Slow VPN speeds on iPhone 15 after iOS 26 update

Count yourself lucky if all your VPN is doing is slowing things down. VPN on iPhone causes all sorts of issues and are completely not needed. They don't offer the protection many think they do as VPN providers sell your search history to anyone willing to pay for it. The ONLY people who need a VPN are those who are required to have from a School or Employer. And if required, the School or Employer should be providing it.

DUMP THE VPN. Your problems will go away. Remove the VPN in Settings > General > VPN & Device Management and then get rid of any VPN App too. Then Force Restart your iPhone --> Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

Enjoy the speeds your phone were meant to have once the useless VPN is removed completely.

Same problem on iPhone 16 pro max, it was slow since I updated and I just noticed disabling VPN gives me double/triple speed and less than a third of latency. I use VPN only for DNS so is even weirder because it stills uses my connection only secure DNS is enable on 1.1.1.1 app.

Robplace_01 wrote:

Not really the point I’m making though is it… it has only been this slow SINCE updating to iOS 26 this has never been a problem before. And as stated isn’t a problem on my iPad either…

You're not understanding the point we're making. They're so not needed and as you're learning cause issues. There's nothing anyone here on this user to user only forum can do to help you get better performance on your iPhone when you are using a useless VPN. Once removed, your iPhone will perform as it was designed to perform. And you can't compare an iPhone to an iPad. They are completely different devices. But you couldn't pay me to use a VPN on my iPad, my iPhone or my MacBook Pro.

If you're still convinced you need a VPN, contact whoever you bought it from and get technical support from them. Apple doesn't have anything to do with the VPN provider. Nowhere does Apple even recommend using a VPN.

A VPN that gives you a secure tunnel

into a school’s or employer’s private network is one thing.

One that dumps your packets out at some exit point on the public Internet may not gain you as much “security” as you think. Especially if the VPN provider is observing your traffic to harvest data to sell. (Not that all do that, but some have been caught doing it.)

Ohh maybe due to the updates you can still give it some time it’s will work perfectly

How can you expect anything other than slowness, passing your data from pillar to post all around the world.

Dump it and enjoy the built in cast iron security of iphone

You mean NordVPN haven't gotten their act together, didn't beta test? I can believe that.