Mobile Energy & Battery Audit

VPN Mobile Battery Drain Calculator

How much battery does a VPN actually drain on your smartphone? Calculate your daily battery consumption across modern cryptographic protocols.

Select Your Smartphone:

Hardware Accelerator: Apple A18 Pro (Hardware AES)

Daily Active VPN Hours:6 Hours / Day

1 hr (Casual)8 hrs (Workday)24/7 (Always-On)

WireGuard (Kernel)70% Less Drain

16.8%

Total daily battery consumed

Operates inside OS kernel; zero userland context-switch penalty.

OpenVPN UDP

51.6%

Total daily battery consumed

Moderate drain; constant context switches between userland & socket.

OpenVPN TCP (Port 443)

67.2%

Total daily battery consumed

Heavy drain; TCP-in-TCP acknowledgment packet overhead.

To maximize battery life on your iPhone 16 Pro / Pro Max, use NordVPN's NordLynx protocol, which consumed only 2.8%/hr in our lab benchmarks.