NordVPN launched Meshnet about three years ago as a unique feature in the VPN industry. A tool that the team believed would transform how users utilize NordVPN forever.
“This feature release is a game-changer,” NordVPN‘s Product Strategist, Vykintas Maknickas, told Techradar when Meshnet was first unveiled.
That, however, never happened. The provider indicates that a lack of usage is the reason behind the decision to permanently remove Meshnet, effective December 1, 2025.
The move caught many by surprise and sparked a wave of disappointment on online forums like Reddit among those who have been benefiting from Meshnet’s added value.
We sat down with the team behind what TechRadar’s reviewers rank as the best VPN on the market to understand what went wrong with Meshnet and what’s coming to replace it.
The short live of Meshnet
NordVPN first launched Meshnet in June 2022 to give users a simple way to link up to 60 different devices at once over encrypted private tunnels.
As NordVPN’s product director, Domininkas Virbickas, explains, Meshnet sprung from a geeky idea and a bid to create something new – a tool that no other virtual private network (VPN) software was offering.
“We thought we might be the ones to fill this gap. I think that one of the hot sea learnings from Meshnet is that we didn’t have clear use cases in my mind at first. We started with the technology,” admits Virbickas.
The team then tried to give Meshnet a better direction. From simply rerouting your internet connections among all these devices, better use cases like secure file sharing and multiplayer gaming were also added.
In March 2023, the provider made the bold decision to make Meshnet free, in the hope of getting more people on board.
It didn’t work, though, with usage remaining confined to less than 1% of NordVPN subscribers.
The main issue is that, Virbickas explains, Meshnet requires a lot of maintenance.
It apparently makes it more troublesome to maintain the core functionality of the VPN client and slows down the team, making the process of developing other features (like the provider’s distinctive Threat Protection Pro tool) much slower.
Virbickas said: “We had that debate for a long time. For that 1% of users, we’re sacrificing 99% of users who want better VPN every day, better threat protection, scam protection, phishing protection, etc. So, after looking at the numbers, and not the feelings or sentiments, we had to make that difficult decision.”
The online backlash, but “no plans” to go back
Meshnet removal has certainly come as a cold shower for the 1% of NordVPN users actively enjoying the feature on a day-to-day basis.
A scant, but vocal, portion of the NordVPN community made their concerns known following the decision to discontinue the feature from December 2025.
For example, one customer strongly criticised the provider for removing what they deem to be “one of its best features.” Something that “makes the subscription not worth it,” they wrote on NordVPN’s TrustPilot page on September 1.
Similar feelings were expressed on Reddit, too, with many commenters citing Meshnet as one of the primary reasons why they chose NordVPN over other secure VPN services in the first place. Some are even considering an appeal to the provider to keep Meshnet alive…
Virbickas assures us that the team is listening to its disappointed customers. Yet, there are “no plans” at the moment to save Meshnet, nor to implement a new iteration of it in the future.
He said: “Meshnet clearly found its use case for some people. We saw the comments, and we really appreciate everyone. We read them and discussed them a lot, but we see that the numbers and usability do not change.”
This means that, if you’re among that 1% of NordVPN subscribers actually using Meshnet, you still have a couple of months to find an alternative.
The provider recommends that anyone who used Meshnet for secure file sharing switch to NordLocker instead. We also suggest looking into Proton Drive, as it comes with both free and paid plans.
If building a meshnet virtual tunnel for different purposes is what you’re after, you’ll be happy to know that there are a few mesh networking solutions on the market you can switch to, such as Netmaker and Tailscale mesh VPN.
“Meshnet did address the use case of a few people, so clearly there’s a need for these solutions – it was just not fitable for us. But there are alternative options,” Virbickas added.
If not Meshnet, what’s next?
As we’ve seen, killing Meshnet will free up resources and accelerate the release of new features for the NordVPN client apps. So, what’s coming next?
Virbickas explains that one of the main focuses for the team at the moment is Threat Protection Pro. Another innovative feature included with NordVPN’s top-tier plans, Threat Protection Pro was first unveiled in June last year as a tool to protect users against online scams.
“This [feature] is actually what makes us still unique. By far, no other VPN offers such a threat protection pro-level like that, because at most they have DNS-level protection,” said Virbickas.
In contrast with similar tools included with other VPN clients, Threat Protection Pro works at the URL and JavaScript levels to help you avoid tracking, phishing, scams, malware, and invasive ads.
Multiple independent audits have already certified its effectiveness as an anti-malware and fake shops tool, blocking 90% of phishing sites in the latest tests.
Now, the plan is to add new features to make Threat Protection Pro even more effective against an ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats.
At the end of July, the provider launched Scam Call Protection for all Android users in the US. The team is currently working on extending the feature for all subscribers across both its Android and iOS VPN apps. A Caller ID functionality – to help users separate legitimate numbers from scam ones – is also in the pipeline, among other things.
All in all, “Customers’ support on Threat Protection Pro is really good. They like what we do and see the value in those additional protections. [By killing Meshnet], we can now deliver more there. New releases will accelerate because we’re going to have more capacity to focus on those things.”
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chiara.castro@futurenet.com (Chiara Castro)
