Is a VPN for Apex Legends worth it? Benefits and drawbacks

Getting a VPN for Apex Legends is worth it to lower your ping, help you find bot lobbies, or unblock the game in restrictive regions and networks (e.g., school wi-fi). Outside the game, certain VPNs offer protection against malicious URLs designed to steal your account.

While a VPN can offer several advantages for Apex Legends, it’s important to consider the potential drawbacks. These include slower speeds, interference from certain VPN settings, and recurring subscription costs, which not everyone may have the budget for.

The article below covers each of these aspects and answers some questions surrounding the topic at the end. To save time on research afterward, we’ll list some tried-and-tested Apex VPNs below.

Best VPNs for Apex Legends:

1. NordVPN: The top VPN for Apex Legends fans. Boasts an extensive network with over 6,400 servers across 111+ countries. Delivers blazing-fast connections and plenty of tools to keep you entertained or secure during downtime.
2. Surfshark: Budget-friendly VPN for Apex players. Offers solid, reliable connections thanks to its Nexus network, and allows for unlimited simultaneous connections.
3. IPVanish: Another reliable Apex VPN that lets you play on as many devices as you want simultaneously. Comes with the Optimal Location feature to select the fastest server.
4. ExpressVPN: Known for its fantastic speeds and excellent privacy and security offering. Has built-in obfuscation to help you evade VPN detection systems in online games.
5. CyberGhost VPN: Huge network in 100+ countries, complete with servers optimized for gaming, streaming, and more.

Benefits of using a VPN for Apex Legends

There are many benefits to using a VPN for Alex Legends. We’ve listed the main ones below.

1. Lower Apex ping in specific cases

Usually, VPNs tend to slow down online activities, including Apex games, due to reasons we’ll cover when discussing drawbacks. That said, some internet providers have routing issues to the Apex game servers, which can cause high ping and lag.

A VPN resolves this by having your game data take a more efficient path, lowering your ping, and solving other connectivity issues. Think of it as taking the nearest highway exit to avoid a traffic jam. You may travel longer to your final stop, but you save time by not getting stuck for a few hours.

Many players (such as this one) on Reddit and other communities confirm this fact. If your games are frequently laggy, it’s worth trying a gaming VPN to lower your ping in Apex Legends.

2. Find bot lobbies in Apex

This is likely the main reason people use a VPN for Apex Legends. By connecting to a VPN server located in an area with fewer players, the game’s matchmaking can place you in so-called Apex bot lobbies. Apex Legends fills lobbies with bots and lower-rank players to avoid long wait times, resulting in easier games.

Players use this method to get a more casual Apex experience, farm ranks, improve their skills, or experiment with different Legends they may not be comfortable with in regular matches. It’s true that Respawn added “Bot Royale” mode for this exact purpose in Season 22. However, bot lobbies are the way to go if you still want some human element to your matches.

3. Unblock Apex Legends on school wi-fi

Another common use for a VPN in Apex Legends is to circumvent restrictions on public Wi-Fi, whether at school, on campus, in hotels, or elsewhere. These establishments often block ports for video games, torrenting, and other activities to save bandwidth or remove “unnecessary distractions” for students.

Fortunately, VPNs encrypt and route your online data through a server in a different region or country. This lets you bypass local network restrictions and hide the fact that you’re playing Apex from any nosy network admins. VPNs also use different ports, like port 443, which is essential for everyday browsing and rarely blocked.

4. Play Apex in restrictive regions

Whether visiting or recently moved to a region that bans Apex, a VPN can help you bypass regional restrictions and continue playing the game. It does so by changing your IP address and tricking the Apex servers into thinking you’re located in the “correct” region.

Apex Legends is banned in Cuba, Iran, Syria, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine’s Crimea region, and North Korea. You can technically include China if you don’t speak the language or you’re not a fan of the changes in the Chinese version of the game.

5. Fewer ads and scam links

VPNs are evolving, and many providers have added threat-blocking features to their apps. For example, NordVPN’s Threat Protection blocks ads, intrusive trackers, malicious URLs (such as phishing scam domains), and other cyber threats.

It’s worth using this kind of VPN feature to one-up scammers trying to steal your carefully built Apex Legends account. Naturally, getting rid of ads and trackers is a nice bonus.

Drawbacks of using a VPN for Apex Legends

There are also drawbacks to using a VPN. We’ve listed those below in the name of balance.

1. Slower speeds

As explained in a previous section, a VPN would generally slow down your games due to various factors, such as:

• Your data has to travel further to reach the Apex servers.
• VPNs add extra data called encryption overhead to your traffic, which takes up a bit of processing power.
• The VPN server can be overloaded with users, as many providers have stopped letting people choose individual servers.

The first and second points are negligible when you use one of the fastest VPNs available. Plus, while overloading the VPN server with users can impact performance, many providers automatically route connections to less crowded servers, minimizing this issue and ensuring a smoother gaming experience.

2. VPN setting interference

Certain VPN features, such as split tunneling, kill switches, or the way providers handle IPv6 addresses can sometimes cause conflicts with Apex Legends or its Easy Anti-Cheat system:

• Incorrectly setting up split tunneling can result in issues like “Engine Error: Failed to allocate a network port”, or not being able to launch Apex because it was excluded from the VPN tunnel by accident.
• An overactive kill switch can shut off internet traffic if your connection is often unstable (common with poor wi-fi signal).
• This is rare (and more of a problem with EAC itself), but if you or your VPN provider block IPv6 connections, the game could not load (or enter an infinite loading loop).

We offer fixes to all of these in our guide on how to get a VPN working with Apex Legends. All of these issues can be resolved with just a few clicks.

3. Subscription cost

Not everyone can afford a VPN, and with rising living costs everywhere, this is perfectly understandable.

Luckily, some of the cheapest VPNs can cost as little as $2.03/month while still providing amazing performance in Apex, great streaming capabilities, and much more. Plus, all of them come with 30-day+ money-back guarantees, so you can test drive them risk-free.

So, is a VPN for Apex Legends worth it? The bottom line

To summarize, an Apex Legends VPN is worth the price if:

• You experience high ping and lag: VPNs can sometimes solve routing issues by picking a better path for your data.
• You want to play on bot lobbies: Bot Royale not challenging enough, but regular matchmaking is just too much after a hard day? VPNs can help you change your region and find more casual games or bot lobbies.
• Apex is blocked in your country or on your local network: Avoid pesky geo-restrictions or campus network admins getting in the way of your fun.
• You’re worried about scammers: Some VPNs block malicious URLs, which include phishing links designed to steal Apex accounts (or from other games).

Meanwhile, the drawbacks of using a VPN to play Apex Legends involve:

• Speed loss: Due to data travel distance and encryption overhead, or potential server overcrowding. All of these are negligible when you use a top-rated provider.
• Connectivity errors: Caused by incorrectly configured VPN settings (e.g. kill switch, split tunneling) or conflicts with Easy Anti-Cheat. Easily fixable with our guide.
• Having to pay a monthly subscription: Not much to be done on that end, though providers often hold sales, and long-term plans can be quite cheap.

Overall, it’s fair to say that a VPN is worth it for Apex Legends if you have the spare budget. Most drawbacks can be solved with a little tinkering, and you can use a VPN to watch Netflix or other streaming sites on top of everything.

Is a VPN for Apex Legends worth it?FAQs

See also: Best VPNs for Apex Legends Mobile