What is BBC iPlayer?
BBC iPlayer is the streaming version of the British Broadcasting Network. On the service, you can find programs and movies from BBC One, Two, Three, Four, Radio 1, CBBC, CBeebies, Scotland, News, Parliament, Alba, and S4C. Genres include films, sports, foods, lifestyle, science & nature, documentaries, arts, history, kids’ shows, and others. Many worldwide know the BBC for its long history of quality programming, and it’s a must for any ex-pats, travelers, or Anglophiles. Since this is a VPN testing site, we will test some services and see which ones unblock the BBC iPlayer.
Over the years, the BBC has developed its own blocking system that’s different from other services. That means if your provider unblocks one service, it may not unblock BBC iPlayer. Of course, it could be the other way around as well. Does your VPN unblock BBC iPlayer? It is easy to do if you want to test to see if yours does. Follow these quick directions.
How to test if your VPN unblocks BBC iPlayer
After these directions, we’ll test some of the top providers in the community to see if you can watch BBC network programming with them.
- Open up your VPN program and select a server in the United Kingdom. Often, this will be London, but others may work as well.
- Once you’re connected in the UK, go to the BBC iPlayer website.
- Check to see if you can get any of the programs to play.
If your VPN doesn’t unblock BBC iPlayer, you’ll get a message that looks like this one.
Now, we’ll look at the providers and tell you a bit about each in regards to the iPlayer.
ExpressVPN
ExpressVPN has a solid reputation in the community, and it consistently performs well in tests we’ve run before. Their service is fast, and you won’t need to worry about disconnects in the middle of your favorite shows. As you can see in this image, we used their server they call the Docklands. It is clearly playing the show Horrible Histories, series (or season) 6, episode 13. This may be a kid’s show, but it does an excellent job of teaching history. That means ExpressVPN gets a passing grade from us in this test because it meets the objective.
30-day money-back guarantee
NordVPN
NordVPN is a heavy supporter of sports. You’ll see them sponsoring various sports events and/or teams. They are one of the services that just work. We tested the famous BBC show, Peaky Blinders, in the image below. While you can get it on the BritBox streaming service in the US, a subscription to a VPN service is often cheaper than a streaming service like BritBox. You can see it works, so NordVPN gets a passing grade.
30-day money-back guarantee
PIA
Private Internet Access (PIA) is well-known in the privacy space, and it’s a favorite in the downloading and torrenting community. However, that does not mean it does all things well. In this image, you can see we could not get it to work at all. We did try several different servers and protocols with no luck. Instead, we got the dreaded message we talked about above. That means Private Internet Access fails this test because it wouldn’t play Little Britain.
30-day money-back guarantee
CyberGhost
CyberGhost is another one of the providers you see everywhere, including sports. While this image doesn’t specifically show an advertisement for CyberGhost, the BBC does allow you to watch Bellator on the BBC iPlayer. As you can see, it does play quite well. CyberGhost gets a passing grade on the BBC iPlayer test because it plays Bellator and everything else on the service.
45-day money-back guarantee
IPVanish
IPVanish has been around for a while now. That means they have had quite a bit of time to perfect their VPN service. While time doesn’t always mean the service will pass our test, IPVanish does. In this image, we tried to play a show called Meet the Khans: Big in Bolton. As you can see, IPVanish does let us play the episode. Therefore, we give IPVanish a passing grade because it meets the goal.
30-day money-back guarantee
Surfshark
Since NordVPN owns Surfshark and NordVPN passes this test, it shouldn’t be surprising that Surfshark does as well. Even though that is not always the case, it is for our tests. This image displays our attempt at playing a show called Time. As you can see, we are connected to a London server, and the show is playing. That means Surfshark gets a passing grade because the show plays.
30-day money-back guarantee
PrivadoVPN
Although PrivadoVPN is a newcomer to the community, the company has taken the time to button up its VPN. In this image, we tried accessing a BBC kid’s show called Hey Duggee. You can see that we got it to play when connected to a London server with PrivadoVPN. That means it passes our test because it meets the objective.
30-day money-back guarantee
StrongVPN
StrongVPN is one of the brands of IPVanish. Since IPVanish works, you can expect this one to work as well. That said, we still tested it to make sure it worked. As you can see, we tried using StrongVPN on a show called Dodger. Because it works with BBC iPlayer, StrongVPN passes our test.
30-day money-back guarantee
HMA
HMA is a veteran service that started in the UK. Because of that, you might expect that it would be the ideal service to use with BBC iPlayer. However, that is not the case. In this image, we tried to stream a show called Peacock. Unfortunately, we got the message showing we were not in the UK. We did try several other HMA servers, but none of them seemed to work. HMA fails our test because we can’t access the show while using the VPN service.
30-day money-back guarantee
PureVPN
For PureVPN, we tried to play a show called Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof on BBC iPlayer. The iPlayer plays the first episode, which means that PureVPN receives a passing grade because it meets the goal. As you can see in this image, we are connected to a server in the United Kingdom.
31-day money-back guarantee
AtlasVPN
AtlasVPN is a smaller provider when compared to others, but that doesn’t mean you can count it out. We tested it by using the same method as we did with the above providers. As you can see, we connected to a VPN server in the United Kingdom. We got the first episode of a show called The Next Step to play successfully. That means AtlasVPN received a passing grade from us because it was able to meet the objective.
30-day money-back guarantee
Ivacy
Ivacy is another one of the small providers that you can’t count out of tests. Here, you can see that Ivacy is able to let us watch The Great British Sewing Bee. After the success of The Great British Bake-off, it isn’t really a surprise to see a show like this one. What is a surprise, though, is that Ivacy passes the test. We give it a passing grade due to its ability to get past the BBC restrictions and allow us to watch The Great British Sewing Bee.
30-day money-back guarantee
TorGuard
While TorGuard is known for its highly customizable features, you would hope that it would allow you to get past the BBC geo-restrictions. Unfortunately, we had no such luck with this one. We tested this one using several different combinations of protocols and servers. Each time, we got the result that you see here. That means TorGuard fails our BBC streaming test because it is not able to let us view the show Silverpoint.
7-day money-back guarantee
CactusVPN
Sometimes, the smaller providers can get past geo-blocks and restrictions from streaming services. However, we did not find that to be the case when we tried to access the popular British cooking show, MasterChef. In this test, we tried using CactusVPN to get us past the geo-blocks for the BBC iPlayer. As you can see, we were not successful. Despite showing that we are connected to a UK server, CactusVPN fails our test. Don’t plan on using this one to watch BBC iPlayer.
30-day money-back guarantee
Bottom Line
As you can see, we had a mixed bag of results, depending on what VPN we chose. We were surprised that some of the larger services couldn’t get past the geo-blocks while the smaller ones could. While getting past geo-restrictions is not the only thing a VPN can do, it is one of the significant functions. If you had a different VPN provider than the ones we used, you’d want to see how yours performed against this test. If yours failed, we suggest you choose one of the ones from our list that passed.
