What do you choose your server(s) based on?

[Esurient 0]

Just like the title states,

I'm curious as to what other's reasoning is for choosing a server, be it something close for latency, specific locations or browsing the servers page for servers that seem to have the highest speed,

How do you choose, why do you choose the server(s) that you use and why do you prefer it over the auto select?
 

[Ansuz 5]

Some sites (like Reddit and YouTube) block specific VPN servers (edit: if not logged in) so I track them on a list.

I sort by score and pick one in my area with a combination of low load and latency that haven't been blocked recently. If I know I'll need a faster connection for downloads or gaming, I'll also do a speedtest and switch servers if I find the server I've connected to isn't fast enough.

[OpenSourcerer 1474]

Some past contributions. More e.g. https://airvpn.org/search/?&q=choose choice based base country&search_and_or=or&search_in=titles&sortby=relevancy

[Esurient 0]

19 hours ago, OpenSourcerer said:

Some past contributions. More e.g. https://airvpn.org/search/?&q=choose choice based base country&search_and_or=or&search_in=titles&sortby=relevancy

Thanks for those, I've had a read and the reasoning is interesting

[Esurient 0]

Got it, I've just started to do this today, select countries I'm interested in such as the Netherlands, and then test one by one what the speedtest shows testing to the same server, I would like to check which servers allow me to connect to Reddit, but it looks like all the servers are blocked so EH. Porxy bans for IRC is the second thing to look at.

On 4/29/2025 at 2:08 AM, Ansuz said:

Some sites (like Reddit and YouTube) block specific VPN servers (edit: if not logged in) so I track them on a list.

I sort by score and pick one in my area with a combination of low load and latency that haven't been blocked recently. If I know I'll need a faster connection for downloads or gaming, I'll also do a speedtest and switch servers if I find the server I've connected to isn't fast enough.

Edited ... by Esurient