I’m visiting Havana in one week. I am travelling from Canada. Which VPN would you recommend I download so that I can use a Cuban sim in my phone and access local apps such as la nave?
Any paid vpn should work. My family uses my Surfshark account just fine
VPNProxyMaster works very well here, and you can even used the limited version, which doesn’t require payment.
Any vpn provider will work, recommend to use the ones you use back home.
Local people here use psiphon for a out of the box solution, but they usually do not handle data like banks communications etc.
Your home router probably has a vpn you can enable and setup. It’s quite easy, and free, and then you don’t need to trust a third party vpn service with not snooping on your traffic. Only Cuban specific tip I’ll give you is in your vpn setup on your phone, make sure the OpenVPN profile file has your ip address hardcoded versus a readable name you need a DNS for.
La Nave works fine without a VPN in Cuba. Install before arrival. But certain US sites and servers block you when you are in Cuba. I think the VPNs are all about the same. The paid ones are a bit more reliable, Nord, etc, but I get by with Proton free version just fine.
I use protonvpn everyday
ExpressVPN is the best for everything in Cuba , security, variety and most important (speed)
NordVPN is a good one, mobile app works well. If you’ll only be using it for this trip, check the available discounts on subs like r/vpncoupons to not overspend haha. “redditoffer” gives discount for Nord.
Update: La Nave worked well for me without need for VPN. Thank you all for the helpful information. Definitely did save me money in the long run comparing to the regular taxis.
Thank you. I normally don’t use VPN here in Canada. I’m thinking I should start to.
Poster wants to install a phone VPN.
Thank you. It is available through my google app store here in Canada. I have downloaded it, and waiting to get to havana to install it.
Ok awesome. I really only need to use la nave when in havana. I have already downloaded it to my phone, and haven’t opened it yet. I purchased the sim online and will pick it up when reaching the airport. Appreciate the info, thank you.
I just got this one👍🏾
Thank you for the information.
Right. Your home router (everyone I’ve seen anyways) has the ability to run a vpn server on your own router that your phone can connect to and use as a phone vpn service.
You log into the router, find the vpn tab, enable it, then click the button to download your vpn profile for your phone… download OpenVPN app on your phone, and send this vpn profile you you downloaded from your router to the OpenVPN app… done.
Now when you enable vpn on your phone then it connects securely to your home router via your fixed ip address, and all traffic you request from your phone , sends the request to your home router which uses your home internet to get the request and send it back to you.
This is exactly how paid vpn services work except instead of connecting to your home router you’re connecting to some strangers router that could technically be watching everything you’re doing (note this sounds scarier than it really is cause most sites use https now so even if they were snooping they aren’t getting much). Anyways I prefer running my own vpn service for free versus paying for one since it’s so easy to setup
Np and good luck. I can’t stress enough that you need to edit the profile file your router spits out and change it to be a fixed ip address that is your ip. This is super easy… the vpn file is just a text document and it’s pretty obvious what needs to change. Most routers don’t fix the ip address because if your ip address happened to change then you don’t need to update your vpn profile. This is great in theory however you need to have access to a DNS server then and Cuba has a history of literally shutting down their DNS server such that they can control communications on the island. 99% of countries wouldn’t shut down the DNS servers like that but Cuba has and will continue doing that. Also unless you move, your home IP address probably won’t ever change.
Appreciate the information.