to hide your activity from the network you are on, because it covers every app and encrypts the whole stretch. It does not change who else can identify you, as set out in what a VPN does not protect you from.
Neither removes the need for trust. Both hand your traffic to someone else, and that party can see where it goes. HTTPS still protects the contents of a page from either of them.
So the same question applies to both: who runs it, and what does it keep? For the services it covers, the register sets out what has been published on exactly that.
Often it is a proxy, whatever the name says. An extension can normally only handle your browser's traffic, so other apps on the device stay outside it. The listing or the documentation should tell you what it covers, and if it does not, assume it covers only the browser.
From the site you visit, yes, as long as the app really sends its traffic through the proxy. It does not hide your activity from the proxy's operator, and an unencrypted proxy does not hide it from your network either.
Treat it as you would any stranger handling your traffic. The operator can see what passes through it and, without HTTPS, can read or change it. Avoid entering passwords through a proxy whose operator you cannot identify.
Next
Every explainer ends by naming the pages that own what it only touched.
Public Wi-Fi is less dangerous than the advertising says, because HTTPS already seals most of what you send. A VPN still hides which sites you reach, and some real risks remain that it does nothing about.
A DNS leak happens when your VPN carries your traffic but the name lookups go around it, which shows your network the sites you visit. This page covers why that happens and how to check for it.
A kill switch stops your traffic when the VPN tunnel drops, so it cannot carry on unprotected without your noticing. Kill switches differ in what they cover, and the differences decide when one actually helps.
"Independently audited" can describe very different pieces of work. This page covers the kinds of audit, what each one can show, and the questions to ask before an audit changes your mind about a provider.
Many people do not. A VPN solves a few specific problems well and does nothing for the rest, so the answer depends on which problem you have. This page goes through the common ones.
A VPN asks you to trust one company. Tor splits your connection across three relays so that no single one sees both who you are and where you are going. They solve different problems, and neither replaces the other.
What happens to a packet between your device and a website when a VPN is on: the handshake, the tunnel, the name lookup and the exit. Each step also explains one way a VPN can fail.
In most of the world, using a VPN is legal. A short list of countries restricts, licenses or blocks them, and what you do through one is a separate question everywhere. This page is a map of that, not legal advice.
Running a VPN costs money every month, so a free one is paid for by something. This page sets out what that usually is, what has gone wrong in practice, and how to tell a sample from a business model.
A VPN protects one stretch of the path: your device to its server. This page covers everything outside that stretch, from your browser and your accounts to malware, a dropped tunnel and the claims made in the advertising.
One encrypted hop between your device and the internet. This page is the starting point for the section: what the hop does, who it hides you from, who it hands the view to instead, and which of the promises made for it survive contact with the mechanism.
Not an explainer but the model itself, for a reader who got to the end of this page and wants to know how the judgement is made.
What the register knows about this market as a whole, and what it does not — every figure from the index, none from a survey.