STATUS IS UPWEBSITE READINESS
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Category benchmark · Snapshot 23 October 2026

VPNs: website readiness

31 configuration checks across 21 VPNs sites from the SID website catalog, with 13 individual profiles for sites in the Chrome UX Report top 50K.

Sites measured
21

all popularity bands

Median readiness index
69/100

all sites: 64

Profiles
13

top-50K sites

Weakest lane
Recover

lowest weighted score

Readiness by lane

Enable

81/100

All sites 77

Harden

65/100

All sites 56

Accelerate

69/100

All sites 64

Recover

0/100

All sites 10

Biggest gaps for VPNs sites

The checks with the most room to improve, weighted by impact.

  1. HSTS kept for at least a year

    43% observed · all sites 34%

    Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.

    Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

  2. Modern image formats in use

    33% observed · all sites 40%

    Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

    Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

  3. security.txt published

    24% observed · all sites 7.1%

    Publish /.well-known/security.txt with at least Contact and Expires fields, as RFC 9116 requires, and review it before it expires.

    Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

  4. CAA records limit who can issue certificates

    29% observed · all sites 13%

    Publish CAA records naming every CA you actually use, including the CAs your CDN uses for managed certificates. Add an iodef contact if you want reports.

    Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

  5. DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject

    52% observed · all sites 39%

    Publish DMARC with p=none and a reporting address first, fix any legitimate senders that fail SPF or DKIM alignment, then move to quarantine and finally reject.

    Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

  6. Static files cached for 30 days or more

    53% observed · all sites 51%

    Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.

    Guide: Browser Caching Guide for Website Owners

Stack mix

CDN and edge

Platform or framework

DNS operator

Certificate authority

Readiness leaders

VPNs sites in the top 50K with the highest share of observed practices (at least 26 of 31 checks measured). This lists only what we observed on 23 October 2026; owners can request a correction.

  1. argovpn.com91/100
  2. expressvpn.com88/100
  3. protonvpn.com88/100
  4. veepn.com79/100
  5. surfshark.com78/100
  6. totalvpn.com77/100
  7. turbovpn.com74/100
  8. proxyium.com68/100
  9. urban-vpn.com60/100
  10. croxyproxy.com59/100

All 31 checks for VPNs

CheckLaneObservedAll sitesMeasured
HTTP requests move to HTTPSHarden95%91%20
HSTS kept for at least a yearHarden43%34%21
TLS 1.3 negotiatedHarden81%91%21
Certificate has more than 14 days leftHarden100%99%21
Certificate lifetime of 100 days or lessHarden81%67%21
CAA records limit who can issue certificatesHarden29%13%21
DNSSEC signedHarden10%8%20
security.txt publishedHarden24%7.1%21
DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectHarden52%39%21
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniffHarden71%48%21
Framing restrictedHarden62%51%21
Content Security Policy presentHarden52%32%21
Referrer-Policy setHarden48%24%21
HTTP/2 negotiatedAccelerate95%90%21
HTTP/3 advertisedAccelerate57%37%21
HTML compressedAccelerate95%93%21
Static files cached for 30 days or moreAccelerate53%51%19
Modern image formats in useAccelerate33%40%15
Offscreen images lazy-loadedAccelerate64%62%14
No render-blocking scripts in <head>Accelerate67%48%21
robots.txt publishedEnable90%76%21
XML sitemap discoverableEnable71%70%21
Reachable over IPv6Enable57%48%21
Canonical URL declaredEnable62%68%21
Meta description writtenEnable90%84%21
Mobile viewport configuredEnable100%94%21
Structured data presentEnable52%51%21
Social preview image setEnable57%57%21
Page language declaredEnable95%90%21
At most one redirect to the homepageEnable100%98%21
Nameservers spread across providersRecover0%10%20

VPNs profiles

Readiness index shown next to each site.