OpenVPN vs. WireGuard: What’s the Difference?

Last updated on July 18, 2025

The main difference between WireGuard and OpenVPN is that WireGuard is much faster, while OpenVPN allows for higher privacy. Another important difference is that OpenVPN gives you a choice of encryption algorithm, whereas WireGuard forces you to use ChaCha20 for encryption and Poly1305 for authentication. Read on to learn about more differences between OpenVPN vs. WireGuard.

Key Insights: OpenVPN vs. WireGuard

OpenVPN and WireGuard are two prominent VPN protocols, each offering unique advantages tailored to different user needs.

• Performance: WireGuard is renowned for its exceptional speed, attributed to its streamlined codebase and efficient design. In contrast, OpenVPN, while robust, may exhibit slower performance due to its more extensive code and processing overhead.
• Security: Both protocols employ strong encryption methods. OpenVPN offers flexibility with various encryption algorithms, allowing customization based on security requirements. WireGuard utilizes a fixed set of modern cryptographic primitives, ensuring simplicity and high security.
• Compatibility: OpenVPN boasts broad compatibility across numerous platforms and has been the industry standard for years. WireGuard, though newer, is rapidly gaining support and is now available on major operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
• Configuration and Ease of Use: OpenVPN provides extensive configurability, which can be advantageous for complex setups but may require more effort to manage. WireGuard emphasizes simplicity and offers a more straightforward configuration process, making it user-friendly, especially for those new to VPNs.
• Privacy Considerations: OpenVPN can be configured for minimal logging, enhancing user privacy. By design, WireGuard may retain connection logs to manage its simplified architecture, which could be a consideration for privacy-focused users.

In summary, WireGuard offers superior speed and simplicity, making it ideal for users seeking efficient performance with minimal configuration. OpenVPN provides flexibility and a proven track record, suitable for scenarios where configurability and established reliability are paramount.

What is WireGuard?

WireGuard is a fast, modern, and secure VPN protocol that uses state-of-the-art cryptography and simple design principles. It aims to be faster, simpler, leaner, and more useful than other VPN protocols, such as IPsec and OpenVPN. WireGuard is designed as a general-purpose VPN for running on embedded devices and supercomputers alike, fit for many different circumstances. It is cross-platform and widely deployable, supporting Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and more. WireGuard is also open source and peer-reviewed, making it more trustworthy and transparent than proprietary VPN solutions.

How Does WireGuard Work?

WireGuard works by creating a virtual network interface on each peer device that acts as a secure tunnel to communicate with other peers. Each peer has a public key and a list of allowed IP addresses that can send and receive data through the tunnel. To establish a connection, a peer only needs to exchange its public key with another peer, without any certificates or usernames/passwords. WireGuard then uses the Noise protocol framework, Curve25519, ChaCha20, Poly1305, BLAKE2, SipHash24, HKDF, and other secure cryptographic primitives to encrypt and authenticate the data packets. WireGuard also handles network changes and roaming seamlessly, allowing peers to switch between different IP addresses or networks without interrupting the connection.

What is OpenVPN?

OpenVPN is a popular and widely used VPN protocol that provides secure and reliable communication over the Internet. OpenVPN can create point-to-point or site-to-site connections, using either UDP or TCP as the transport layer. It can also use TCP port 443 to bypass censorship and firewall restrictions in some countries. OpenVPN is compatible with many devices and operating systems, such as Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, and more. It is also open-source and community-driven, allowing users to customize and audit the protocol according to their needs.

How Does OpenVPN Work?

OpenVPN works by creating a virtual network interface on each peer device that acts as a secure tunnel to communicate with other peers. Each peer has a certificate or a pre-shared key that authenticates its identity to the other peers. It then uses TLS/SSL for key exchange and various encryption algorithms, such as AES or ChaCha20Poly1305, to encrypt and authenticate the data packets. OpenVPN also supports various features and options, such as compression, proxy support, bridging mode, routing mode, and more.

What’s the Difference Between OpenVPN and WireGuard?

Take a look at the OpenVPN vs. WireGuard comparison table below to decide which protocol better suits your needs.

	OpenVPN	WireGuard
Speed	OpenVPN is speedy but not as fast as WireGuard.	WireGuard is extremely fast and surpasses OpenVPN in that aspect.
Transport Layer	OpenVPN supports both UDP and TCP, which allows for a configuration on TCP port 443. Port 443 is rarely blocked by a firewall, which allows bypassing censorship in countries like China or Russia.	WireGuard only supports UDP, making it impossible to use TCP port 443 and therefore harder to bypass censorship.
Compatibility	OpenVPN is supported and compatible with many more devices and operating systems than WireGuard. Almost every VPN today employs the protocol.	WireGuard utilizes ChaCha20Poly1305 as the encryption algorithm. This algorithm does not have wide dedicated hardware support, but this is changing.
Key Exchange	TLS/SSL	Curve25519
Encryption	OpenVPN can use both established and well-tested cryptographic algorithms (e.g., AES) as well as newer ones (such as ChaCha20Poly1305), making it highly flexible.	WireGuard uses modern cryptography. While this allows for using cutting-edge security, the algorithms have not been around for as long as the algorithms commonly used in OpenVPN.
Flexibility and Complexity	OpenVPN gives many choices in choosing the cryptography, which makes it more customizable, but complex as a result.	WireGuard gives fewer choices in choosing cryptography but makes up for it by being less complex.
Mobility	OpenVPN is known to produce issues when switching between networks, but the overall support for mobility is reliable.	WireGuard is more stable and reliable for mobile networks and handles network changes exceptionally well. This makes WireGuard a viable alternative for IKEv2.
Privacy	OpenVPN does not store any private information about the user.	WireGuard requires the user’s IP address of the user to be stored on the server until the server reboots.

Advantages of WireGuard over OpenVPN

1. WireGuard is faster than OpenVPN.

When it comes to speed, WireGuard trumps OpenVPN both throughput-wise and connection time-wise. While the speed differences between OpenVPN and WireGuard might not be as pronounced in real-life scenarios as they are in testing environments, WireGuard is still the faster of the two.

2. WireGuard has a smaller data overhead compared to OpenVPN.

The tunneling process requires the user to send additional information over the network. This leads to increased data usage, which leads to data overhead. The data overhead can eventually slow down the VPN, so the smaller the overhead, the better. WireGuard has a smaller data overhead than OpenVPN.

3. WireGuard is more concise than OpenVPN.

WireGuard requires about 4,000 lines of code versus OpenVPN’s 70,000 lines of code, which makes security audits and verification much easier for researchers. Further, the concise code mitigates the potential threats of using new cryptography.

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Advantages of OpenVPN over WireGuard

1. OpenVPN can offer a privacy edge.

With OpenVPN, you can run in a minimal-logging configuration where only an in-memory session table is kept and disk logs can be disabled entirely. WireGuard has to keep each peer’s most recent endpoint IP in memory while the tunnel is active (usually only a couple of minutes after the last handshake, or until the interface reloads). Many VPN providers shorten that retention window even further, yet the brief presence of the IP may still matter to users under strict surveillance.

2. OpenVPN is more flexible than WireGuard.

With OpenVPN, you can run in a minimal-logging configuration where only an in-memory session table is kept and disk logs are disabled; that requires explicit log-level and file settings. WireGuard must keep each peer’s public key and its most recent endpoint IP in memory for the life of the peer entry (typically until the interface or server restarts). Many VPN providers script periodic cleanup, but the brief persistence of an IP may still matter to users under strict surveillance.

3. OpenVPN has wider support than WireGuard.

OpenVPN is supported by virtually all devices and commercial VPN services. In contrast, WireGuard has limited support. While WireGuard is catching up, it is still far behind the ubiquity of OpenVPN.

Similarities Between OpenVPN and WireGuard

1. Neither OpenVPN nor WireGuard has any known major security vulnerabilities.
2. Both protocols can be extended with third-party scripts and modules.
3. Both OpenVPN and WireGuard are open-source, which means anybody can view the underlying code.
4. Both protocols support Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS).

OpenVPN vs. WireGuard: Which VPN Protocol is Better for Your Privacy and Security?

There is no one fixed answer as to which one of these two protocols is better. It all boils down to what you need.

Use WireGuard if:

• You want to use a VPN on a mobile device.
• Speed is your top priority.
• You switch between networks often.

Use OpenVPN if:

• You use a router or service that does not support WireGuard.
• Privacy is your top priority.
• You are wary of new technologies and prefer well-tested solutions that have been around for more than a decade.

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Summing up OpenVPN vs. WireGuard

OpenVPN and WireGuard are two open-source VPN protocols used to establish and authenticate communication between a VPN client and a VPN server. WireGuard uses newer cryptography and achieves good throughput speed and faster connection times. In contrast, OpenVPN provides better privacy because, unlike WireGuard, it does not store the user’s IP address. Both protocols are very secure.