Anyone who uses a portable device like a mobile telephone or laptop knows that every running app consumes a certain amount of battery power. This includes when you use a VPN on a mobile device.
In this guide, you’ll learn more about how a VPN can affect the battery life on your device, as well as ways you can save power.
Why would using a VPN drain the battery faster?
The most common way people use a VPN from a mobile device is by installing a client app that manages connections to the VPN service. The client mobile app authenticates your device to the VPN server. It also has to manage computer security by encrypting and decrypting VPN traffic. All of these consume CPU (Central Processing Unit) resources, so they need extra battery power.
What if I’m not using my VPN?
If you use the client app to connect the VPN service, your device will use extra power, even if you’re not actively surfing the net or using web apps. This is because the client app needs to keep NAT (Network Address Translation) sessions active by sending and receiving data. These types of KA (keepalive) messages use battery energy.
The good news
The biggest drain on any mobile device battery is caused by the screen and maintaining cellular network connections. This means VPN software consumption represents only a small percentage of battery power relative to other apps like media players. Other major VPN providers have performed tests on mobile devices and have found that VPN usage doesn’t significantly impact battery life.
How can I maximize battery life when using a VPN?
Although VPNs won’t hugely drain your battery life, all other things being equal, there are some best practices to get maximum VPN efficiency from your device:
Use Wi-Fi or Ethernet
Maintaining a constant connection to 4G or 5G networks can be a huge drain on your mobile device’s battery, especially if it’s constantly switching between different networks. Where possible, use Wi-Fi to connect, which uses far less battery life. If you have a laptop, you can also directly connect to the Internet via an Ethernet cable.
Pick Your Protocol
Certain VPN protocols are more lightweight than others. Wireguard is specifically designed for efficiency, as it contains far fewer lines of code than older protocols like OpenVPN. This means choosing the right communication protocol can reduce battery drain.
Select Your Server
Selecting a VPN server close to your location reduces latency; in other words, it takes less time to transmit data packets between your device and the server. Doing this also reduces the chance that packets will be lost, meaning they don’t need to be resent. This will improve your device’s battery life.
Use a Kill Switch
The best VPN clients come with a built-in kill switch. The main purpose is to protect user privacy by ensuring all internet connections are routed via the VPN. If the VPN connection drops, all internet access is halted.
This prevents your device from repeatedly trying to connect to the Internet. It also prevents other internet apps from sending and receiving internet data. Both of these save energy.
Close Background Apps
Even if you do have a VPN kill switch, if background apps are repeatedly trying to access the Internet, it will place a greater strain on your device’s battery. Make sure to check and close down any unnecessary running apps or processes.
Use Split Tunneling
If your VPN client app supports split tunneling, you can configure it only to send sensitive internet traffic over the VPN. For instance, you could have messages sent by your email app routed over the VPN but have your YouTube app connect directly to the Internet. This reduces the amount of data that needs to be encrypted and decrypted, improving electric battery life.
Update, Update, Update
Keeping both your device operating system and VPN client app up to date is good advice at any time. However, when it comes to improving battery life, you’ll likely get the best results from the latest versions. This is because app updates often are designed to make the software more efficient.
Use a VPN Router
As we’ve learned, the VPN client app on your mobile device requires CPU resources for encrypting and sending traffic. You can sidestep this altogether by using a VPN Router. This involves using a router whose firmware has been modified to connect directly to the VPN server. Any computer hardware, such as mobile devices that connect to the router’s wireless access point, can use the VPN without installing any extra software.
Can I just turn off my VPN?
If you exit the client app and connect directly to the Internet, then you’re not using the VPN service, so there’s no extra battery drain.
Still, if you do this, you’ll lose all the protection a VPN offers. For example, anyone monitoring the traffic from your device will be able to tell what sites you’re visiting and what web apps you’re using. Your IP address will also be visible to sites you visit, meaning you’re more likely to be targeted by cybercriminals.
Remember: security is more important than your battery!
Will battery saver mode affect my VPN?
This is a difficult question to answer as different devices have different implementations of battery saver mode.
If the mode disables background processes required by your VPN client app, then it may not function as well as before.
Similarly, if the mode places limits on CPU performance then your VPN client app may not be able to encrypt and decrypt traffic as easily, reducing VPN performance.
If this is a concern for you, we recommend investing in a VPN router. That way, you won’t need to install a client app on your device to use a VPN.
How can I test the VPN battery drain?
To get an idea of what effect your VPN has on battery life, first make sure to charge your device to 100%.
You’ll then need to run a series of tests of battery drain both while your device is and isn’t connected to the VPN over a certain amount of time.
For example, you could measure battery drain over 3 hours when:
- The device is idle, i.e., the VPN connection is active, but no web apps are in use.
- Streaming media like an HD video, e.g., from YouTube.
- Streaming media like an audio file from an online music service.
To make this a fair test, you’ll need to make sure that all other things are equal. For instance, if your device is 5 meters away from the router when you run the first test, make sure not to move it when running the others.
You should also make sure to connect to the same VPN server and use the same VPN protocol when running the VPN tests.
When running apps like YouTube, make sure no others are open, so you know only that activity relates to battery use.
We also suggest recharging your smartphone or other portable device and then running the tests again several times to get an accurate result.
Does using hide.me’s VPN reduce battery life?
As we’ve discussed, using a VPN client app will require extra battery power. You can reduce this by choosing from a server close to you from one of hide.me VPN’s many locations. We also fully support the Wireguard protocol, and both our Android and iPhone client apps have a kill switch.
We love bringing you this content and hope it helps keep you safe and secure online. Feel free to share it with your friends, too.
Here at hide.me we are all about internet freedom, and we are happy to be in a position to bring that to everyone. That is why we give you a 30-day money-back guarantee on our Premium plan. No questions asked and no logs recorded.
If you have any questions, please feel to contact our 24/7 support team either at support@hide.me or via live chat.
