Mullvad review for crypto users
Last reviewed 2026-08-26
Mullvad asks for nothing about you. Signing up produces a random account number and that is the whole identity: no email address, no username, no password, nothing to hand over later because nothing was ever collected.
In April 2023 that design met the Swedish police. At least six officers arrived at the Gothenburg office with a warrant for customer data. Mullvad demonstrated that the data did not exist, the officers consulted the prosecutor, and they left without seizing anything. Cure53 has separately audited the apps and infrastructure across several engagements, most recently a fourth infrastructure audit in June 2024 that found nothing capable of compromising a user's anonymity.
Payment is where the design goes furthest. Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Monero all run on Mullvad's own full nodes with self-hosted wallets, so no payment processor sits in the middle, and banknotes in an envelope with a payment token work too. Crypto and cash both earn a ten percent discount. What they do not earn is a refund: the terms exclude both from the fourteen-day money-back guarantee outright, which is the trade for a payment nobody can trace back to you.
Two things to weigh. Sweden is a Fourteen Eyes member, which matters less when the company holds no data to share but is still true. And the price is a flat five euros a month whether you buy one month or ten years, so there is no discount to chase and no renewal trap either.
- Owned by
- Mullvad VPN AB
- Jurisdiction
- Sweden
- Eyes alliance
- Fourteen Eyes member
- Price
- A flat five euros per month whatever the term, with a ten percent discount for cryptocurrency and cash payments and no long-term discount tiers at all.
- Money-back
- 14 days (Cash and cryptocurrency payments are excluded from it entirely, so a bitcoin purchase cannot be refunded.)
- Free tier
- None
- Protocols
- WireGuard, OpenVPN
- Servers
- Vendor publishes a live server list, running to roughly 550 servers, and marks which are owned rather than rented
- Pay with crypto
- bitcoin, bitcoin cash, monero
The evidence for the no-logs claim
A no-logs policy is a sentence on a website until someone checks. This is what has actually been checked for Mullvad, dated, with the primary source for each item.
Independent audits
- 2024
Cure53: fourth infrastructure audit, covering one OpenVPN and one WireGuard server plus the Ansible deployment code. source
- 2021
Cure53: infrastructure audit that found no personally identifiable information or privacy leaks. source
- 2020
Cure53: penetration test and source code audit of the apps across Windows, Android and iOS. source
- 2018
Cure53: penetration test and source code audit of the VPN client app. source
Tested in the real world
- 2023
At least six officers from the Swedish police National Operations Department searched Mullvad's Gothenburg office with a warrant seeking customer data. Mullvad showed the data did not exist and the officers left without seizing equipment or obtaining any customer information. source
Paying with bitcoin
Coins accepted
bitcoin, bitcoin cash, monero
Processor
In-house, on self-hosted full nodes
Anonymous signup
Yes
Accounts are a randomly generated number with no email, username or password attached, and cash sent by post is tied only to a payment token rather than the account number.
The refund sentence that governs a crypto purchase, from Mullvad's own policy:
“We do not offer refunds for cash and crypto payments.” refund policy
What it does for a bitcoin user
- A random account number is the entire identity: no email, username or password
- Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Monero run on self-hosted nodes with no payment processor
- A 2023 police search of its office produced no customer data
- Cash in an envelope is accepted, tied only to a payment token
What it will not do: bypass KYC, hide on-chain activity, or make a geo-blocked exchange usable. Presenting a false location to an exchange breaches its terms of service and is how accounts get frozen with the balance inside. Details in the VPN guide.
Pros and cons
What works
- The strongest signup privacy reviewed here, with nothing personal collected at all
- A police raid tested the no-logs claim in practice and came away empty
- Crypto payments avoid third-party processors entirely, and take ten percent off
- Flat pricing with no renewal price rise and no discount maze
What to watch
- Cash and crypto payments carry no refund rights whatsoever
- Sweden is a Fourteen Eyes member country
- A flat five euros a month costs more than heavily discounted multi-year rivals
- Only five simultaneous devices, and no port forwarding
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an email address to sign up for Mullvad?
No. Mullvad generates a random account number and that is the only identifier it holds. There is no email address, username or password anywhere in the process.
Can I get a refund if I pay Mullvad in bitcoin?
No. The terms exclude cash and cryptocurrency payments from the fourteen-day money-back guarantee, so an anonymous payment is also a non-refundable one.
What happened when Swedish police raided Mullvad?
In April 2023 officers arrived with a warrant for customer data. Mullvad demonstrated no such data existed on its systems, and after the officers consulted the prosecutor they left without taking anything.
Does Sweden being in the Fourteen Eyes matter?
It is a genuine consideration, though intelligence-sharing agreements govern what states do with data they obtain. The 2023 search is the practical answer: there was nothing on the systems to obtain.