What is the difference between MPLS vs IPSec VPN?
In the early 2000's, the IPSec based VPN was the default service provider product offered within the telecoms marketplace. At its heart, the IPSec based WAN enabled businesses to leverage a single public IP backbone (or the wider Internet) by encrypting data between their office sites and remote users.
We've written previous articles on the evolution of MPLS and VPLS but suffice to say, the protocol provides telcos with the capability to traffic engineer their internal networks enabling better use of their infrastructure and bandwidth (there are other benefits).
With this interesting information said, the benefits to business surrounded some unique selling points that opened up the possibility of doing more with the WAN. Let us discuss why your organisation might select one technology over the other and why a hybrid of both services is becoming the norm.
MPLS vs IPsec VPN vs SD-WAN - Feature Comparison (2026)
| Factor | MPLS | IPsec VPN | SD-WAN (modern alternative) |
| Network type | Private carrier network | Encrypted tunnel over internet | Encrypted overlay (internet or private) |
| Latency | SLA-guaranteed (<5ms UK) | Variable (depends on internet) | Variable (with path selection) |
| Bandwidth cost | £3–£9 per Mbps/month | £0.10–£0.50 per Mbps/month | £0.30–£1.50 per Mbps/month |
| Security | Private by default (no encryption) | Encrypted (AES-256) | Encrypted + application-aware policies |
| Scalability | Weeks to provision new site | Hours to configure | Minutes to deploy (ZTP) |
| QoS | Carrier-grade CoS | Limited | Application-aware |
| Redundancy | Dual-homing expensive | Easy (multiple ISPs) | Built-in (multi-link) |
| UK availability | Nationwide via carriers | Any internet connection | Any internet connection |
| Best for | Legacy latency-critical apps | Site-to-site secure connectivity | Modern branch networking |
UK Pricing: MPLS vs IPsec VPN vs SD-WAN (2026)
The cost gap between private and public connectivity in the UK has widened as internet infrastructure has improved. For a standard 100Mbps leased line, an MPLS circuit typically costs between £250 and £500 per month in urban areas, though this can rise significantly for remote sites. In contrast, Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) for an IPsec VPN setup is more competitive, often starting from approximately £175 to £300 per month in major cities.
This pricing differential is driven by the rapid expansion of full-fibre infrastructure and a reduced reliance on carrier-level Quality of Service (QoS). As UK business broadband has become more reliable and symmetrical, many organisations find that the premium for a private MPLS backbone is harder to justify for standard office traffic. This is especially true as FTTP becomes the standard, offering high-capacity links at a fraction of the cost of traditional private circuits.
SD-WAN has emerged as the modern middle ground for pricing and performance. A managed SD-WAN service in the UK typically starts from approximately £95 per month per site, though enterprise-grade deployments with advanced security and analytics more commonly range between £150 and £250. These costs are often offset by the ability to aggregate multiple cheaper internet links rather than paying for a single, expensive MPLS connection.
These figures are indicative of the current 2026 market and will vary based on your specific provider, the length of the contract, and the total number of sites in the network.
The Internet vs Public IP
There is a clear distinction to be aware of here - not all IPSec VPN services are equal. The difference surrounds whether your organisation is provisioning WAN services across a single IP backbone or a mixture of multiple service providers.
The preference would always be provision an IPSec VPN over a single backbone. When traffic traverses a single service provider, performance levels are more predictable, offering assurances for traffic throughput to latency and support fix times. Conversely, sending traffic which traverses multiple networks is not predictable thus resulting in application performance issues.
Comparing MPLS vs IPSec VPN
MPLS VPN
- Private network
- Connectionless any to any topology
- Support for QoS (Quality of Service)
- Granular per application service levels
- Support for jitter, important for voice and data
- End to end separation of traffic
IPSec VPN
- The ability to leverage any Internet service connection, though a single backbone is recommended
- Make use of all available connectivity from a home broadband circuit through to full 1Gbps Ethernet - providing a connection exists, you are good to go with fast start implementation and ease of setup
- Access to the wide array of productised public cloud based products
- Split tunneling allows access to both Internet and VPN across a single circuit
With the above in mind, the reasons for the explosive growth of MPLS services is clear.
Security
The privacy of MPLS VPN means there is no requirement to encrypt your business traffic unless added security is a requirement. Added encryption over MPLS is mostly found in financial and government institutions where maximum possible security is always of utmost importance. As a default setting, the majority of UK and global business find MPLS VPN security acceptable since each service provider customer is kept separate regarding traffic routing via VRF tables.
IPSec is fundamentally designed to create secure tunnels through public Internet connectivity. There are a couple of key elements to be aware of when provisioning an Internet VPN. The first surrounds encryption. The current levels of encryption supported by security services such as AES mean that your data is inherently secure. IPSec will operate in VPN only mode which means any traffic outside of an authenticated endpoint will be dropped. The alternative is split tunnel mode which allows companies to benefit from both secure tunnels and local Internet access. The downside? A firewall is required. Whether or not your IT team believe IPSec to be secure enough is open to opinion.
Topology
One of the key original selling points of an MPLS WAN surrounded the any to any connectionless topology. The ability for every site to communicate with each other was a fundamental shift from legacy technologies such as Frame Relay hub and spoke deployments. On the flip side, an IPSec WAN is capable of any to any topology but at the cost of processing power. As the number of sites increases, the processor takes an additional hit where each new location requires a tunnel to every other site creating overhead. In this respect, an IPSec VPN is not as scalable when compared to an MPLS network architecture.
MPLS Application Priority - QoS (Quality of Service)
When MPLS hit the market, the marketing would have us believe that QoS (Quality of Service) was going to be the cure for all application performance woes. In short, QoS allows the Enterprise to protect their critical apps such as voice and video (as an example). To help IT Managers relate the power of QoS back into business benefits, most SLA's reflect latency, jitter and throughput per QoS setting. As of writing this article, QoS is still a crucial aspect of WAN provision but is becoming less of a selling point for high bandwidth Ethernet services avoiding congestion issues. With this said, bandwidth is only part of the story as using QoS enables us to predict and ensure performance. All organisations will have a varying experience with some reporting Ethernet ISP bandwidth providing more than adequate performance and others stating that QoS was a miraculous network enhancing feature.
IPSec VPNs do not, as a rule, allow Quality of Service. As with everything in life, there is always an exception. However - I have personally not witnessed a public based VPN using QoS over IPSec. With this in mind, the general service provider implementation will not prioritise your applications which will mean there is a level of trust required when provisioning services such as voice and video. In the majority of tier1 ISP networks, we would be somewhat confident in the performance of delay-sensitive apps over national VPN deployments. In the Global space, it may be difficult to deploy an international IPSec VPN without using multiple provider backbones (as we mentioned at the beginning of this article) which would not be recommended unless your application performance does not need to reach a certain level of general performance. The Enterprise business will not trust any technology outside of private based QoS enabled VPN for their mission critical voice, video and commercial applications.
SLA (Service Level Agreements)
Our discussion on SLAs leads on from point 3 - QoS. A key fundamental difference between a public based VPN and private WAN surrounds the guarantees on performance and fix times. A private based MPLS network is more predictable from the perspective of service provider traffic usage. Therefore, the perception is that the core network is better engineered for current and future capacity. When combined with end to end application quality of service, the performance SLA can cover latency and jitter on a global basis. The public VPN will often provide latency service levels between global locations, but these are an average between regions rather than city areas. The fix times for both IPSec VPN and MPLS are similar in many respects with each service provider offering flexible capability. When using multiple ISPs, the SLA will vary depending on the providers ability.
Cloud based services
One of the biggest advantages of public based VPNs is access to the massive growth of productised cloud-based services. If you have recently read up on MPLS, you may have been surprised by blog posts suggesting the product's demise. In part, this is due to the growth of cloud services which are not widely available from closed off private VPN services. It is true that some MPLS service providers are offering cloud services, but these products are limited when compared to the wider Internet. The cloud is creating the resurgence of Internet and public WAN services as organisations rush to gain a competitive edge from new applications and increase in user productivity. Voice, video, collaboration, CRM, storage, backup and so forth are all available for a low monthly OPEX fee. The challenge for the Enterprise is to adopt the cloud while maintaining particular performance levels for intersite applications. As IPSec often operates in tunnel only mode (i.e. no split tunneling), the tunnel will need to terminate within a cloud provider's infrastructure. This way of working is highly prevalent and pretty much supported by most cloud services.
The Hybrid WAN Outcome and SD-WAN
The hybrid VPN is now a buzz topic in the industry alongside technologies such as SDN (Software Defined Networks). The hybrid capability allows business to procure a single circuit (or diverse) into a hybrid WAN providers network with access to MPLS, The Internet, Point to Point / Multipoint and so forth. The reasons why IPSec remains a traditional VPN method are clear, largely because of an ability to terminate connectivity over low-cost circuits including fast start solutions. And, the benefits of a private based MPLS capability are also clear as we have discussed.
The hybrid WAN discussion has moved on significantly: what was once a conversation about simple failover is now almost exclusively delivered through SD-WAN platforms. These platforms act as an intelligent overlay, managing multiple connection types to ensure application performance stays consistent regardless of the underlying link quality.
This shift is particularly relevant in the UK following the Openreach copper switch-off. Traditional ADSL is no longer a viable underlay for business connectivity as legacy PSTN services reach their final end-of-life stage. Modern hybrid architectures now rely on a mix of full-fibre (FTTP), SOGEA, and high-speed 4G or 5G cellular links to provide the bandwidth and resilience that businesses require.
Whilst SD-WAN is now the dominant choice for multi-site organisations, MPLS has not been dismissed entirely. It remains a fixture for organisations with specific compliance requirements or for those running latency-critical applications that demand the deterministic performance of a private core. Most UK enterprises now opt for a tiered approach: using MPLS for mission-critical traffic while routing general cloud and internet data over more cost-effective public circuits.
Robert Sturt is a leading expert in SD-WAN and enterprise network solutions with extensive experience in telecommunications and network infrastructure. As a Forbes Business Council member and contributor to TechTarget, he provides strategic insights on network transformation and digital connectivity solutions. His expertise spans SD-WAN implementation, network security, and enterprise digital transformation initiatives.
Fact-checked by: Harry Yelland - Cybersecurity Writer, Netify
What is the difference between MPLS and VPN?
MPLS is a private networking technology that routes data using pre-determined labels within a service provider's core network, ensuring highly predictable performance. An IPsec VPN differs by creating encrypted tunnels over public internet infrastructure, making it more cost-effective but subject to the fluctuations of the open web. SD-WAN has emerged as the modern successor to both, using software to intelligently manage and secure traffic across a mix of private and public connections.
Is MPLS more secure than VPN?
MPLS is inherently private because traffic is partitioned within a carrier's network using VRF tables, meaning it never touches the public internet, though the data itself is typically not encrypted by default. An IPsec VPN is built on encryption (such as AES-256) to protect data as it travels over public infrastructure, but this introduces a dependency on the security of the endpoints and the public gateways. Your choice depends on whether your threat model prioritises the physical isolation of a private network or the cryptographic protection of an encrypted tunnel.
Which is cheaper, MPLS or VPN?
An IPsec VPN is almost always the cheaper option because it utilises lower-cost internet connectivity rather than private circuits. In the current UK market, a 100Mbps internet leased line for a VPN starts around £175 to £300 per month, whilst an equivalent MPLS circuit typically costs between £250 and £500. This price gap has grown as UK fibre infrastructure has matured, allowing internet-based services to deliver the high bandwidth once reserved for expensive private networks.
Should I replace MPLS with SD-WAN?
Replacement makes the most sense for organisations migrating heavily to cloud-based services (like Microsoft 365 or AWS) where backhauling traffic through a central MPLS hub creates unnecessary latency.
You should retain MPLS if you operate in highly regulated sectors or run legacy applications that are extremely sensitive to the minor jitter variations found on the public internet. Most UK organisations now choose a hybrid approach, maintaining MPLS for a few core sites whilst using SD-WAN and internet links for the rest of the branch network.