Does NordVPN work with Netflix in Australia?

Netflix is a household name that’s in many homes. No matter where you are in the world, it’s packed with quality content across licensed content, including some of the best Netflix original TV series and the best Netflix movies.

The thing is, while Netflix originals are universal around the globe, a bunch of the other content isn’t. For instance, AMC hits Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are part of the American Netflix library but they typically require a separate Stan subscription to watch in Australia. To tap into Netflix’s rich international content libraries, you’re going to need a virtual private network service like NordVPN.

Yes, NordVPN works with Netflix. This means that no matter where you are in the world, you can use NordVPN to access other Netflix libraries. Simply connect to a region with the Netflix library you’d like to access, then bring up Netflix to see that region’s library of content. The easiest way to tell that you’re connected to a different Netflix region is to scroll down to the ‘Top 10’ list.

Fair warning: you may have to scroll quite a bit to find it. Normally, the Top 10 list will include the country name. So if you’re not using a VPN, you should see something along the lines of “Top 10 TV Shows in Australia today” and “Top 10 Movies in Australia today”. Use NordVPN to connect to a location in a different country that has Netflix, and you should see the country name change. We highly recommend using a service like Just Watch to test specific content in regions inside and outside of Australia.

NordVPN used to have a handy breakdown of the Netflix regions it supported but the corresponding support page no longer lists specific countries. There were 14 Netflix regions officially listed in the past and, of those, the following ones worked in my NordVPN tests:

• Netflix Australia
• Netflix Canada
• Netflix France
• Netflix Germany
• Netflix Italy
• Netflix Netherlands
• Netflix South Korea
• Netflix Spain
• Netflix UK
• Netflix USA

Of the others that were previously mentioned, I was unable to confirm whether Netflix was displaying regional content for Finland. Additionally, NordVPN was having trouble connecting to any servers in Japan and Brazil, so I couldn’t confirm either of those. India was previously listed as a supported country, but NordVPN wasn’t offering any Indian servers at the time of updating this article.

You can access Netflix libraries from outside of your region, but technically you shouldn’t. NordVPN makes a point of saying that its service shouldn’t be used to bypass copyright regulations. The Netflix terms of use state that signing up for the streaming service means you agree to not circumvent content protections and that you agree to viewing “the Netflix content primarily within the country in which you have established your account and only in geographic locations where [Netflix] offer[s its] service and have licensed such content.”

This technically means that Netflix could ban your account, even if account bans for VPN circumvention have not been widely reported. What is more widely reported is that particular VPNs are either temporarily or permanently blocked, which means you won’t be able to access Netflix libraries in those regions. In our experience, this is typically a temporary situation as Netflix and other streaming services are effectively blocking a VPN server’s IP address. Once a new one appears on a service like NordVPN that’s renowned for bypassing geoblocks, streaming should work again.

While major VPN providers tend to automate VPN connections by automatically selecting the best server for you once you select a country, you can manually connect to specific regions and additional servers in the countries these VPNs offer. If you connect to one of those servers and are told that Netflix is blocked, try another region/server in the same country.

For NordVPN, search for the country you’re after, like “United States”, then scroll through the list of servers by region and pick a different one. Alternatively, click a location on the NordVPN global map. VPNs like PureVPN have a button that lets you manually connect to another server, which means a new IP address, increasing the likelihood of bypassing geoblocks. Admittedly, at the time of writing this feature was seemingly relegated to PureVPN Windows software.

Netflix has regional libraries because of licensing. Global licensing of content isn’t really a thing. Also, there are many competing streaming services around the world, so certain content isn’t available for Netflix to license, depending on the region. In Australia, for instance, different channels and streaming services are competing for licensed content, including Binge, Stan, and Prime Video.

Unless you nab special pricing, NordVPN is offered in one-month, 12-month or two-year subscriptions. Note that NordVPN has cheaper pricing for the first annual or biennial subscription, and then higher typical pricing applies thereafter. NordVPN also has three products: Standard, Plus and Complete. NordVPN Standard is all you need for streaming. Plus adds NordPass and a data-breach scanner. Complete has everything included in Plus alongside 1TB of cloud storage and next-gen file encryption.

NordVPN prices are outlined in the table below.

NordVPN is one of the most popular VPN services around, but there are others we’ve reviewed that work with secure access to several Netflix regions around the world:

• CyberGhost VPN
• Express VPN
• Hola VPN
• Hotspot Shield VPN
• IPVanish VPN
• Norton Secure VPN
• Private Internet Access
• PrivadoVPN
• Proton VPN
• PureVPN
• SurfShark VPN
• TunnelBear VPN
• VPN Unlimited
• Windscribe VPN

While free VPNs like ProtonVPN may allow you to securely connect to Netflix libraries from around the globe, they tend to be restricted in terms of number of servers, available data, number of devices that can connect, and overall speed. Because VPNs are relaying your internet traffic through external servers, your overall internet speeds are impacted, which is an important consideration when matching internet connection with VPN.

That said, there are several free VPNs that you can test with Netflix:

• Hola VPN
• Privado VPN
• Surfshark
• TunnelBear
• Windscribe

The answer to how fast your internet needs to be for VPNs varies based on a few factors. For instance, time of day can impact your overall home internet speed, which means you’re already dealing with slower speeds before connecting to a VPN. If you have a lot of devices competing for finite internet bandwidth, this will also impact speed for any device/s connecting to a VPN.

While Netflix is playable with speeds as low as 3Mbps, this shifts to 5Mbps for Full HD playback. Basically, you should be able to comfortably stream Netflix from around the world with NBN 25, which has download speeds of up to 25Mbps.

Here’s a look at a daily updating list of the most popular NBN 25 plans in our comparison engine.

[text block] Netflix says that you need to be able to hit 25Mbps download speed to watch 4K Netflix content. Given the speed lost by connecting to a VPN, particularly VPN servers that are on the other side of the world, an NBN 50 plan should be sufficient (with download speeds of up to 50Mbps).

Here’s a look at some of the most popular NBN 50 plans from our database.

For extra breathing space, consider an NBN 100 plan, which has download speeds of up to 100Mbps. The Netflix 4K subscription includes up to four simultaneous streams, so if you wanted four 4K streams in your home, you’d need at least 60Mbps download speed.

Below is a daily updating list of popular NBN 100 plans from our comparison engine.

How much a VPN impacts internet speed—downloads, uploads and latency—is determined by a few factors: the VPN provider, the distance between connecting device and server, and how busy the VPN server is. When it comes to streaming, download speeds is the main one that matters.

For NordVPN specifically, we measured a 5% change in download speed for a nearby Australian server. That change went up to 13% for a US server and 31% for one in the UK. On a max-speed NBN 100 connection (100Mbps download), this would equate to 95Mbps for Australia, 87Mbps for the US and 69Mbps for the UK.

All of these speeds are capable of streaming Netflix at 4K quality with up to four simultaneous streams. Just be sure to factor in a VPN’s impact to download speed relative to the max download speed for your home connection and the percentage change. You can see how fast your internet is by running a speed test, which works regardless of whether you’re connected to a VPN.