Do you actually need a VPN for Disney+?
If what you want is another country's library, the honest answer is that a VPN is the wrong tool, and the next section quotes Disney's own rules on why. But if you are a subscriber who travels, a VPN earns its keep in ordinary ways: it encrypts your traffic on hotel, cafe and airport Wi-Fi, it keeps services that dislike foreign logins, such as banking and email, behaving as if you were at home, and it covers the laptop, the phone and the kids' tablets on one subscription.
Things also break at inconvenient hours when you are abroad. Both of our picks run 24/7 support over live chat and email, so there is a real person to talk to at 2am: NordVPN and Surfshark both answer around the clock.
What Disney's own rules say about VPNs
The terms that govern Disney+ sit in the combined Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu Subscriber Agreement, and they are blunt. Subscribing is limited to residents of the countries and territories where each service is offered, and the agreement adds: "You may not access the Services from locations where we do not have rights or where we do not make the Services available."
On location tools specifically, the agreement's restrictions section prohibits "using any technology or technique to obscure or disguise your location when you are accessing the Services". That sentence is aimed squarely at using a VPN to appear somewhere you are not.
And on the content itself: "The Content that we make available via any Service Tier is not guaranteed and may be limited and vary over time", including "based on your location". In other words, the shelf you see depends on where you are, and none of it is promised to you.
Disney+ also has a name for the moment this goes wrong. Its help centre keeps a dedicated page for the location error, Error Code 73, titled "This content isn't available to watch in your current location". A VPN that makes your connection appear somewhere else is exactly what those rules are written about, so the sensible habit while travelling is the boring one: VPN off while you watch Disney+, back on for everything else.
Recommended VPNs for travel
NordVPN, best for short trips and month-by-month plans
It is the one for you if you are covering yourself, or you and a partner, and want something simple to run and easy to forget about. One plan covers 10 devices, and the apps are quick to install and easy to switch off and on as you need. Plans run by the month, the year or over two years, all with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Surfshark, best for long stays and unlimited devices
It is the one for you if one subscription needs to cover everyone. Connections are unlimited, so every phone, laptop and tablet in the family runs on the same plan at once, at home and abroad. It sells the same three terms and adds bonus months on the longer two, with the same 30-day money-back guarantee.
Server networks and speeds
Speed for a traveller mostly comes down to distance: the closer the server, the shorter the detour your traffic takes, and the less speed you give up. Connecting to a server in the country you are actually in is the right default, and it is all most travellers ever need.
Encryption always costs a little throughput, but on a decent connection there is usually plenty left for streaming in high definition. We do not publish speed numbers here because they vary by country, server and time of day; the 30-day money-back guarantees on NordVPN and Surfshark are the honest way to test them on the connections you will actually use.
How to choose between them
The differences that matter fit in one table, and the last row is the one the rest of the internet leaves out.
| Feature | NordVPN | Surfshark |
|---|
| 1 month | $14.99 | $16.45 |
| 1 year plan, total upfront | $65.88 (12 months billed) | $50.85 (15 months billed) |
| 2 year plan, total upfront | $94.23 (27 months billed) | $67.23 (27 months billed) |
| Devices per plan | 10 | Unlimited |
| Audited no-log policy | Yes (2025) | Yes (2025) |
| Money-back guarantee | 30 days | 30 days |
| Guarantees another country's Disney+ | No | No |
Priced per month, NordVPN wins only on the one-month plan. Commit for a year or two and Surfshark is the cheaper subscription, and the unlimited device allowance is the deciding factor for families.
Setting up before you travel
Do the setup at home, on Wi-Fi you trust, before the airport. Install NordVPN or Surfshark on each device, sign in, and connect once to a nearby server to confirm everything works. Then open Disney+ with the VPN on: if you see the location error, practise the fix now, which is pausing the VPN while you watch and re-enabling it afterwards. The test of a travel VPN is how gracefully you can turn it off, watch what you want, and turn it back on; five minutes on your sofa beats troubleshooting on hotel Wi-Fi.
Two more pre-flight checks: if your plan includes downloads, save what you want to watch while you are still at home, since downloaded titles play offline without any of this mattering. And if you pay for Disney+ in the EU or EEA and are staying within it, portability rules mean your home library follows you with no VPN involved at all.
Final recommendation
For a trip measured in weeks, NordVPN is the pick if you are covering yourself or a couple and want something simple to run, with a 30-day guarantee that outlasts most holidays. For a household, Surfshark covers unlimited devices on one subscription.
Buy either one for what it actually does: an encrypted connection on networks you do not control, and your everyday services working away from home. Neither guarantees another country's Disney+ library, whatever other pages promise. Disney's own agreement rules it out, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
