Not a VPN, but you may also want to look into I2P.

https://i2pd.website/

https://proprivacy.com/privacy-service/guides/i2p-guide

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FNp0TRDG0BQ

Basically, a p2p protocol for the entire internet.

Its considerably more complicated to set up than most modern VPNs, where nowaday's its usually as simple as install an app with a GUI, verify some settings and you're good to go, and i2p is also quite slow...

... but its totally free, and you can torrent over it, and as far as I know, if you've set it up properly, it is basically undetectable by ISPs, due to how it uses 'garlic' routing: basically, a whole bunch of users net requests are encrypted, anonymized, and then smashed into a big packet... so an ISP would have to untangle all of that for every packet, and afaik, none of them have figured out how.

I2P would obviously be horrible for watching streaming content though, snail speed.

I love Mullvad, but if you need P2P its not the best option. If you just need a VPN, though, its amazing. Today I just switched to AirVPN and am running it on Arch through Eddie. Have my qbittorrent set up to only allow connections through Eddie and just forwarded my first port. I'm very happy with it.

I think the only downside is that I could get Mullvad for 5eur a month on a month by month basis. AirVPN is 7eur or 15eur for three months, so I have to lock into the three months to get the same price.

What's going on with Proton the company?

Edit: ah fuck, thanks for the replies. Sigh.

AirVPN, IVPN, Mullvad, Windscribe

Mullvad, IVPN and ~~Nym~~ (not tested with audits yet, do not trust as much as the other two).

For clearnet browsing. PIA, AirVPN and Windscribe for torrenting. Windscribe and PIA are probably good for either but this is my classification, take it as you will

Still using Private Internet Access (PIA).

Honestly, dunno why they've fallen out of fashion due to the FUD about being owned by an unsavoury parent company, but the most important matter to me is if they keep logs, which they don't. One of the few VPN companies tested on this, in court, and in a recent audit. Plus still extremely cheap (if you go for 3yr+3mo).

Port forwarding works with with this docker NAS stack. Doesn't use gluetun, but there's a specialised docker-wireguard-pia container as part of the stack, with a script that handles port changes. Been flawless.

Just throwing in another voice for PIA. Their corporate owners may be questionable, but I've been with them since before they sold out and have never heard a peep from my ISP for seeding terabytes of torrents. They don't keep logs, and they are audited to prove it regularly.

EDIT: They also have port forwarding, but not for every exit server.

Great for use on my phone when I want to use public/airport wifi

If you just want the tunnel encryption you can try hosting a VPN on your own home network. It's what I do since I don't need to spoof my location.

You are asking in the piracy community so I'm assuming you're also using it to torrent (which a home VPN won't help with) but you didn't specifiy so I'm not sure

I thought about publishing a Terraform module one time that spins up a cheap VPS, installs OpenVPN and then gives you a config with a certificate. You could run it for just a few hours at a time, and use destroy when you're done. But then I got really bored because I have ADHD.

I've used AirVPN for this exact setup and it works great. The port forwarding is static and doesn't change once setup. I switched to proton because it was convenient, I was already paying for ProtonMail et all, so I dropped the extra VPN subscription when it renewed.

I'll add another recommendation for Windscribe. I've had a lifetime subscription since 2017 and have never had issues. I use it for normal internet usage pretty much daily and the occasional torrenting.

What’s wrong with NordVPN?

If you mainly do torrenting, AirVPN is a good option. I have recently moved away from ProtonVPN; it’s too expensive.