best vpns for tomato routers

Running a VPN is great, but finding a VPN that supports all your mobile devices, tablets, computers, smart TVs, and more is extremely challenging. And when you finally find the right VPN, it may be overly expensive or only allow a few simultaneous connections. That means while you run the VPN on your smartphone, tablet, and computer, your other devices cannot be running the VPN at the same time. This mean you other devices will be left unprotected and open to hackers, bad packet infiltration, or hazardous networks.

A VPN Routers fixes all of these issues. Now what is a ‘VPN router’? The terms may sound a bit scary, but it is quite simple, it is running a VPN on your router. A router is the box where your internet service broadcasts out of. A ‘VPN router’ means you implement your VPN service into the router. This means your network is now fully routed through the VPN. Say you install/configure your VPN provider into the router, now whenever you connect to your network, everything on that network is run through the configured VPN. Say the network name is ‘My network’, connect to it, and all your mobile devices, computers, smart TV’s, smart devices, consoles, and everything will be connected and route through the VPN. No separate continuations needed.

Now you may think, how can I implement a VPN into the router, my internet service provider gave me this unusable piece of junk? That may be one issue, to have full VPN router access, you will need to flash firmware on it. The process is simple, or you can do what we did, and buy a pre-flashed router that comes with free support.

Tomato is our preferred firmware to work with. Once the router is plugged into the wall, open up the gateway, and configure the VPN. This means no more configuring a VPN on all devices separately, or finding a VPN that supports your devices, just find a VPN that supports router firmware, and implement the service into the router. Even if a cyber-criminal, attacker, neighbor, or anyone gets on the network, their actions will be encrypted too. This means their actions will be encrypted and shielded, as well as them not being able to sniff the network, snoop on your internet browsing habits, or steal sensitive data transferred over the network.

VPN routing is essential, and the security benefits are surreal. As it simplifies and secures the whole network, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, a VPN that supports OpenVPN for routers is the only realistic option. Other types of encryption such as PPTP and L2TP/IPSec are unrealistic and could be considered insecure algorithms leaving your data in plain-text. Meaning they are insecure and virtually anyone can read the data transmitted through it. Second, making sure the VPN supports your router firmware. We have an article for VPNs that support DD-WRT here, but this article will go over VPN’s that support Tomato firmware. If you use an optional third party firmware, you may need to look into what is backwards compatible with that firmware. Most firmwares are widely backwards compatible with DD-WRT and Tomato the firmwares are open-source projects. Last things you need to take into account is if it supports your countries or needs. Now running a VPN on the router is great, but if you live in the USA, and are running a VPN on your router in the Netherlands, issues may arise. It may be harder to buy items, login to your bank account, or similar issues may arise. Turning off the VPN on the router is as easy as one click, but it’s better to choose a VPN a bit closer to you, so you don’t set off any red signals when browsing or shopping online.

If everything has been accounted for and you are using Tomato, below are the best VPNs for Tomato routers.

Private Internet Access

private internet access tomato

Private Internet Access is one of our top providers due to that fact that it supports almost every setup imaginable. Private Internet Access offers easy and fast support for Tomato routers and server switching is a breeze. Private Internet Access offers unrestricted access to all services across all servers and can offer a great VPN solution for Tomato routers.

Pros:

  • Over 12 countries to choose from
  • Over 1400 servers for users to connect to
  • Supports Tomato and about every configuration imaginable
  • Extremely cheap

Cons:

  • Due to cheaper price some servers may be slow during peak hours (can happen if you get connected to a bad server cluster)
  • Operates under the jurisdiction of the United States of America

Visit the Private Internet Access Website!

AirVPN

airvpn tomato

AirVPN offers full support for Tomato routers and is our top choice. With AirVPN’s simple one click configuration manager it makes router setup a breeze. A few clicks and AirVPN’s configuration manager will setup files for any country, specific state, specific area, or anything desired. They allow the choice of UDP or TCP, specific ports, and offer a simple one click setup for the non-techies.

Pros:

  • Full support for Tomato
  • Offer free secure DNS
  • Over 14 countries to connect to
  • Offers high quality, fast VPN for cheap
  • Operates under the jurisdiction of Italy

Cons:

  • May be a bit technically oriented but can be easily figured out
  • Have to build a new configuration every time you want to switch server locations

Visit the AirVPN Website!

CyberGhost

cyberghost tomato

CyberGhost is a bit of an older Romanian provider who recently upgraded their previous service. CyberGhost released their new VPN service along with many great features. One great feature is they support Tomato routers. CyberGhost has a massive server selection, and has quite a large country selection. With over 330 servers, and 24 countries to connect to.

Pros:

  • Gian server selection
  • Great speeds across all servers
  • Supports Tomato routers
  • Decent pricepoint
  • Operates under the jurisdiction of Romania

Cons:

  • May seem a bit flashy and appealing to the eye, some features don’t really add to the service.

Visit the CyberGhost Website!

CryptoStorm

cryptostorm tomato

CryptoStorm is one of the most undernoted VPN’s in the industry. Being previously known as CryptoCloud, CryptoStorm has built a whole new service along with a new structurally anonymous authentication method. While the service can leaves virtually no footprint online, it has quite some large claims. Stating it is ‘battle tested’, along with providing open source tools to make sure everything checks out. The service does seem to indeed check out from third parties testing thus far. To add, the service also gave us amazing speeds on our Tomato router, something a bit of a smaller company cannot usually provide. While the service is among the best in speeds, setup was quite a pain. The setup tutorial is very easy, but assumes you already know how to operate and gain access to the internals of the router using JFFS. After tinkering for over 20-30 minutes we finally got it all setup.  We just wish guides were more comprehensive and we did not need to look up how to setup features that were main section of the review.

Pros:

  • Great speeds on Tomato routers
  • Open source project meaning anyone can view and review it
  • Clear terms of service and privacy policy on how they handle your data and whats allowed
  • Operates under the jurisdiction of Iceland

Cons:

  • Guides need to be a bit more comprehensive

Visit the CryptoStorm Website!

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