How Strong Is Your Encryption?
Analyze TLS version, cipher suite, HTTPS security, and browser fingerprint risk - graded A through F.
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Click the button above to analyze your connection's encryption strength.
VPN Protocol Encryption Reference
Choose the right protocol for your security needs
| Protocol | Cipher | Speed | Security | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WIREGUARD-BASED | ||||
| WireGuard | ChaCha20-Poly1305 | ⚡ Very Fast | Excellent | ✓ Best choice |
| AmneziaWG | ChaCha20-Poly1305 | ⚡ Very Fast | Excellent | ✓ Best + obfuscated |
| WARP (Cloudflare) | ChaCha20-Poly1305 | ⚡ Very Fast | Good | ✓ Free, no config |
| XRAY / V2RAY STACK (ANTI-CENSORSHIP) | ||||
| VLESS + XTLS-Reality | XTLS / TLS 1.3 | ⚡ Very Fast | Excellent | ✓ Best anti-censorship |
| VMess | AES-128-GCM / ChaCha20 | ⚡ Fast | Excellent | ✓ Widely supported |
| Trojan | TLS 1.3 | ⚡ Fast | Excellent | ✓ Looks like HTTPS |
| Hysteria 2 | AES-128-GCM / QUIC | 🚀 Extreme | Excellent | ✓ Best on bad networks |
| TUIC | ChaCha20 / QUIC | ⚡ Very Fast | Excellent | ✓ Low latency |
| NaïveProxy | TLS 1.3 (Chrome stack) | ⚡ Fast | Excellent | ✓ Undetectable |
| SHADOWSOCKS-BASED | ||||
| Shadowsocks-2022 | ChaCha20-Poly1305 | ⚡ Fast | Excellent | ✓ Recommended version |
| Shadowsocks | ChaCha20-Poly1305 | ⚡ Fast | Good | ✓ Anti-censorship |
| ShadowsocksR | ChaCha20 / obfs | ⚡ Fast | Fair | ⚠ Outdated |
| CLASSIC PROTOCOLS | ||||
| OpenVPN AES-256 | AES-256-GCM | 🟡 Moderate | Excellent | ✓ Recommended |
| IKEv2/IPSec | AES-256-GCM | ⚡ Fast | Good | ✓ Good choice |
| SoftEther | AES-256 / RSA-4096 | ⚡ Fast | Good | ✓ Multi-protocol |
| SSTP | AES-256 / SSL | 🟡 Moderate | Good | ✓ Windows only |
| L2TP/IPSec | AES-256 / 3DES | 🐢 Slow | Fair | ⚠ Acceptable |
| PPTP | MPPE-128 / RC4 | ⚡ Fast | Broken | ✗ Never use |
What VPN Encryption Actually Protects
VPN encryption wraps your traffic in a cipher so that anyone between you and the VPN server - your ISP, the operator of a public Wi-Fi network, anyone monitoring the link - sees only unintelligible data. They can tell that you are connected to a VPN and how much data you are moving, but not to which sites or what they contain.
What it does not do is protect you past the VPN server. From that point onward your traffic re-enters the ordinary internet, protected only by whatever HTTPS the destination site provides. This is why the transport-layer checks on this page matter alongside the tunnel: a strong VPN cipher and a weak TLS configuration still leave you exposed, just to a different observer.
In practice the cipher is rarely the weak link. Every protocol in the reference table above except PPTP uses encryption that no realistic adversary can break directly. Attacks target implementation flaws, leaked keys, compromised endpoints and traffic metadata - not the mathematics. Choosing AES-256 over AES-128 changes almost nothing about your actual risk.
How to Read Your Results
The six checks above examine the encryption of your current browser session. Here is what each one is telling you.
- TLS version: TLS 1.3 is current and removes the legacy cipher suites that made earlier versions attackable. TLS 1.2 remains acceptable when configured well. Anything older is obsolete and should not appear in 2026.
- HTTPS enforcement: confirms the connection is encrypted end-to-end with a valid certificate chain. A failure here means traffic is readable in transit regardless of any VPN.
- HSTS: instructs your browser to refuse plaintext connections to this domain in future, closing the downgrade window that a first plaintext request would otherwise open.
- Mixed content: flags encrypted pages that pull scripts or images over plain HTTP. A single mixed script is enough to compromise the whole page, since it can rewrite anything on it.
- Fingerprint risk: encryption hides content, not identity. If your browser is uniquely identifiable, you can be tracked across sites without any of your traffic being decrypted - see our browser fingerprint test.
- Connection summary: the combined view, weighting the checks by how much each one affects real-world exposure.
Choosing a VPN Protocol
The reference table above lists what is available; this is how to choose between them.
- For most people: WireGuard. It is fast, its codebase is small enough to be audited properly, and ChaCha20-Poly1305 performs well on devices without AES hardware acceleration.
- For maximum compatibility: OpenVPN with AES-256-GCM. Slower, but it works everywhere and has two decades of scrutiny behind it.
- For restrictive networks: obfuscated transports such as VLESS with XTLS-Reality, Trojan or Shadowsocks-2022, which are designed to be indistinguishable from ordinary HTTPS traffic.
- On mobile: IKEv2/IPSec handles network switching between Wi-Fi and cellular more gracefully than most alternatives.
- Never: PPTP. Its encryption has been broken for over a decade and it offers no meaningful protection at all.
Whichever you choose, confirm the tunnel is not leaking around the encryption - a perfectly encrypted connection with a DNS leak still hands your browsing history to your ISP. Our IP leak test checks all five channels at once.
🧰 Related Security Tools
Every test runs entirely in your browser - nothing is stored unless you choose to share the result.
VPN Encryption Check - FAQ
What encryption strength means in practice, which protocol to pick, and what encryption cannot do for you.
How do I test my VPN encryption strength?
Run the check at the top of this page while connected to your VPN. It inspects the TLS version negotiated by your browser, certificate validity, HSTS enforcement, mixed content and fingerprint exposure, then combines them into a single grade. Compare the result against the protocol reference table to see how your tunnel’s cipher fits into the overall picture.
Is AES-256 meaningfully better than AES-128?
Not in any practical sense. Both are unbroken, and the difference only matters against attackers with computing resources that do not exist. AES-256 is the conventional choice and costs almost nothing extra, so there is no reason to avoid it - but a VPN using AES-128 is not meaningfully weaker, and treating this as a selection criterion is a distraction from things that do matter, such as leak protection and logging policy.
What is TLS 1.3 and why does it matter?
TLS 1.3 is the current version of the protocol that encrypts HTTPS connections. It completes the handshake in one round trip instead of two, and it removes the obsolete cipher suites and negotiation paths that made earlier versions vulnerable to downgrade attacks. TLS 1.2 remains acceptable when properly configured; anything older should be considered broken.
Which VPN protocol has the best encryption?
WireGuard and modern OpenVPN configurations are equivalent in practical security - both use ciphers with no known feasible attack. WireGuard achieves it with roughly 4,000 lines of code against OpenVPN’s hundreds of thousands, which makes it far easier to audit and leaves less room for implementation bugs. That, rather than cipher choice, is the real argument in its favour.
Does a VPN encrypt all my traffic?
It encrypts everything that enters the tunnel, which is not necessarily everything your device sends. DNS queries, IPv6 traffic and WebRTC connections routinely escape a misconfigured tunnel and travel unencrypted. Split tunnelling excludes chosen applications by design. Encryption strength says nothing about coverage, which is why a leak test is the necessary companion to this one.
Can my ISP see anything when I use a VPN?
They can see that you are connected to a VPN, the address of the VPN server, and how much data you are transferring and when. They cannot see which sites you visit or what you send, provided nothing is leaking. Traffic volume and timing constitute metadata, and for most people that is an acceptable trade - but it is not invisibility.
What is HSTS and do I need it?
HTTP Strict Transport Security is a header that tells your browser to refuse any plaintext connection to a domain for a set period. It closes the window where an attacker could intercept a first, unencrypted request and downgrade the session. It is a site-side setting rather than something you configure, but its presence is a reliable signal that a site takes transport security seriously.
Why does encryption not stop tracking?
Because tracking does not require reading your traffic. Encryption hides content; fingerprinting identifies the browser sending it. A unique combination of screen size, fonts, canvas rendering and installed extensions identifies you across sites regardless of how strong your cipher is or how many times you change IP address. Our browser fingerprint test shows how identifiable your setup currently is.