OpenVPN Support Forum

I set up a VPN on a cheap VPS I had in the hopes of switching to using it for my internet, however the speeds I get are horrible. I can download a test file from the server itself (running wget over SSH) at ~7MBs, but downloading through the VPN I barely get 1MBs. I expected some speed hit from using a VPN, but I can't imagine how I'm losing 6MBs for a straight file transfer. I'm not an expert though, so I don't really know what could be affecting this, or if there's anything I can do. My configuration is just the default example configuration with the minimal changes needed to get it running.

I can download a file to the VPS at 10MBs, and can download that file from the VPS to my computer at 4-5MBs. My computer's connection is 11MBs down and 9MBs up according to speedtest. pinging the VPS from my computer is ~40ms.

it's just normal to take an 80% hit?

If I were to look for a new VPS, then, what would be important? Just upstream and downstream speeds? CPU? What would be unimportant?