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Private VPN with Monero

Maximize your online privacy by paying for Mullvad VPN with Monero cryptocurrency, ensuring anonymous payments and secure browsing.

Private VPN with Monero

Most VPN guides stop at "use a trusted provider" and hand-wave away how you pay for it. Here, you’ll pay for Mullvad using Monero so your subscription isn’t trivially linked to your real-world identity through a bank or card statement.

Why pay for a VPN with Monero?

Paying for Mullvad VPN with Monero (XMR) keeps your payment metadata off the usual card and PayPal rails. Mullvad already avoids emails, names, and logs; using a privacy coin like Monero closes one more gap between you and your traffic and makes it harder to correlate your subscription with your real-world identity.

Monero hides sender, receiver, and amounts on-chain by default, so observers mostly just see that someone paid Mullvad, not who, from where, or how much.

No VPN or cryptocurrency makes you magically anonymous, but this combo is one of the simplest practical upgrades you can make to your network privacy, especially if you're still paying for services with traceable cards.

What you'll do

  • Generate a pseudonymous Mullvad account number.
  • Acquire a small amount of XMR.
  • Pay for Mullvad with Monero to get the 10% crypto discount.
  • Optionally manage your connection directly with WireGuard on Linux.

This guide is for educational purposes only, not financial, legal, or operational security advice. Always understand your own threat model.

1. Get some Monero (XMR)

You only need enough XMR to cover a few months or a year of Mullvad, plus fees.

Common approaches:

  • Centralized exchanges (KYC)
    • Easy on-ramp, but ties your identity to the coins you withdraw.
  • Non-KYC exchanges or DEXs
    • More private, but requires more research and care. Avoid obvious scams.
  • Earning or mining XMR
    • The most private from a fiat on-ramp perspective, but slower.

However you acquire it, move your XMR into a wallet where you control the keys before paying Mullvad.

2. Create a Mullvad account

Mullvad accounts are just random numbers—no email, username, or password.

  1. Go to the Mullvad VPN website.
  2. Click Generate account.
  3. Save the account number securely (password manager, encrypted file, or on paper).
  4. This number is all you need to log in and pay; if you lose it, the account is gone.

3. Pay for Mullvad with Monero

  1. Open your Mullvad account page and click Add time.
  2. Choose Monero as the payment method.
  3. Pick how much time you want to buy.
  4. Mullvad will show you an amount and an address (or QR code).
  5. In your Monero wallet, send exactly that amount to the provided address.
  6. Wait for confirmations; Mullvad will automatically credit your account.

Some important details:

  • Monero payments, like Mullvad's other crypto options, get a 10% discount.
  • Mullvad runs its own wallet and node; no third-party payment processor is involved.
  • There are no refunds and no account recovery for Monero payments, so double-check your account number and amounts before sending.

4. Install and use the Mullvad app

  1. Download the client for your platform from the Mullvad website.
  2. Install and launch it.
  3. Paste or type your account number when prompted.
  4. Choose WireGuard as the tunnel protocol (recommended) and select a location.
  5. Click Connect and verify your IP and DNS via Mullvad's check tool or another leak test site.

Once connected, all traffic from that device will flow through Mullvad until you disconnect.

5. Optional: use WireGuard directly on Linux

Mullvad can also generate plain WireGuard configs so you can manage the tunnel without the GUI.

After downloading your *.conf files from Mullvad into /etc/wireguard, you can control them with wg-quick:

Install

		yay -S wireguard-tools
yay -S openresolv

Connect to a server

		sudo wg-quick up se-mma-wg-001   # example: Sweden Malmö
# or
sudo wg-quick up nz-akl-wg-301   # example: New Zealand Auckland

Change servers

		sudo wg-quick down se-mma-wg-001
sudo wg-quick up nz-akl-wg-301

Disconnect

		sudo wg-quick down se-mma-wg-001

Verify your connection (CLI)

		curl https://am.i.mullvad.net/connected

If it prints that you are connected to Mullvad, your tunnel is working and your DNS is going through the VPN. If not, make sure you still have time on your Mullvad account and that the correct WireGuard config is active.

(Optional) Fetch configs automatically with Mullvad's script

If you don't want to click around the web UI, Mullvad ships a small helper script that can download and update all your WireGuard configs in /etc/wireguard.

Download the script and (optionally) verify its signature:

		curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mullvad/mullvad-wg.sh/main/mullvad-wg.sh
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mullvad/mullvad-wg.sh/main/mullvad-wg.sh.asc
curl -O https://mullvad.net/media/mullvad-code-signing.asc
 
gpg --import mullvad-code-signing.asc
gpg --verify mullvad-wg.sh.asc

Then run it to fetch your configs:

		chmod +x mullvad-wg.sh
sudo ./mullvad-wg.sh

The script will prompt for your Mullvad account number and place the WireGuard configuration files in /etc/wireguard for you. Re-running it updates the configs for that same device key. If you want to use Mullvad on multiple machines, generate a separate WireGuard key (device) for each one.

Conclusion

Paying for Mullvad with Monero keeps one of the loudest metadata sources—your bank or card provider—out of the loop while still being easy to use day to day. Combined with WireGuard and a minimal client setup, you get a solid, pragmatic baseline for network privacy without running your own VPN infrastructure.

If you want to go further, pair this with a hardened browser profile (uBlock Origin, container tabs, strict cookie and fingerprinting settings), consider Tor Browser for high-sensitivity browsing, and keep your devices patched so the VPN isn’t the only thing standing between you and the internet.

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