The Best VPN for Home Office Security in 2025

If you work from home, your network is the front door to your company's internal systems. A single compromised device on your home Wi-Fi can become a pivot point for lateral movement into your employer's infrastructure. The old approach — a traditional VPN with open inbound ports — is no longer enough. The modern home office needs the things actually worth buying: a secure, auditable, and fast remote-access solution that doesn't trade convenience for safety.

We evaluated four leading approaches to home-office VPN security. Here's what we found.

Why Zero Trust Is the New Gold Standard

Traditional VPNs like OpenVPN and WireGuard create a tunnel between your device and the corporate network. Once inside, a user (or an attacker who steals their credentials) can move laterally across the network. Zero Trust flips that model: no device is trusted by default, even if it's inside the network perimeter. Twingate, our top pick, implements this by eliminating open inbound ports entirely and enforcing per-application access policies.1 This means an attacker can't scan for open ports on your home router, and even if they compromise one device, they can't pivot to others.

The Contenders

1. Twingate — Best Zero Trust Solution for Home Offices

Twingate is purpose-built for the remote-work era. Instead of exposing a VPN endpoint to the internet, it uses outbound-only connectors that establish encrypted tunnels to Twingate's cloud relay. There are no open ports to scan, no certificates to manage, and no firewall rules to update.1 For the home office user, this means you can grant access to specific applications — not entire subnets — and revoke it instantly from a web dashboard. It's the most secure option on this list and surprisingly easy to set up.

Why it wins: Zero Trust architecture that prevents lateral movement, cloud-managed with no open ports, and granular per-app access controls.

2. WireGuard — Speed Demon With a Tiny Attack Surface

WireGuard has become the darling of the VPN world for good reason. Its codebase is roughly 4,000 lines — a fraction of OpenVPN's hundreds of thousands — making it dramatically easier to audit for vulnerabilities.2 Performance is outstanding: WireGuard uses modern cryptography (Curve25519, ChaCha20, BLAKE2s) and runs in the Linux kernel, delivering near line-speed throughput on modest hardware. For home office users who need raw speed — say, for large file transfers or video conferencing through the tunnel — WireGuard is the clear choice.

The trade-off: It's a traditional tunnel. Once connected, the client has network-level access. No built-in Zero Trust segmentation.

3. OpenVPN — The Flexible Industry Standard

OpenVPN has been the backbone of remote access for two decades, and it remains a solid choice for those who need maximum flexibility. It supports a vast array of authentication methods, cipher suites, and deployment topologies, including network segmentation and site-to-site configurations.3 If you're comfortable managing certificates and firewall rules, OpenVPN gives you control over every aspect of your VPN.

The trade-off: Complexity. Configuration is manual, the codebase is large, and open inbound ports are a persistent attack surface.

4. PiVPN — Budget-Friendly DIY on a Raspberry Pi

PiVPN wraps WireGuard and OpenVPN into a single, streamlined installer designed for Raspberry Pi. It's the cheapest way to get a dedicated VPN server at home, and the setup process is remarkably straightforward for a DIY project. For the budget-conscious home office user who already has a Pi lying around, PiVPN is a fantastic entry point.

The trade-off: You're still managing a traditional tunnel. Performance is limited by the Pi's hardware, and there's no Zero Trust layer.

Side-by-Side Comparison

How We Tested

We evaluated each solution on three criteria: security posture (attack surface, lateral movement prevention, auditability), performance (throughput, latency, CPU overhead), and ease of deployment (time to first connection, ongoing maintenance). All testing was conducted on a standard home office setup: a 500 Mbps fiber connection, a Raspberry Pi 4 (for PiVPN and OpenVPN servers), and a 2023 MacBook Air client.

The Bottom Line

For most home office workers, Twingate is the clear winner. Its Zero Trust architecture eliminates the biggest security risks of traditional VPNs — open ports and lateral movement — while keeping setup simple enough for non-experts.1 If you need raw throughput and are comfortable managing a traditional tunnel, WireGuard is an excellent second choice.2 OpenVPN remains the gold standard for flexibility, and PiVPN is a great budget option for the tinkerer.

We may earn a commission if you purchase through our links, at no extra cost to you. Our recommendations are based on independent testing and research.

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