Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Not recommending a VPN here. But there are many open-source anonymizing networks out there that need more attention. I know speed and avoiding blocks and captcha's are important to you, so this answer is not geared toward your use case, but for those looking for a free alternatives to VPN's and don't care about the speed and want to help out the network, there are

lokinet: (https://github.com/oxen-io/lokinet) (Based on the LLARP, low-latency anonymizing protocol, basically tor 2.0).

(My personal favorite): i2p. A network within a network. Downsides are you can only download torrents within the network, but the upside is there is a solid community and there are more and more torrents that exist. Mental Outlaw has a great video about i2p

There are some VPN's you can trust, but in the end of the day, I trust encryption and the decentralized network better than any centralized corp.

Have had no issues with Proton

I'd recommend deciding what you're looking for in a VPN, then using r/VPN's comparison guide to find which one suits your wants.

Is this the best method? Idk, but it's what I did and I'm pretty satisfied. I decided that the most important factors to me were port-forwarding, price, speed, leak protection, and encryption - basically in that order. Using that criteria I settled on AirVPN, and I have no complaints so far (one month in).

Some people care more about ethics, or ownership, or what have you. So what you think is the best VPN will depend on your needs. There's no perfect VPN anymore, imo

Edit: As others have pointed out, some VPNs also come in optional packages. Ones such as Proton. That's something else to consider if you're in the market for stuff like antivirus or secure email

I use MullvadVPN and have no issues. In fact you can even pay for it anonymously and it has a cute mole for mascot.

I've used AirVPN for years. Works great

Check out windscribe, they have port forwarding. Proton is great too. If you're on windows setting up port forwarding with their app is a breeze vs Linux which they are developing better at current.

I have PIA and have so far been very pleased. If you are concerned about owner, maybe just go 1 year at a time, so you can pivot elsewhere if their reputation changes.

I DO get captcha on Google sometimes. But it just convinced me to switch to DDG and never looked back.

My recommendation would be to give up on the port forwarding.

If maintaining a ratio is important to you then just rent a seedbox once in a while. 1 month with a seedbox gives me enough upload credit to last me several years.

Thereafter I just download torrents, I may be unconnectable but no big deal.

Proton is the way to go. For $12 or whatever it is these days, I get a subscription to Proton VPN, Mail, Calandar, Drive, and Pass (a password manager). I also get 500gb of storage. The VPN is fast enough I leave it on all the time, even when gaming.

Been using proton for torrenting and other use, it’s been great. Connect to Switzerland from USA with good speed and security. I use them for email so I got a good package deal.

I use PIA because it's cheap as dirt. I don't use their client and I have it setup so exclusively my torrent client uses it. It works for my use case because I'm pretty much just trying to avoid nasty letters from my ISP. I wouldn't trust them with any of my regular traffic because they're sketchy and there's got to be a reason they're so cheap.

Although I would consider what your usecase for a VPN is - ie what attack vectors are you trying to protect against when using it for regular traffic? There's arguably very little a VPN does to protect you on public WiFi and also opens you up to new risks

Windscribe is a really good all in one option with fully featured clients across several platforms.

AirVPN is great when paired with your own clients, like Wireguard or Passepartout, and you want to take advantage of its indefinite port forwarding. The clients aren't user friendly.

I’ll see if I bookmarked it but there was a site with a bunch of VPNs listed with their privacy/functionality compared. Using it as a reference I ended up on Mullvad VPN. Super simple set up for the basic stuff with some more functionality under the hood if you need. iOS and windows app for quick set up too. My experience with them has been only positive so far.