VPNs and the law · Plain-English answer
In most countries, yes, using a VPN with Netflix is legal and is not a criminal offence. It does breach Netflix's terms of use, which is a contractual issue. In practice Netflix responds by blocking known VPN addresses or limiting you to globally licensed content, not by penalising accounts.
Watching Netflix through a VPN does not break criminal law in the UK, EU, US, or most other places. You are a paying subscriber accessing a service you have an account for, over a legal privacy tool. No court in a major market has treated that as an offence.
Laws differ by country and this is general information, not legal advice, but the widely shared view is that this sits in the realm of contract terms rather than criminal law.
Netflix's terms say you may view content primarily within the country where you established your account, and the service actively detects VPN addresses. When it does, you typically see an error asking you to turn off the VPN, or you can only watch titles Netflix licenses worldwide. Bans of paying accounts for VPN use are essentially unheard of.
The honest summary is that the risk is inconvenience, not legal trouble. Regional licensing is the reason the blocks exist, and whether a given server works with any streaming service can change without notice.
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