Throne is the best proxy client I tested on a Mac, and Egern is the best on an iPhone. I ran 23 apps plus the sing-box command line on a MacBook Air M1, and 7 apps on an iPhone 11 Pro, with identical traffic, one at a time.
The short version:
- On a Mac: Throne ranks first, at 16.9 Gbit/s and 0.29 J per GB.
- On an iPhone: Egern ranks first. It adds about half the energy per GB of Anywhere, the fastest iPhone app.
- Pick by energy: the hungriest Mac app uses 55 times the energy per GB of the lightest.
- Real setups cost more: a chain of two proxies with routing rules used about 3 times the energy of one proxy.
The interactive version is on Tunnel Atlas, and every number is in the full tables.
The best proxy apps on a Mac
The score weighs energy efficiency at 70% and speed at 30%, because the top apps are already far faster than any internet connection.
- Throne: score 94, 16.9 Gbit/s, 0.29 J per GB
- sing-box command line: score 82, 16.3 Gbit/s, 0.34 J per GB
- SFM: score 81, 9.58 Gbit/s, 0.28 J per GB
- Egern: score 64, 3.87 Gbit/s, 0.26 J per GB
- Surge: score 58, 10.2 Gbit/s, 0.46 J per GB
The command line is there as a baseline for the sing-box core with no app around it. See all 24 Mac results.
The best proxy apps on an iPhone
Energy here is the extra the whole phone uses compared with the same test without a VPN.
- Egern: score 92, 2.46 Gbit/s, 6.2 J per GB
- Anywhere: score 63, 3.27 Gbit/s, 12 J per GB
- Shadowrocket: score 50, 1.16 Gbit/s, 10.8 J per GB
See all 7 iPhone results.
Energy is the real gap
Speed rarely limits you. Happ, the slowest app on the Mac, still averaged 0.38 Gbit/s. Energy is where apps differ: Happ used 14.6 J per GB, against 0.26 for Egern. On the iPhone the same spread is about 7 times, from 6.2 to 44.3 J per GB.
Many of these apps wrap the same open-source cores, sing-box or Xray, and still land far apart. The app around the core decides a lot.
Real use costs more
The labs use one proxy, no routing rules and a server on the same device. Through real servers at 200 Mbit/s, the same apps drew between 7.6 and 33.7 mW. Adding a second proxy and everyday routing rules roughly tripled that for Egern and Shadowrocket.
Anywhere's two figures come from different versions (2.3 and 2.4), so treat its jump with care.
Check your MTU
MTU is the size of the tunnel's packets. At the common 1500, an app handles about 2.7 times more packets per GB than at 4000. Raising it from 1500 to 4000 lifted SFM's upload from 10.8 to about 14.3 Gbit/s. On the Mac, the seven apps at 1500 or below are all among the nine slowest, so set 4000 wherever your app allows it.
How I tested
Each lab runs its test server on the device itself, so no network is in the way and the results show the app's own cost. A script ran each app in turn with the same Shadowsocks 2022 profile: two rounds on the Mac, three on the iPhone. Each app was tested for speed over 1 and 4 connections and for energy during a steady 200 Mbit/s download.
These are the results of one Mac and one iPhone, with versions as installed on 20–22 Oct 2026, so yours will depend on your device, OS and app version. The full method and exceptions are on the site.
Which setup should you run?
The app is half of the choice. Routes covers the best 2026 setups with no censorship, in a censored country and during a shutdown, and shows who sees what along the path. Timeline walks through thirty years of VPN and proxy techniques with their status today.
If your favourite app is missing, or a result looks off, open an issue on GitHub.
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