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VPN

Surfshark Review 2025: An Excellent VPN That Continues to Churn Out Innovative Features

by admin October 1, 2025

Surfshark isn’t quite as budget-friendly as it once was, but even after a 33% renewal price increase earlier this year, this virtual private network still offers good value considering the range of features it includes and the multitude of improvements it rolled out over of 2025. Even though Surfshark’s price hike has made the service less of a bargain compared to PIA or Mullvad, it’s still cheaper than VPNs like ExpressVPN and NordVPN that offer similar features and performance at substantially higher renewal prices.

I ran Surfshark through a gauntlet of tests across various platforms over several weeks in February 2025, along with some additional tests in August. My initial testing involved more than 200 individual speed tests, DNS leak tests, a rigorous evaluation of its streaming capabilities and an assessment of its overall value. My follow-up tests in August included additional DNS leak and streaming tests in addition to a close look through the latest audit and newly released features like split-tunneling on MacOS and FastTrack. As always, I also reviewed its corporate structure and pored through its privacy policies, with special consideration to data collection and no-logging claims. Throughout the process, I communicated with Surfshark representatives via email and videoconference.

Surfshark is still an excellent VPN that gets the job done for casual VPN users. It’s fast, has lots of servers, it’s great for streaming, is easy to use across platforms and it has some cool and unique features. Surfshark is a great choice for someone who wants unlimited simultaneous connections and a slick user interface that’s packed with useful features. I’m also encouraged by the company’s improving commitment to transparency. Here’s what you need to know about Surfshark and whether it’s the right choice for you.

Surfshark is an excellent budget-friendly VPN

James Martin/CNET

Speed: Consistently fast connections

Key takeaway: Surfshark has established itself over the years as a consistently speedy VPN that can easily handle just about any online activity, including data-heavy activities like streaming, gaming and torrenting. And I’m impressed with the new FastTrack feature’s performance and believe it can be a game changer for certain users.

21% speed loss in 2025 tests
Number of servers: 3,200-plus
Number of countries: 100

Every VPN will slow your speeds somewhat, which is why we test to see how fast each VPN is relative to other providers. While other VPNs’ overall speed test results have fluctuated (at times dramatically) from year to year in our testing, Surfshark has maintained an even keel. Over the past four years of speed testing Surfshark, we’ve calculated a 19% speed loss once and a 17% speed loss three times. When I tested Surfshark’s speeds in 2025, I registered a marginally higher speed loss of 21%.

That difference is negligible. In practical terms, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that you’d notice any difference in performance.

Either way, the point is that Surfshark is a fast VPN. As a comparison, Surfshark’s speed performance sits behind the 3% speed loss we calculated with NordVPN and the 18% with ExpressVPN.

I tested Surfshark’s speeds from my location in Ohio to Surfshark’s VPN servers in New York, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Singapore and Australia. I found Surfshark’s speed performance to be generally consistent with my expectations across all protocols, platforms and server locations that I tested. The only anomaly I noticed over the course of my speed tests was with OpenVPN on MacOS, where speeds to New York were slower than any other server location I tested. Generally, the closer the VPN server is to your physical location, the faster your connection speeds through the VPN should be. Yet the closest server location I tested yielded the slowest speeds on MacOS when using the OpenVPN protocol.

On MacOS through OpenVPN, I registered an average speed of 269 Mbps on Surfshark’s New York servers. That’s slower than the 310 Mbps I registered on Surfshark’s France and Germany servers and the 291 Mbps I averaged through the UK. More surprisingly, speeds to New York were slower than the 276 Mbps and 282 Mbps that I averaged through servers in Australia and Singapore, respectively — locations that are halfway across the globe from where I sit. New York is a popular VPN server location with a potentially higher load than other locations, which could lead to slower speeds. However, Surfshark says it has 78 servers in New York, which should be able to handle the traffic.

I didn’t experience this anomaly while testing Surfshark’s speeds through OpenVPN on Windows.

That said, speed performance was fastest on MacOS through WireGuard with an average speed across all locations coming in at 307 Mbps — a 17% speed loss from my approximately 370 Mbps internet connection. Otherwise, I registered a 20% speed loss on MacOS through OpenVPN, 23% on Windows through WireGuard and 25% on Windows through OpenVPN, showing that Surfshark’s VPN provides consistent speeds across platforms and protocols.

New FastTrack feature can give your connection speeds a boost on certain server locations

At the beginning of August, Surfshark released a brand-new feature called FastTrack, which the company says can boost your speeds up to 70%. FastTrack is similar to speed-boosting features from other VPNs like ExpressVPN’s Lightway Turbo and Proton VPN’s VPN Accelerator, but Surfshark’s solution leverages its Nexus network to optimize the route your traffic takes to the server location you connect to. (Surfshark’s Nexus network is also what powers the VPN’s IP Rotator and Dynamic MultiHop features). Currently, FastTrack is only available on Surfshark’s latest MacOS app and only through the Sydney, Seattle and Vancouver server locations. The feature will roll out to other locations and operating systems later on, but during a recent call, Surfshark’s representatives didn’t commit to a timeline.

When I downloaded Surfshark’s latest MacOS app, none of the FastTrack-enabled server locations had the FastTrack icon displayed next to them as documented in the blog post the company published on Aug. 7. I was confused at first, but it turns out the FastTrack icon only appears when routing your connection through multiple servers is the most optimized route to take. If connecting directly to the server is the optimal way to go, then the FastTrack icon doesn’t show up. So don’t panic if you don’t immediately see the FastTrack icons even if you have Surfshark’s latest MacOS app installed. Upon firing up the Surfshark app the next day, the FastTrack icons appeared for me.

Based on a quick set of informal tests to get a feel for FastTrack’s performance, the feature seemed to work well for me. Although my speeds didn’t increase by 70% when connecting through FastTrack servers as opposed to non-FastTrack connections, the speed difference I measured between the two was noteworthy. My speeds through FastTrack connections in Sydney were about 60Mbps (or 20%) faster on average than connecting through Sydney without FastTrack enabled.

You can see the triangular FastTrack icon displayed next to the server location in the app.

Screenshot by CNET

Speeds were considerably slower to Sydney without FastTrack enabled.

Screenshot by CNET

Similarly, but to a lesser degree, my FastTrack speeds to Vancouver were about 16Mbps faster on average than without FastTrack. Your specific results may vary depending on your network and location. Users with slower or less stable internet connections may experience a more pronounced bump in speeds when using FastTrack, which could be especially beneficial if your internet connection isn’t tops. Surfshark’s representatives told me that the 70% figure was based on weeks of internal testing in different locations prior to the launch of the feature.

Cost: Surfshark’s renewal price bump bites, but it comes with improvements to the service

Key takeaway: Surfshark is still an excellent VPN that is easy to use and works well for streaming. The jump in its renewal prices means it’s no longer the wildly budget-friendly option it once was, but performance improvements make up for that higher cost. If you’re on a strict budget, you can get Mullvad or PIA cheaper.

$15.45 a month, $48 for the first 15 months (then $79 a year) or $60 for the first 27 months (then $79 a year)
Money-back guarantee: 30 days
Payment options: Credit card, PayPal, Google Pay, Crypto
Apps: Available for MacOS, Windows, Linux (GUI), iOS, Android, Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, routers
Works with: Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, Max, Amazon Prime Video and others

Surfshark’s 33% bump over the previous $60 annual renewal rate makes the VPN a less attractive option than it once was, making it no longer uncontested as CNET budget-friendly option. Still, that $79 annual renewal price is still significantly cheaper than rivals ExpressVPN’s ($100 or $117 a year) and NordVPN’s ($140 a year) renewal prices.

If you only need a VPN for a single month, I recommend going with Mullvad, which costs only 5 euro (about $6) a month and doesn’t renew automatically as other VPN services do. In short, don’t choose Surfshark’s monthly plan unless you go into the transaction with the intention of asking for a refund within the first 30 days.

As of publication, Surfshark’s base VPN plan costs $15.45 a month, $48 for the first 15 months (then $79 annually) or $54 for the first 27 months (then $79 annually). Surfshark’s Starter tier is its most basic subscription plan and includes the VPN and Alternative ID features. Other, more expensive subscription tiers are also available that include Starter features along with additional bundled privacy and security tools like antivirus, data leak alerts, private search and data removal services. However, my evaluation of Surfshark focuses primarily on Surfshark’s Starter tier.

Subscriptions and renewals are refreshingly clear

Buying a Surfshark subscription is a simple affair, which you can do with a credit or debit card, PayPal, Google Pay or various cryptocurrencies. I like how Surfshark has made information regarding its subscription renewals much clearer than it had in years past on its checkout page.

Surfshark includes this transparent disclaimer about its renewal terms on the checkout page — which is, unfortunately, not typical for the industry.

Schreenshot by CNET

Far too many VPN companies still struggle with subscription renewal transparency, as if they’re afraid to concede that prices will increase upon renewal or as if it’s on the customer to make that assumption. But Surfshark’s approach serves as validation that being transparent about your renewal terms doesn’t have to be scary.

Bundle options available from Surfshark

If you’re interested in exploring additional bundled options with Surfshark, here’s a a breakdown of what the company offers:

Plan StarterOneOne-plusPrice $15.45 per month, $48 for the first 15 months (then $79 per year) or $54 for the first 27 months (then $79 per year)$18 per month, $51 for the first 15 months (then $99 per year) or $67 for the first 27 months (then $99 per year)$20.65 per month, $91 for the first 15 months (then $119 per year) or $108 for the first 27 months (then $119 per year)VPN YesYesYesAlternative ID YesYesYesAntivirus NoYesYesData leak alerts NoYesYesPrivate search NoYesYesIncogni data removal NoNoYes

VPN providers are leaning heavily into bundled services. A solid suite of bundled privacy and security tools are available from Surfshark, including antivirus, which isn’t offered by most of Surfshark’s competition. However, Surfshark doesn’t offer a password manager at this time, which other top VPNs like ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Proton do. Adding a password manager could help boost Surfshark’s appeal as a bundled privacy and security service provider.

Surfshark’s app is slick, intuitive and snappier than ever

Surfshark’s app interface is slick, nicely laid out and easy to use across all platforms. I like the subtle tweaks Surfshark made this year that make the app even more user-friendly. Specifically, it displays the settings you’ve enabled, including the protocol you’re using, the kill switch, Bypasser, CleanWeb and Rotating IP. Also displayed are your connection time, current VPN IP address and the server you’re connected to. It’s a lot of information, but it’s all helpful information to have at your fingertips and Surfshark pulls it off without being obtrusive or making the app interface seem cluttered.

I also like how you can just tap or click right on the app interface to go directly to each of the displayed feature’s settings without having to navigate through the settings menu. It’s a small detail, but it makes the app a lot more intuitive and shows that Surfshark cares about the finer details of the user experience.

Surfshark’s desktop app includes helpful settings info at a glance.

Screenshot by CNET

Other key features you’ll get with Surfshark’s VPN include a kill switch, Dynamic MultiHop, Bypasser (split-tunneling), rotating IP and an ad and tracker blocker. All features worked smoothly across platforms including Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Apple TV and Fire TV.

Surfshark is one of the only other VPNs besides PIA to offer split tunneling on iOS and MacOS, which is impressive considering that changes Apple made in 2020 caused issues with VPNs’ split tunneling functionality on Apple devices. Most other VPNs that include split tunneling haven’t offered the feature on Apple devices since, usually reserving it for Android and Windows users. Surfshark’s Bypasser feature allows you to route specific websites outside the tunnel on iOS, while on MacOS it allows you to bypass websites in addition to apps.

I was happy to see marked improvements in overall app performance across platforms as well. In the past, Surfshark often took an inordinate amount of time and multiple attempts to establish a successful connection. However, in my latest round of testing, I encountered no such issues. Surfshark’s app connected in a flash every single time I went to connect to a server regardless of what platform I was using or what location I was connecting to.

Great for streaming, minus a couple of minor issues

Streaming with Surfshark was also mostly a smooth experience during my latest tests. That’s no surprise because the VPN is well-equipped for streaming geographically restricted content with its fast speeds and large server network. I was able to stream content from various popular streaming services like Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, Max and Amazon Prime Video through a number of different Surfshark server locations from across the globe — though not without a few bumps in the road.

During my testing, Netflix loaded up immediately without issue. However, Hulu detected the VPN when I tried to stream content on my Amazon Fire TV Stick. Otherwise, streaming with Surfshark on Fire TV Stick, Apple TV and other platforms was excellent and in line with what I would expect from a top-tier VPN.

Surfshark is great for unblocking regional Netflix libraries.

Screenshot by CNET

Privacy and security: Unique privacy features and an increased commitment to transparency

Key takeaway: Surfshark provides enough privacy for casual VPN users, but the Netherlands jurisdiction may scare off some privacy-critical users. That said, the addition of post-quantum encryption, EverLink and a renewed commitment to transparency should work for the vast majority of users’ privacy needs.

Jurisdiction: Netherlands
Encryption: AES-256-GCM, ChaCha20
RAM-only server infrastructure
No leaks detected
Protocols available: OpenVPN, WireGuard, IKEv2

Surfshark’s privacy and security is enough for casual users looking for general online privacy. But there are a few reasons why you may want to look elsewhere if your privacy needs are critical (for example if you’re in a country with strict internet censorship and surveillance or if you’re a journalist, attorney, physician, activist or whistleblower).

One reason privacy-critical users may want to avoid Surfshark is due to its Netherlands jurisdiction. Although the Netherlands doesn’t impose any mandatory data retention laws, the country is part of the 14-Eyes data-sharing alliance, which means that if data were retained, it could be shared with other countries.

Additionally, Surfshark is still playing catchup when it comes to transparency. I’m encouraged by the results of the independent audit report from Deloitte that Surfshark published in June, which found that “the configuration of IT systems and management of the supporting IT operations is properly prepared, in all material respect in accordance with Surfshark’s [no-logs policy].” But the latest audit report is the company’s first audit of any sort since 2022. And while the positive outcome of the audit is encouraging, the full report is not available to review by the general public, rather only to Surfshark users through their account dashboards. For maximum transparency, I’d like to see Surfshark make the full audit reports publicly available, like ExpressVPN does.

Jastremskas told me that Surfshark is committed to commissioning annual third-party audits going forward, which is reassuring. Not getting audited on a regular basis doesn’t necessarily mean that a VPN isn’t doing what it says it’s doing, but regular audits act as a crucial trust signal that privacy-critical users shouldn’t ignore.

Surfshark says in its Privacy Policy that the company doesn’t “collect any information about what you do online (your visited IP addresses, browsing history, session information, used bandwidth, connection time stamps, network traffic or any other similar information).” But a VPN’s no logs claims are impossible to verify with 100% certainty, so your only option is to take the VPN provider’s word for it. No-logs audits can help, but can only go so far.

That said, I like that Surfshark will be commissioning audits on a yearly basis and that the company has begun publishing a quarterly transparency report — which details the number of legal requests it receives each quarter and if the company was obligated to disclose any user data in relation to the received requests. The latest report states that none of the nearly 350,000 requests received between April and June 2025 resulted in Surfshark disclosing user data.

Surfshark’s supplements basic privacy features with creative and forward-looking tools

Surfshark handles standard privacy protections well, including DNS leak protection, server infrastructure and killswitch functionality.

I ran thorough DNS leak tests on multiple servers using each available protocol across various devices, and I didn’t detect any leaks whatsoever. Surfshark uses industry-standard AES 256-bit encryption for OpenVPN and IKEv2 connections and ChaCha 20 for WireGuard connections. Surfshark’s Camouflage Mode (obfuscation) is available when using the OpenVPN protocol and disguises your VPN traffic as regular HTTPS traffic, which can be crucial if you’re using Surfshark in a region where VPNs are restricted or outlawed entirely.

I also like the fact that Surfshark employs a 100% RAM-only server infrastructure, meaning that its server fleet runs on volatile memory and theoretically no data is saved to a hard disk, which can help give users extra peace of mind that their data is safe and cannot be disclosed to a third party.

I also like the option on Windows to set the kill switch to soft or strict mode. The soft kill switch works like a traditional kill switch and cuts your internet connection if the VPN inadvertently disconnects, protecting your privacy and preventing IP leaks. The strict kill switch cuts your internet any time you disconnect from the VPN, even intentionally — which offers greater protection against any potential sensitive traffic going unencrypted. You also have the option to enable a strict kill switch on your Android device using the native Android kill switch, which won’t let you use the internet at all unless you’re connected to the VPN.

But the best VPNs go beyond these basics, with innovative features that give users options for more privacy, utility or both.

I’m continuously impressed with the Dynamic MultiHop feature, which goes a step further than the traditional double VPN: While most VPNs that offer double hop connections usually only offer a handful of preset connections, Surfshark allows you to choose any pair of servers you want from its fleet of server locations in 100 different countries. Keep in mind, though, that while a double VPN connection boosts your privacy, your speed will take even more of a hit due to your traffic being encrypted twice.

With Surfshark’s MultiHop feature, you can create custom double-VPN connections out of any two server locations.

Screenshot by CNET

One of the most unique and helpful privacy features that Surfshark offers with its basic VPN plan is its Alternative ID tool. With Alternative ID, you can create a full alter-ego complete with full name, birthdate, physical address and email address that you can use online to fill out forms or sign up for email lists without having to provide your actual personal information.

I had a lot of fun playing around with the tool and coming up with different personas. You can either come up with everything on your own manually or have Alternative ID automatically generate the information for you. Your alternative email address will automatically forward emails to your designated actual email address. You can create up to three alternative email addresses and give them different labels based on what you use them for. An alternative phone number is also available for an additional $3 a month. All in all, it’s a really cool suite of features that can help you protect your personal data when you need to provide information to access a website or online service.

The Rotating IP feature is another useful tool. When enabled and connected to a server, the IP Rotator automatically changes your VPN IP address periodically every few minutes without disconnecting you from the server. This gives you an extra layer of privacy because it makes it that much more difficult for others to track you online.

New, innovative EverLink feature can self-heal a broken VPN connection

While not exactly the same as a kill switch, Surfshark’s brand-new EverLink feature can help ensure your VPN connection stays stable and prevent your traffic from being exposed unencrypted and your IP address from being leaked. While a kill switch automatically cuts your internet connection in the event that your VPN unexpectedly disconnects, Surfshark’s EverLink feature can automatically and seamlessly reconfigure the VPN tunnel without breaking the connection. Surfshark refers to EverLink as a “self-healing server infrastructure” and it’s an innovative one-of-a-kind feature not offered by other VPNs. EverLink is enabled automatically when using the WireGuard protocol. However, even with EverLink, I still recommend enabling your kill switch at all times when using Surfshark or any other VPN for added peace of mind.

Surfshark’s post-quantum protections help future-proof the service

I’m also happy that Surfshark rolled out its post-quantum protection for WireGuard this year. In addition to Surfshark, only a handful of other VPN providers — including ExpressVPN, Mullvad and NordVPN — offer post-quantum encryption. It’s an important step because post-quantum protections can help guard against potential future threats from quantum computers.

Surfshark’s post-quantum layer is “an additional layer of security for our VPN protocols. For now, we are mainly working on WireGuard, but also exploring the possibilities to implement post-quantum layer for other protocols like OpenVPN,” Justas Pukys, Surfshark’s Senior Product Manager for VPN told me during an interview.

Surfshark’s a bit more expensive than it used to be, but it’s starting to make a compelling case for its higher renewal prices

While I was critical of Surfshark’s increased renewal pricing earlier this year, given the lack of noteworthy improvements or many other major changes, the company was clearly hard at work in the background on significant developments that came to fruition over the course of the year. The addition of post-quantum encryption, a fresh no-logs audit, EverLink and FastTrack definitely count for a lot and help alleviate the renewal price sticker shock, and bump up Surfshark’s overall value compared to what it was earlier in the year.

Additionally, the team hinted at a few more “non-traditional” parental control- and anti-phishing-related VPN features coming down the pike, which could add value in the future. Nevertheless, Surfshark is still cheaper than ExpressVPN and NordVPN even with the price hike, and I still recommend it to casual users as a reasonably priced alternative.

Ultimately, Surfshark is still a top-notch VPN that goes above and beyond what many similarly priced or more expensive alternatives can do.

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October 1, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Setting Up a VPN on Your iPhone Is Easy. Here’s How

by admin September 29, 2025

There are several reasons why you might want to use a VPN on your iPhone. A VPN, or virtual private network, is a service that creates a secure connection over the internet between your device — in this case, your iPhone — and a remote server, to hide your public IP address. VPNs scramble your internet traffic, making it difficult for third parties — like companies or internet service providers — to connect your online activity back to you.

With a VPN enabled, your ISP can’t tell what apps you use or websites you visit, and by the same merit, apps and websites can’t view information about your ISP. If you’re connected to a public W-Fi network, a VPN adds an extra layer of privacy, so your browsing history is masked from that hotspot’s ISP.

In addition to privacy benefits, VPN can also be used for entertainment purposes and travel, like accessing geo-restricted content. If you live in the US but are traveling in another country, you can use a VPN to make it seem like you’re still at home, allowing you to access the American version of Netflix, for example, which typically isn’t available in other countries. On mobile devices specifically, a VPN may be able to help you stream videos in better quality while on a cellular signal by avoiding traffic shaping.

If you’re concerned about privacy, want access to region-locked content, are traveling abroad or want to avoid mobile data throttling, a VPN is worth having on your iPhone. Here’s what to know about choosing one and how to set it up.

Here’s how to use a VPN on your iPhone easily and quickly

Downloading a VPN app, creating an account, choosing a plan and connecting to your VPN shouldn’t take longer than a minute or so.

Nelson Aguilar/CNET

Installing a VPN app on your iPhone is pretty simple — like most other iOS apps, you’ll simply download one from the App Store. Here’s how to install a VPN on your iPhone:

First, go to the App Store.
Then, tap in the Search bar at the top, enter the name of the VPN app you intend to use then tap the name in the results list or tap search on your on-screen keyboard.
Tap Get next to the VPN provider’s name to download it on your iPhone.
Next, open the VPN application.
Sign in if you already have an account. If you don’t have an account, create one and sign up for a plan. Browse through the various plans to see if there’s an option that can save you money, especially if you intend to use the VPN for longer than a few months. You should also keep your eye out for any free trials.
Finally, choose a location from the server list and connect to the VPN server.
The first time you attempt to connect to a VPN server, you’ll be asked to install a new VPN profile on your iPhone. The pop-up screen you see in the middle screenshot below, or something similar to it, should appear. To install the VPN profile, tap Allow and enter your passcode and that should be it.

You should then be connected to a VPN server. Browse through your VPN app and play around with the various settings available. If you want to protect your other devices (your tablet, computer, streaming device and so on), most VPNs allow for multiple simultaneous connections.

If you want easy access to your VPN, you don’t have to go into the VPN app to quickly toggle it off and on. Instead, you can go to Settings > VPN to disconnect and connect to the last VPN server you were connected to.

There’s also a way to manually set up your VPN if needed…

If your employer, school or a self-hosted server has given you connection details, like a server address and a login or certificate, you can add a VPN directly to your iPhone without installing any apps. Here’s how:

Go to Settings > General > VPN & Device Management > VPN > Add VPN Configuration.
Choose the IKEv2 VPN protocol (which is the most common for iOS). IPSec and L2TP still exist, but many providers now prefer IKEv2 for faster reconnects and reliability.
Enter the description, server, remote ID and, if desired, a local ID.
Input the authentication details using either your username/password or a certificate exactly as provided.
Hit the blue check mark (iOS 26) or the Done button (earlier iOS versions) in the top right and then toggle the VPN on in the same menu. You can also toggle it on/off from the main Settings menu or from the Control Center.

There’s also an option to sign in to your work or school account via an email address in your settings, if IT allows you to access your VPN this way.

Which VPN should you use on your iPhone?

Surfshark is one of the cheapest VPN options available for iOS.

Sarah Tew/CNET

There are a bunch of VPN options out there, both free and paid, and your decision basically comes down to two things: what you need from your VPN and how much you’re willing to pay. Here are the best iPhone VPNs on the market.

ExpressVPN is CNET’s Editors’ Choice winner for best overall VPN for 2025. At $13 a month, $75 for the first 15 months or $98 total for the first 28 months (the one- and two-year plans renew at $100 a year), it’s one of the more expensive options. But we’ve found ExpressVPN justifies its premium price because it’s fast, reliable and simple to use. It may not have as many advanced privacy features as other VPN rivals, but it provides the privacy essentials, like a kill switch (which cuts off your internet if your VPN unexpectedly disconnects), split tunneling (to use a VPN connection for some apps but not others) and an audited no-logs policy (to back up its zero-log claims). ExpressVPN is a great option for accessing geo-blocked streaming content while you’re traveling, because it’s so fast and excels at bypassing regional restrictions.

NordVPN is the fastest VPN for iOS. At $13 a month, $60 for the first year or $83 total for the first two years, NordVPN’s one- and two-year plans are initially cheaper than ExpressVPN. But the company’s $140 a year auto-renewal on the one- and two-year plans is significantly more expensive than Express’s $100 a year auto-renewal. The app is also simple to use. You can easily choose a location to connect to and also quickly connect to specialty servers, like Onion over VPN or double VPN servers, both of which make it harder to trace your data back to your device (like your iPhone).

Surfshark is the best value VPN for iPhones and, despite its relative affordability, it doesn’t compromise on privacy features. Like NordVPN and ExpressVPN, Surfshark has an intuitive interface, but it’s packed with privacy features, like dynamic multihop connections, an IP rotator and an ad and tracker blocker. While the monthly plan is steep in comparison to most rivals at $15 a month, Surfshark’s $48 for the first year or $60 total for the first two years undercuts many competitors. Even its $79 a year auto-renewal on the one- and two-year plans is cheaper than ExpressVPN and NordVPN’s renewal prices.

Normally, we don’t recommend most free VPNs, for a few reasons: You might get weaker encryption, data caps, slow speeds, data collection, advertisements, limited server options or even malware. The only free VPN we can enthusiastically vouch for is Proton VPN because it doesn’t track you, blast you with ads or throttle your speeds. Proton VPN’s zero-dollar tier is limited — it doesn’t let you pick a server manually and you can only connect on one device at a time. But Proton’s paid premium plan is a great upgrade path for folks who need more simultaneous connections, a larger server network or additional manual control.

Usually, it’s better to pay if you really need a VPN for privacy protection on your iPhone. Also, most paid VPN options feature a free seven-day trial (as long as you sign up through the App Store) or a money-back guarantee, so there are ways to use paid VPNs without spending any money — but only for a limited time.

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September 29, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Hide.me Free VPN | TechRadar

by admin September 20, 2025

Why you can trust TechRadar

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

On paper, Hide.me Free boasts an impressive offering – unlimited data, customizable tools, and a truly free VPN that’s more than just a trial. There are a handful of limitations – par for the course for a free VPN – but Hide.me Free’s strong core features and server array are strong counterpoints.

Ultimately, if you’re on the hunt for a free service that has your privacy in mind and will watch your back as you go about your usual browsing, Hide.me Free has the right features and pretty nifty apps.

Features

Hide.me subscription options:

24 month plan – $2.69 per month ($64.56 total cost)

Hide.me Free gets the VPN basics right – just like its paid counterpart. Users can take their pick of an impressive number of tried-and-tested VPN protocols, including OpenVPN, WireGuard, IKEv2, SSTP, and SoftEtherVPN. We also liked that we could select a “fallback protocol”, which the VPN used if our first choice failed to connect – which it didn’t, incidentally.

However, the availability of these protocols varies depended on the platform we tried, which were Windows, Android, and iOS.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Platform

WireGuard

OpenVPN

IKEv2

SSTP

SoftEther

Windows

✅

Mac

❌

✅

❌

Android

✅

❌

iOS

✅

❌

IPv6 support
All Hide.me Free apps come with full IPv6 support, setting them apart from other free providers that offer a simple checkbox feature that claims to prevent IPv6 leaks. More often, however, free VPNs typically ignore the issue of IPv6 leaks.

Hide.me Free is the only free service on our list that allows users to connect using IPv4, IPv6, or both. If you’re unfamiliar with IPv6, this won’t matter that much, but if you are – and if your ISP allows you to use IPv6 – Hide.me Free will work with it right out of the box with no risk of IPv6 leaks.

Still, this is way more control than we see even from the likes of our best VPN overall, NordVPN.

Auto-connect
Hide.me Free’s auto-connect tool is one of the best we’ve ever tested, too. Available on desktop apps and Android and iOS, we enabled it with a simple toggle we could further customize it to allow us to select different actions when connecting to unsecured Wi-Fi, secured Wi-Fi, or Ethernet networks.

The options for each are: “Connect or Disconnect”, “Ask what to do”, or “Ignore Network”. This is a nice array of options. So, if security is your primary concern, you could configure the auto-connect tool to ask whether you want Hide.me Free to automatically connect whenever you join an unsecure network – like the free Wi-Fi you find in cafes, airports, and hotels – so you don’t accidentally join a dodgy hotspot that lacks encryption or, in the worst case scenario, is a bogus connection monitored by a data-hungry bad actor. This is especially useful for folks who commute to work or have a vacation on the cards.

Each time the app made one of these automated decisions, it then added the name of the network and the decision it made to a list. That’s better reporting than most VPN apps, which typically expect you to maintain that list yourself or manually add networks to a trusted list as you access them.

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(Image credit: Hideme.Free)(Image credit: Hideme.Free)(Image credit: Hideme.Free)(Image credit: Hideme.Free)

Split tunneling
We were glad to see that Hide.me Free offered split tunneling for Windows, Mac, and Android, though the feature is currently missing from iOS. Like the auto-connect tool, Hide.me Free’s split tunneling is highly customizable, allowing users to pick and choose which apps or sites use the VPN tunnel and which don’t.

So, using the split tunneling tool, you could route traffic headed to your streaming app/site of choice through your regular internet connection, and not the encrypted Hide.me Free tunnel.

This will reduce the amount of traffic the VPN has to deal with on its limited data budget and ensure that you can actually enjoy your content without any buffering or lag.

Kill switch
Hide.me Free has a reliable kill switch that we weren’t able to trip any time we tampered with the VPN protocol software to cause it to disconnect. Our real IP address was not leaked at any point during testing, which is a must-have factor for any VPN, and especially impressive for a free service.

The kill switch is available on all platforms, including iOS, unusually. It’s not always easy to find, though – it’s named “Network Protection” in the Android settings, for example.

In addition to a simple on/off toggle, users can also configure a script inside the app that’ll launch whenever the kill switch is triggered (cutting your internet connection) or disabled. You could use this to create an alert warning you that the kill switch was triggered, or forcibly close a process or launch an app.

Why is this useful? Well, imagine that you always leave your VPN on at home, connected to a nearby server. What happens if that connection drops out? Usually, a VPN will display a notification to let you know, but what if you wanted something else to happen?

If your VPN is connected to a local network, you might want to send a notification to other devices connected to it or, to prevent communication across a now unsecured connection, you might want to close some apps and programs. Hide.me Free makes this possible via scripts – a series of commands that give you more control over how the app responds to a kill switch failure.

Other features
Hide.me Free also boasts obfuscation – but we found that it was pretty basic. Still, it might help you establish a secure VPN connection if you live in a privacy-unfriendly country (like China or Russia) where VPNs are routinely sniffed out and blocked. If you’re looking for the most reliable VPN for China, Hide.me Free probably shouldn’t be your first choice, but it may help with less intensive VPN blocking, and we’re glad that the option is there for free users.

The lock setting allows users to lock the VPN app whenever it’s minimized or after a specified number of minutes has passed. It works like a mobile device App Locker: select a PIN and rest assured that, without this PIN, nobody will be able to unlock (and interfere with) your VPN.

It might seem like security overkill, but it ensures that friends, family, and other nosy individuals can’t happen across your device and adjust your VPN settings. You wouldn’t want a sibling to disconnect the VPN while you’re torrenting, right? Network Lock puts a stop to this kind of meddling.

As mentioned earlier, Hide.me Free gives users unlimited data to play with – there are no monthly caps and no hard limits. Admittedly, that’s a huge bonus that means you won’t have to carefully ration out your VPN usage over the month. Hide.me Free does have its hangups, however, that mostly hinge around the differences between its free and premium plans.

Missing features and hangups
Hide.me Free users are limited to a single simultaneous connection. That means only one person, on one device, can use the VPN at any given time. This is pretty much par for the course when it comes to free VPNs, although Windscribe Free is a notable exception to the rule, offering unlimited connections for free and paid users.

Free users won’t find support for port forwarding or SOCKS5 proxy, either. There’s no option for TOR over VPN, and multi-hop is restricted to paid users.

On a more technical note, Hide.me Free also lacks support for downloading OpenVPN or other manual configuration files (like WireGuard keys). This makes it a lot more difficult to use the VPN with a router. Lots of routers work with OpenVPN but, more often than not, they also require a configuration file that tells them exactly how to set up the connection and the IP address of the server they’re trying to access. Without this file, we can’t recommend Hide.me Free as a fully-fledged router VPN.

Features score: 7/10

Server network

We were unable to discern the total number of VPN servers in Hide.me Free’s network but, as free users are restricted to a small subset of locations, this isn’t a huge stumbling block.

Hide.me Free gives users access to servers in 7 countries: Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK, USA. It is worth noting that Hide.me claims that free users have 8 locations to choose from but, on our Windows testing machine, we only saw the 7 listed above. Singapore is often listed as a free location, but during our testing, we saw it marked as Premium-only.

We took a closer look at the free locations to determine whether the listing in the app matches the likely real location of the server. We’re happy to say that all 7 locations are accurately listed, although the Finnish servermay be in Estonia.

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(Image credit: Hideme.Free)(Image credit: Hideme.Free)

As with other VPNs, Hide.me Free allows users to add servers to a favorites list for easy access and set specific servers as the default, so the VPN automatically connects to them when the big “Connect” button is clicked or tapped. It’s a nice time-saving measure we’re glad to see included.

One notable aspect of Hide.me Free’s server array is that 6 of its 7 locations are based in Europe, with the 7th being in the US. Lots of free VPNs have blank spots on the map, so this isn’t entirely surprising, but today, we find that most top-rated free VPNs have at least one server location in Asia.

For example, Windscribe Free has coverage in Hong Kong, and Proton VPN Free has servers in Japan. Extending the range of the server network benefits everyone, giving folks outside of Europe access to nearby servers, improving their overall browsing experience, and offering people elsewhere the opportunity to location-hop and check out a new region of local content.

Servers score: 6/10

Apps

Hide.me Free is available for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux. This is a decent spread, and it’s nice to see that Hide.me doesn’t neglect its Linux userbase. We were also glad to see that Hide.me Free has its very own Firefox, Chrome, and Edge browser extensions, too.

There are also Hide.me Free apps for Apple TV, Android TV, and Amazon Fire TV. We’d like to laud this selection, but it is, unfortunately, irrelevant, as the free version isn’t quick enough to keep up with HD streaming.

Overall, nothing major is missing from Hide.me Free’s app offering, which is impressive for a free service, as are the three browser extensions.

The only hiccup to note is that the missing access to the OpenVPN files means that it’s not going to work as a VPN for your router.

Apps score: 8/10

Ease of use

First things first, we were impressed that Hide.me Free doesn’t require any registration or sign-up to use. We simply downloaded the app from the provider’s website and followed along with an installation wizard. In fact, across all platforms, we didn’t run into any trouble when installing Hide.me Free.

The more we dug into Hide.me Free’s usability, however, the more cracks appeared. We installed Hide.me Free on a device that we’d previously used the paid edition on, and it automatically logged in, presumably because it didn’t remove our old credentials when uninstalling.

The dashboard warned us that our plan had expired and that it was time to upgrade, and there was no obvious “use free version” button – or even a hint that a free version existed.

Eventually, we double-clicked a server location in the location list, and a new “Trial Expired” screen appeared. It gave us the option to “Downgrade to a free plan”. When we hit downgrade, we were finally able to use Hide.me Free.

Of course, most users won’t be affected by this issue as they’ll be installing the app on a device that hasn’t used Hide.me before. Still, if you’re one of the unlucky few who has, it’s an unnecessary hassle. Hide.me could make life way easier by offering a “Downgrade” button to everyone with an expired plan rather than forcing them on a digital goose chase.

(Image credit: Hideme.Free)

We also experienced an odd quirk where, once the app had installed and displayed the “Finished” page, the app launched immediately. Most VPNs wait until you’ve closed the page to do this, so the app appeared before we’d even closed the installer. It’s odd, but it didn’t cause any issues.

Once the Hide.me Free Windows app was up and running, we were greeted by a quick tutorial that introduced us to all the most important sections of the app. If you’re an experienced VPN user, this won’t be all that useful, but anyone on the hunt for a good VPN for beginners will appreciate the easy-to-digest signposting.

Overall, we found Hide.me Free’s Windows app to be rather overcomplicated. It looks more like an operating system desktop than a simple app. The dashboard is designed to be customizable – it can contain all kinds of widgets that users can edit and reposition to suit their needs.

(Image credit: Hideme.Free)

One widget displays the currently-selected location and connect button, another holds the map of Hide.me Free’s locations, and a third contains your account information. There are even widgets listing your favorite servers, streaming servers, account information, a “Privacy Search” button that allows you to make searches from within the app, and a long list of links to Hide.me Free’s social media channels.

It’s a great idea in theory, and we always like to see customization, but it’s also almost entirely unnecessary. We didn’t need the dashboard to constantly tell us that we were using the free version, and we didn’t find ourselves needing immediate access to Hide.me’s X account. Plus, there’s already a link to the map view in the left-hand sidebar, rendering the one in the dashboard redundant.

We didn’t see any massive benefit to the dashboard. If anything, it actually makes the app look worse than the competition because the widgets have fixed sizes, meaning there’s a lot of wasted white space. Compare that to the super-compact Windscribe Free VPN UI which takes up no more room on desktop that it does on mobile.

Still, there are plenty of ways to avoid the dashboard. Clicking the “Locations” option in the sidebar takes you to a simple location list. From here, you can double-click any free location to join a server and, once you’re done, double-click again to disconnect.

When we tried Hide.me Free on iOS, we found that the layout is much more conventional, which was a plus for us. The iOS app is well-designed and works similarly to premium mobile VPNs. Joining a server is as easy as tapping the “Connect” button, and users have the option of selecting “Best location” to choose another free location.

Regardless of the platform we used, Hide.me Free did a good job of underscoring which features are available to free users and which aren’t. We selected the SmartGuard ad blocker, for instance, and the app warned us that our experience was “restricted”.

(Image credit: Hideme.Free)

Digging into Hide.me Free’s advanced tools, we found that they’re organized unusually. Almost every other app we’ve tested puts options like auto-connect and split tunneling in a settings menu, but Hide.me Free lists them (and other significant tools) in their own Features menu. If you’re used to diving into the settings to find these things, you might miss them at first, but it’s nothing a bit of exploration can’t fix.

Hide.me Free’s actual settings menu is nice and easy to parse. It mostly consists of simple on/off options. The technical settings, however, are laid out a little differently across platforms, which can make it difficult to find the specific setting you’re looking to tweak.

Fortunately, Hide.me Free’s menus have a search box – which we found rather unique. It’s a great addition to the mix that makes hunting down tools quick and easy, so long as you know what you’re looking for. So, if you’re searching for a DNS setting but can’t find it, just type “DNS” into the search box, and Hide.me Free will display every setting that includes “DNS”.

During our testing, when we went about our regular browsing, we encountered a lot of CAPTCHA tests. These tests went on for a long time, too, often cornering us into 7 or 8 rounds of selecting the squares containing motorcycles or chimneys. This ground our browsing to a halt – and given that Hide.me Free also throttles speeds, it makes for a less-than-ideal everyday experience.

More CAPTCHAs usually means that the IP addresses on Hide.me’s free servers aren’t as fresh as they might be – either through age or the number of customers on those free servers using them – and that’s not a great sign.

Finally, when we weren’t using Hide.me Free and made a big change to our network configuration (by connecting to a second VPN, for example), the Hide.me Free dashboard would suddenly appear. We hadn’t clicked on it or switched to it – it simply popped up.

We can only assume that the Hide.me Free Windows app thinks it’s solely responsible for our network settings and, if something changes, it’s the app that’ll take charge. It doesn’t matter all that much, however. We simply minimized the dashboard and went about our business as usual. It’s another small interface irritation, however, and it could become seriously frustrating if it happens regularly.

Ease of use score: 5/10

Speed and performance

We put Hide.me Free’s speeds to the test using our 1 Gbps connection and the WireGuard protocol. The service achieved pretty decent results, clocking in at 415 Mbps on our Windows machine and 25 Mbps on Android.

While this isn’t quite as quick as Proton VPN Free and Windscribe Free, both recording 900 Mbps, it’s still more than you need for easy-breezy day-to-day browsing.

How we perform speed tests

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

We test from two different virtual PCs, one in the UK and one in the US, using a 1 Gbps connection. You can find out more in our VPN testing methodology.

It is worth noting that, during the course of our hands-on testing, we did notice inconsistencies in Hide.me Free’s speeds. Initially, our testing machine reported that we had been throttled to a measly 1 Mbps, but subsequent testing proved more fruitful.

It’s uncertain whether this vacillation in results will repeat but, if it does, it could cause issues for free users attempting to use Hide.me Free to stream, torrent, or check out social media feeds – as 1 Mbps just isn’t enough to keep up with resource-intensive activities.

Speed and performance score: 6/10

Unblocking

As part of our real-world tests, we tried streaming Netflix and YouTube, and were successful on both occasions. The only caveat here is that we were forced to reload Netflix before the page loaded fully, and we did experience some buffering when initially tuning in to content. After about five minutes or so, however, the experience settled and remained smooth.

We’d still recommend looking to a paid service for the most reliable access to today’s top streaming platforms (and smaller regional services), but Hide.me Free impressed us by holding its own.

Hide.me Free isn’t our first-choice torrenting VPN, either, despite the fact that all of its free servers appear to support P2P activity. You’re better off with PrivadoVPN or Proton VPN. Hide.me Free also lacks a port forwarding option – you’ll have to subscribe to the paid version to check it out.

Unblocking score: 6/10

Privacy and security

Hide.me Free uses AES-256 and ChaCha20 via WireGuard. There are a lot of protocols to choose from when you open up the app, though we typically recommend WireGuard, thanks to its blend of speed and security. We’re also glad to see that Hide.me Free ditched less secure options, like L2TP, a long time ago.

We also believe that Hide.me Free is geared more towards technical users and folks who want to learn about VPN technology and cybersecurity. This is most visible in the provider’s blog, where the company regularly posts in-depth articles covering essentials like encryption.

Digging into Hide.me Free’s server infrastructure, there was no real technical detail to be found, but the Network page on the provider site claims that: “Our servers are hand-picked, security-hardened and self-maintained… To protect our users’ privacy, we control and run a self-managed VPN network without any involvement of outsiders. Every server stores sensitive cryptographic keys in a temporary storage to minimize attack surface.”

Terms like “hand-picked” and “security-hardened” don’t raise any eyebrows. “Self-maintained” and “self-managed without any involvement of outsiders”, however, does. It seems unlikely or, worse, misleading. Unless Hide.me Free is running its own data centres, others will, at least, have physical access to the servers.

Servers storing keys “in a temporary storage” fit with them being RAM-based. We suspect that, if it’s true, Hide.me Free would simply claim as much. Instead, perhaps the provider means that the keys are stored in a folder of temporary files, which is always emptied when the server closes or starts.

Hide.me Free hasn’t implemented full post-quantum encryption, but it has achieved a degree of quantum resistance with its custom dynamic WireGuard configuration. Currently, Hide.me is working to deliver a better and more complete post-quantum solution.

Hide.me Free generates a random username and an internally-assigned (not public) IP address when users connect to a server. Any data related to their session links solely to that ID. The company says that this means usage data remains anonymous and unconnected to your real, public IP address.

Like a lot of VPNs, Hide.me Free’s apps include crash reporting and related telemetry features which might send app usage and troubleshooting information back to the company. This data is anonymized and not linked to you personally. It helps Hide.me determine if a lot of users are having problems connecting to a certain country – not that you, in particular, are.

Finally, as a cherry on top, Hide.me had its no-logs policy successfully audited in 2024. This is a good foundation to build on, and we’d like to see the service commit to annual audits of its policies, apps, and servers.

Privacy and security score: 6/10

Track record

Hide.me was founded over 13 years ago and is currently based in Labuan, Malaysia, and owned by a Malaysia-based IT security company, eVenture Ltd. The provider also has a second office in Zagreb, Croatia, according to its LinkedIn page.

The VPN makes some impressive claims, including that it was the first BSC VPN to offer IPv6 and WireGuard support, and that it was one of the first services to implement WireGuard in a privacy-friendly way.

In mid-2024, Hide.me published the results of a privacy audit conducted by Securitum. The security consultancy inspected server configurations, interviewed Hide.me staff, reviewed deployment procedures, and more. Hide.me didn’t publish the full report, unfortunately, and instead published a summary of the results. The good news is that the summary still contains plenty of detail.

Overall, the audit was positive with Securitum stating: “As a result of the audit, it was confirmed, that declared by Hide.me no-logs policy is indeed applied, and the audit did not reveal any issues on VPN container that could lead to a compromise of user privacy.”

We’re happy to see Hide.me invest in its transparency, but there’s more that could be done. We’d like to see Hide.me undergo more regular audits of different types (covering the provider’s apps, for example) and publish the full report afterwards.

The only blemish on Hide.me’s record we found was a Mac app bug discovered in 2019. The bug possibly allowed a privilege escalation, a type of exploit that malware could use to acquire extra rights on your system, perhaps infect your device, or cause other issues. This is bad as security vulnerabilities go, but it’s not uncommon; NordVPN had three of these reported in 2018.

Track record score: 7/10

Customer support

A lot of free VPNs don’t offer customer support to their user base. The good news is that Hide.me Free bucks this trend, and customers have access to 24/7 technical support.

There are also community forums. These are a handy resource for folks who prefer to do their own troubleshooting, and other users are generally happy to share their own experiences and ideas that you simply won’t hear from customer support. Unfortunately, these forums aren’t as active as they could be, so you may end up waiting a while for a response.

(Image credit: Hideme.Free)

Hide.me Free’s support site contains a huge number of detailed articles, which is great, but there’s not a lot of material for beginners. The FAQ page warns that “port 25 is blocked for security reasons”, for instance, but doesn’t attempt to explain what port 25 is, why it matters, or why a user should care.

Fortunately, if you have any burning questions or want to clarify your confusion, free users get full access to the Hide.me Free support team. We opened a live chat session, reached position 1 in the queue, and an agent joined us within seconds. When we raised an email ticket, we received a helpful reply in under half an hour, which is impressively quick – and a much faster response time than we’ve seen with many paid VPNs.

Customer support score: 8/10

Pricing and plans

As Hide.me Free is the limited version of the full-fat Hide.me subscription, the plan naturally comes with notable omissions that are only available to paying customers. These include:

Access to 91 server locations
10 simultaneous connections
Port forwarding
SOCKS5 proxy
SmartGuard ad, tracker, and malware blocker
Bolt “Fast Proxy” technology (speed booster)
Multi-hop

A 2-year plan comes in at $2.69 a month – which makes Hide.me’s premium offering one of the more reasonable options on the market. Still, Surfshark has it beat at $1.99 a month and a long list of innovative security-boosting tools. In comparison, Hide.me doesn’t quite stack up.

Pricing and plans score: 5/10

Should you use Hide.me Free?

Hide.me Free does a decent job of holding its own against other free providers on the market, but the truth is that you can get a lot more for nothing elsewhere. The clunky Windows dashboard really lets the service down – other providers do it better.

On the other hand, if you can handle having a single device connection and deal with a few hiccups during setup, Hide.me Free’s customizable tools and features are some of the best on the market.

Being able to use the service without handing over an iota of personal information is an impressive plus, too. So, if you’re looking for a free VPN that’ll have your back during your day-to-day browsing, with an audited no-logs policy, Hide.me Free could be worth investigating.

Overall score: 64/100

Hide.me Free Alternatives

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September 20, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Best VPN for Streaming in 2025: Unblock International Movies and TV Shows on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and More

by admin September 13, 2025

Based on our years of experience using and testing VPNs, here’s what you should consider when choosing a VPN for streaming.

Streaming capabilities

Your VPN’s capacity to access streaming content is the top factor to consider in a VPN for streaming. If your VPN can’t access geo-restricted streaming content, it isn’t fit for this purpose. It’s also important to make sure that the VPN you choose works well for the specific streaming services you want to access. Think about the streaming services you want to watch like Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, Max, Hulu, Peacock, Crunchyroll, YouTube TV and Sling — then try your VPN with those services to see if it works. We’ve found that ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Surfshark all work reliably with each of those streaming services across most platforms.

Keep in mind that a streaming service that works with a specific VPN today may not tomorrow (and vice versa). Sometimes a simple server switch can do the trick and get you access to the content you’re looking for. If not, you can alert your VPN’s support team to the issue and they may be able to get it resolved. Each of these VPNs will give you your money back within 30 days of purchase, so if it happens to not work as well as you want, you can get a refund. Check out the best VPNs for Netflix and the best VPNs for Amazon Prime Video for more information.

Speed

Your VPN’s speed performance plays a major role in the overall quality of your streaming experience. You’ll need a VPN that’s fast, especially if you’re streaming in 4K or if you’re accessing geo-blocked content from a region that’s a considerable distance from your physical location. Generally, you’ll need download speeds of 25Mbps at a bare minimum for 4K streaming, but you’ll want at least 50Mbps for reliable 4K streaming. You can get by with far less (10 to 20Mbps) for HD streaming. All VPNs will slow your speeds somewhat (sometimes by 50% or more), but if your VPN is slowing your connection too much, you may end up experiencing a lot of buffering or lower-quality video playback. A fast streaming VPN will only reduce your download speeds minimally — ideally by 25% or less on average. As long as your connection is fast enough to begin with, the speed loss shouldn’t be noticeable.

Privacy

Regardless of what you’re using your VPN for, privacy is a key consideration for any VPN service. Your VPN should have privacy measures in place, like DNS leak protection, a kill switch, modern encryption protocols and a no-logs policy (ideally one that’s been audited or tested in the wild). A VPN that provides the necessary privacy protections will ensure that your internet traffic is never leaked unencrypted.

Network

A good VPN for streaming should have a network of servers in locations across the globe. If you’re looking to fully optimize your streaming and get access to the largest selection of streaming content, then you’ll probably want to choose a VPN with servers located in the largest number of countries. If you’re looking to access content from a specific region, you should check to ensure the VPN you want to use has servers in the region(s) you need. You can check the VPN’s server page on its website to see what countries it has servers in before purchasing a subscription. Most of our top picks feature thousands of servers in 100-plus countries. To unblock streaming content from a specific country, all you need to do is use the VPN app to connect to a server located in the country from which you want to stream content. For example, to access the US Netflix library, ensure you’re connected to a server in the US. Or if you want to access content on BBC iPlayer, connect to a UK server.

Device compatibility

You’ll also want to make sure that the streaming VPN you choose is compatible with the device on which you want to stream content, whether that’s a mobile device, laptop, smart TV or streaming device. Most VPNs are compatible with a wide range of devices, but it’s always a good idea to confirm that the service you’re considering will work with your device. Many VPNs have apps for Fire TV and Android TV that work on streaming devices or smart TVs, but not every provider has an Apple TV app yet. NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN, PIA and IPVanish are a few of the providers that do have Apple TV apps. (Disclosure: IPVanish is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) Luckily, you can use a VPN on your router if you want to use a VPN with devices like PlayStation 5 and Xbox consoles or Roku streaming devices that don’t support native VPN apps.

Router installation

It isn’t necessary to use a router to stream geo-blocked content with a VPN, but it can help if your smart TV or streaming device doesn’t natively support VPN apps. Also, with a VPN router setup, you can protect all of the devices on your network at once while using only one of your allotted simultaneous connections. Installing a VPN on a compatible router can be difficult and even risky if you try it yourself, so be sure you have the technical know-how to do so before proceeding. Alternatively, you can purchase a router with a VPN preinstalled from a company like FlashRouters. If you’re an ExpressVPN user, you can purchase the provider’s Aircove router or use its intuitive router app on your existing VPN-compatible router.

Cost

VPN prices can vary considerably from one provider to another. A monthly VPN subscription can range anywhere from about $5 to $15 per month. Longer-term VPN subscription plans often feature introductory pricing around $40 to $100 for the first year. But be aware that renewal prices can sometimes double or even quadruple — with VPN renewal pricing coming in anywhere from $50 to $150 or more per year after introductory term. If you’re on a budget, take a look at our list of the best cheap VPNs. You can even use a VPN to save money on your streaming subscriptions because a VPN can help you access more global content without you having to subscribe to as many streaming services.

Sports streaming

If you’re a sports fan, you can use a VPN to avoid regional blackouts and stream sports from anywhere. To do so, just connect to a VPN server in a location where the sporting event is accessible online — whether it’s a specific U.S. city, or a different country — and you should be able to stream all the sports you want. For instance, you can use a VPN to stream out-of-market NFL games or watch NFL matches while traveling abroad.

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September 13, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

IPVanish takes its first step toward a RAM-only VPN network

by admin September 11, 2025

IPVanish unveiled its first RAM-only servers in 19 cities across 9 countries, with plans to expand to all 148 locations by 2027
RAM-only servers improve privacy by wiping all data on reboot, while also boosting durability and making updates faster
This rollout puts IPVanish in line with rivals that already use RAM-only servers, although not all top VPN providers embrace this method

IPVanish just made another move toward strengthening its privacy game: it launched RAM-only servers, marking a major shift in how its network operates.

Unlike traditional VPN servers that rely on hard drives (HDDs), RAM-only servers are automatically wiped on reboot or shutdown. This means your data is never stored for long.

The company joins some of the best VPN providers by going diskless and targeting improved privacy. While the release only impacts servers in 19 cities across 9 countries at the time of writing, IPVanish plans to swap all of its servers to RAM-only within the next two years.

How do RAM-only VPN servers work?

There’s a major difference between traditional VPN servers and ones that run on Random Access Memory (RAM).

Most VPN servers run on HDDs. IPVanish reassures that those servers remain secure thanks to full-disk encryption and its no-logs policy, but they come with some downsides, which switching to RAM can help address.

With RAM-only servers, all data is stored in volatile memory that wipes clean on every reboot. This means there’s no lingering information left behind, even if a server is seized, and updates can be deployed more quickly because there are no physical drives to reimage. The result is stronger privacy by design.

Australia is one of the location currently offering RAM-only servers (Image credit: IPVanish)

That said, while the fact that servers get wiped on every reboot is good news, IPVanish appears to already be doing a good job of not storing your private data. A recent audit confirmed that the company never stores user data, which minimizes the risk of leaks.

“This initiative complements our ongoing commitment to robust privacy standards, including third-party no-log audits, regular transparency reports, account anonymization, and minimal data collection at signup,” said IPVanish Chief Commercial Officer, Subbu Sthanu.

Beyond privacy, with no moving parts, RAM-only servers are often more durable and easier to maintain or upgrade, too.

Which IPVanish’s servers are RAM-only?

IPVanish started the rollout of its RAM-only servers, launching them in 19 locations to start with. Right now, these privacy-focused servers are available in Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States.

Other RAM-only servers VPNs

We’ve reviewed every single leading VPN service out there (and some that aren’t quite up to par), and we’ve seen some of our favorites make the switch to RAM-only servers over the years.

Notable mentions here include ExpressVPN with its TrustedServer technology, which runs entirely on RAM, as well as NordVPN and Private Internet Access (PIA). There are clear merits to the tech, which, for many of these providers, serves as an extra layer of safety on top of already stringent security measures.

However, not all of the top-rated VPNs lean into RAM-only servers.

ProtonVPN, which is also highly rated by our reviewers for privacy and security, chooses not to use RAM-only servers. Proton explains that even RAM storage can be targeted by threat actors if the server is turned on, and full-disk encryption achieves the same kind of protection.

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September 11, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Best VPN for Travel: Stay Private While Browsing the Web and Streaming On-the-Go

by admin September 7, 2025

PIA

Private Internet Access brings a lot to the table, particularly for regular travelers. Its large server network blankets the globe with 35,000 servers in 91 countries. ExpressVPN and Surfshark deliver more individual country choices but PIA’s sheer number of servers lets you easily find an optimal connection. It’s an especially great VPN for folks traveling domestically or to one of the worldwide locales where Private Internet Access maintains a decent presence. In our experience, we found PIA unblocked Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus and Netflix on US and UK servers, making it a good VPN for streaming.

Its wallet-friendly pricing sets you back just $12 monthly, $40 for the first year ($50 annually upon renewal) or $79 total for three years. By comparison, most VPNs like NordVPN and ExpressVPN typically charge $60 to $100 a year. The value-packed Surfshark charges about $48 for your first year and its price jumps to $60 after its initial sweet introductory pricing.

Despite its relatively low cost, PIA doesn’t cut corners. Although it’s not the most feature-rich VPN, you’ll get a solid privacy suite, including a kill switch that stops your internet if your VPN gets disconnected, split tunneling for using a VPN for some apps but not others and 256-bit encryption over OpenVPN or IKEv2 with ChaCha20 on WireGuard. There’s multihop, which routes your connection through another server for additional privacy, and obfuscated servers, making it tougher for apps or ISPs to identify when you’re using a VPN. PIA also boasts unlimited simultaneous connections — the pricier ExpressVPN limits you to eight.

Unfortunately, PIA delivered middling internet speeds in our testing with an average speed loss of 49%. All VPNs slow down your connection somewhat, with the fastest VPNs offering an average internet speed loss of 25% or less. Folks with faster internet connections like fiber shouldn’t notice a difference even with a higher speed loss but PIA isn’t ideal for people with slower speeds like satellite internet users. With its decent features, pricing transparency and subscriptions that significantly undercut the competition, PIA remains a solid VPN that boasts a generous server network, unlimited simultaneous connections and relative affordability compared to VPN rivals. But for the price, you’re better off with Surfshark, which is faster and offers a larger global server network.

Read our PIA review.

IPVanish

IPVanish offers 2,400-plus servers in 108 countries, which is in the same ballpark as NordVPN, Proton VPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark. (Disclosure: IPVanish is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) In our experience, IPVanish’s internet download speeds were uneven, with a 44% average internet download speed loss in our 2024 testing, with fast speeds marred by occasionally noticeable dips, which could impact gaming or 4K streaming.

IPVanish provides plenty of perks, including unlimited simultaneous connections, user-friendly apps and great streaming capabilities. It streams and unblocks region-restricted content from Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, Hulu and Netflix with aplomb. At $13 monthly, $40 for the first year or $53 total for two years, IPVanish initially saves you money upfront compared to competitors like ExpressVPN or NordVPN. However, its exorbitantly expensive renewal prices of $156 a year for the annual plan and $312 for the two-year plan trounce even pricey autorenewals of ExpressVPN ($100 renewal) and NordVPN ($140 renewal). IPVanish works fine for casual use, but you can get a VPN with more robust privacy features and faster internet speeds, all of which benefit travel. IPVanish’s user-friendly apps make it a decent choice for beginners seeking a VPN to add peace of mind and allow for streaming abroad. But wallet-friendly VPNs PIA and Surfshark are better options for the money because of their larger server networks.

Read our IPVanish review

CyberGhost

With 11,500-plus servers spanning 100 countries, CyberGhost offers loads of choices for international travel. It’s decent for streaming from BBC iPlayer, Netflix and other sites. You can use specific servers optimized for streaming, but streaming works on all servers. CyberGhost remains wallet-friendly at $13 per month, $42 every six months or $57 total for the first two years of service (you’re billed annually after 24 months of service on its two-year plan).

CyberGhost lacks advanced privacy features like Tor Over VPN or double-hop servers, both of which make it even more difficult to trace your traffic back to its source. There is obfuscation, which makes it more difficult to determine that you’re using a VPN, which can circumvent restrictions by countries, ISPs or Wi-Fi networks that have blocked VPNs. Obfuscated servers could be useful when running a VPN at school, work or in a country where virtual private networks are frowned upon.

CyberGhost’s high internet speed loss isn’t ideal for demanding applications like 4K streaming or gaming. CyberGhost does provide some useful features, including a kill switch, which shuts off your internet if your VPN gets disconnected, and split tunneling for selectively choosing some apps but not all to route through your VPN. All things considered, CyberGhost is acceptable for casual use like streaming videos or web browsing, and its exhaustive server network is particularly well-suited to travel. Uneven speed loss and middle-of-the-road privacy features mean you’ve likely got better choices.

Read our CyberGhost review.

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September 7, 2025 0 comments

Windscribe Website Showing Client Software

Product Reviews

Windscribe VPN review | TechRadar

by admin August 26, 2025

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We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Windscribe is one of the best all-rounders in the VPN market. It’s got some handy privacy-boosting tools, the speeds you need to enjoy HD streaming, and apps for pretty much every platform out there. So, even though it can’t quite match up to today’s best VPNs, it’s still worth checking out if you’re on the hunt for something new.

During our hands-on testing, we were impressed by Windscribe’s core features and unblocking power, but we did run into issues with its UI. So, to help you figure out if Windscribe is your match made in heaven, we put its approach to privacy, server network, and overall value for money to the test. Keep reading, and let’s dig in.

Features

Windscribe subscription options:

1 month plan – $9 per month ($9 total cost)

Windscribe boasts a generous spread of servers across 69 countries, and 134 cities, all over the world. That’s a decent spread that’ll suit most people’s geo-spoofing needs, but it’s worth noting that NordVPN has it beat with coverage in 118 countries.

There’s a Windscribe for every device out there, too, which is exactly what we like to see from today’s most modern providers. Windscribe is compatible with Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Linux, with feature and UI parity remaining consistent across all of its apps. Plus, if you’re looking for a more lightweight option that still packs a privacy-boosting punch, there are also browser extensions available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

In terms of VPN protocols, Windscribe ticks all the right boxes, offering a choice between IKEv2, OpenVPN, and WireGuard. Industry-standard AES-256 encryption also ensures that your web traffic is kept safe from cybercriminals and snoopers, while stealth technologies try to obfuscate your VPN usage, perhaps allowing you to get online even in countries that actively block VPN traffic.

ROBERT is Windscribe’s DNS-backed tool to help users block ads, malware, trackers and more (Image credit: Windscribe)

The powerful apps look great and are easy to use for beginners but also include many advanced features including split tunneling (on the desktop as well as mobile devices), MAC address spoofing (a clever way to reduce the chance of being tracked), versatile auto-connect rules, full IPv6 support, and even a command line interface to automate the VPN from scripts.

ROBERT is Windscribe’s DNS-based tool for blocking ads, malware, trackers, and various internet content types like gambling, porn, fake news, clickbait, and so on. How effective is it? We’ll take a look later.

There’s no 24/7 support but Windscribe does have a decent web knowledge base and a helpful support chatbot. You can raise a ticket if you need more advice, and in our experience, replies are detailed and helpful.

New features include Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) that can bypass SNI filtering so others can’t try to view or maybe block the domains you’re trying to access.

While many VPNs offer no control over DNS at all, Windscribe allows you to define which DNS to use when the VPN is connected or disconnected. The latest addition includes support for DNS-over-HTTPS, and as Windscribe also runs Control D (a very configurable DNS service, with a free plan) we expect to see more related features appear over time.

The Android app has a new ‘Decoy Mode’ which is an interesting privacy feature (Image credit: Windscribe)

In addition to paid plans, Windscribe also offers a very generous free plan (Image credit: Windscribe)

Windscribe pricing

Windscribe’s free plan offers a generous 10GB of data transfer a month if you register with your email address, and 2GB if you don’t. You’re limited to 11 countries – North America, across Europe, and Hong Kong – but that’s still far better than some (Hotspot Shield and a few others don’t give you any choice of locations at all).

Upgrading to a commercial plan gets you unlimited data and access to all 110 locations.

One of our favorite things about Windscribe is the fact that it gives users unlimited simultaneous connections to play with. So, if you have a lot of devices you need to protect, or want to share your account with friends and family, you only need to pick up a single subscription. It’s great value for money that you don’t see everywhere.

Prices are fair. Monthly billing is only $9 – many VPNs charge $10-$13. Pay for a year upfront and the price falls to an equivalent $5.75. That’s not cheap but it’s within the range we expect for a premium VPN, and it’s still far lower than some. ExpressVPN and Hide.me both ask $8.32 a month on the annual plan, NordVPN charges $8.29 from the second year.

If low prices are top of your priority list, though, there’s money to be saved elsewhere. As we write this, Private Internet Access has a three-year plan that’s only $2.03 a month for the first term, while Ivacy’s five-year offering is only $1 a month. Sure, we don’t like long-term contracts either, but look at the totals. Hand over $69 to Windscribe and you get one year of protection. Give Ivacy $60 and you’re covered for five.

Windscribe does offer a ‘Build a Plan’ scheme that cuts costs by allowing you to buy only the locations you need for $1 each. Each location adds 10GB to your free bandwidth allowance, and your plan must have a minimum of two locations.

For example, providing your email address gets you 10GB of data a month. Add the US and UK locations, and you’ll get 30GB of data for $2 a month. You can upgrade to unlimited data for another $1, or a total of just $3 a month, and that’s billed monthly. No need to sign up for years.

If you only use a VPN for occasional short trips, say, that looks like a great deal. Surfshark’s monthly-billed plan is more than four times as expensive at $13, for instance – okay, that’s the full service with all the locations, but if you don’t need them, who cares?

Another option, ScribeForce, enables signing up a group of users (a business, a family) with the same account. There’s a five-user minimum, but you’ll pay just $3 each, billed monthly, for access to the full and unrestricted service.

Unusual add-ons include static IP addresses. Adding a US or Canadian residential IP costs $8 a month (data center IPs are $2) and could greatly improve your chances of accessing any blocked sites, and enable connecting to IP-restricted business and other networks. Once you have a static IP, you can also enable port forwarding in the Windscribe web console.

Whatever your preference, Windscribe supports payments via card, PayPal, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies via CoinPayments.net, along with gift cards and assorted other options via Paymentwall.

Windscribe doesn’t have the lowest headline prices, then, but it’s fairly priced for the features on offer, and there are huge savings to be made if you’re covering multiple users.

There is a small catch in Windscribe’s money-back guarantee, which only covers you for three days and if you’ve used less than 10GB of traffic. So, if you think that might be an issue, download and try the free version before you buy to make sure it delivers what you need.

Windscribe protects your privacy with AES-256 encryption and doesn’t keep logs (Image credit: Windscribe)

Privacy and logging

Windscribe’s privacy features include strong AES-256 encryption, SHA512 authentication, a 4096-bit RSA key, and support for perfect forward secrecy (keys aren’t re-used, so even if a snooper gets hold of a private key, it will only allow them to view data within one session).

The apps use multiple techniques to reduce the chance of data leaks, including redirecting DNS requests through the tunnel to be handled by the VPN server, and optionally using a firewall to block all internet access if the connection drops.

We checked Windscribe’s performance on a Windows 10 system using the websites IPLeak, DNSLeakTest, and DoILeak and found no DNS or other leaks.

Windscribe claims its ROBERT DNS filter can protect your privacy by blocking trackers, but how well does it work? We connected to our nearest server, then tried accessing 156 common trackers, and ROBERT blocked 147. That’s one of the best results we’ve seen. ROBERT did even better at keeping us away from malicious sites, and the ad blocker scored an excellent 93% (most VPN ad blockers managed 40-90%.)

We enabled the Windows app’s firewall (similar to a kill switch) and began using various tricks to forcibly close the VPN connection and see what happened.

We found the app didn’t display a notification to warn that we’d been disconnected. If it wasn’t able to reconnect immediately, that might leave the user with no internet, and no idea why.

This situation probably won’t last long, though, as the app tries to reconnect as soon as it spots the problem, and we were typically online again within a few seconds. This may be a small usability issue, but in privacy terms, the client worked perfectly, handling every oddball situation we threw at it and always protecting our traffic.

Windscribe’s stance on logging is covered in a clearly written and refreshingly short privacy policy which explains what the company does and doesn’t collect.

There’s a tiny amount of very minimal long-term logging, but it’s limited to the total bandwidth you’ve used in a month (essential to manage usage on the free plan), and a timestamp of your last activity on the service to allow identifying inactive accounts.

The system collects some connection details – username, VPN server connected to, time of connection, bandwidth used during the session, number of devices connected – but these are held in the VPN server’s RAM only, and are lost when the session closes.

Other than that, there is no logging of connections, IPs, timestamps or browsing history. Or as the privacy policy puts it, ‘we do not store any logs on who used what IP address, so we cannot tie user activity to any single user.’

Here is some of the data from Windscribe’s transparency report (Image credit: Windscribe)

As there is no data on your activities, Windscribe points out that there’s nothing to share. This is backed up by a transparency report which covers the numbers of DMCA and Law Enforcement data requests over the year, and in both cases states that: ‘Exactly zero requests were complied with due to lack of relevant data.’

This is all good, but we would like to see Windscribe go further. Many VPNs have had their systems publicly audited to check for logging or other privacy issues, and that gives far more reassurance to potential customers than comforting words on a website. We hope that Windscribe (and all other VPN providers for that matter) will soon do the same.

In June 2023, Windscribe’s Co-Founder and CEO, Yegor Sak, was hit with a lawsuit in connection with alleged offences committed by an unknown user. Fast forward to April 2025, and the case was dismissed in court due to a lack of evidence, becoming a landmark victory for no-log VPNs as law enforcement bodies increasingly pressure VPNs to keep lawfully accessible records of user records.

In the meantime, it’s worth remembering that Windscribe gives you 2GB of data per month, for free, without requiring an email address or any other personal data. If you’re just looking to protect email and basic browsing, and can live with the data limit, this automatically gets you more guaranteed anonymity than you’ll have with almost everyone else.

Speed testing is an important part of any VPN review (Image credit: Speedtest.net)

Performance

We put Windscribe’s performance to the test using a 10 GB line and a local UK-based server. We then measured download speeds using benchmarking services including SpeedTest (both the website and command line app), Cloudflare, Measurement Lab, and more. We ran each test using at least two protocols and in both morning and evening sessions.

Windscribe’s WireGuard speeds are, in a word, awesome. The VPN clocked in at 840 Mbps – making it one of the fastest providers in our most recent round of testing, beating the likes of PIA and ExpressVPN (using the Lightway protocol).

OpenVPN speeds tend to be a little slower than their WireGuard counterparts, primarily because the protocol isn’t as streamlined and efficient. It’s made up of more lines of code, too.

So, it wasn’t a huge surprise when we saw Windscribe clock in at 368 Mbps using OpenVPN. It’s not a chart-topping performance, as ExpressVPN and Surfshark were both faster, but you’ll still have no trouble checking out HD streams or enjoying stable torrenting.

We can only measure the speeds for our test locations, of course, and you may see different results. If performance is a top priority for you, using the free version gives you the chance to check local speeds (from the 11 free locations) without as much as handing over your email address.

Alternatively, Windscribe’s ‘Build A Plan’ option could give you a month of unlimited traffic to a couple of locations for only $3, a low-priced way to run all the intensive speed testing you need.

Windscribe was able to unblock Netflix for all but one of the regions we tried (Image credit: Netflix)

Netflix and streaming

Plenty of today’s biggest and best streaming platforms geo-restrict their content – meaning the shows you love won’t be available if you head overseas on vacation or for work. Luckily, VPNs like Windscribe can help you regain access by geo-spoofing your location. All you need to do is connect to a server back home.

However, some platforms are cracking down on VPN usage, blocking IP addresses known to belong to VPN services. It’s why only the best VPNs, and the ones that frequently refresh their IP address pool, actually work as streaming VPNs.

To put Windscribe’s unblocking powers to the test, we first threw it at a selection of Netflix libraries, including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Japan libraries. We’re happy to report that it worked like a charm every time.

The good news continued. We had no trouble tuning into Disney+, BBC iPlayer, Channel 5, and Australian services 9Now and 10 Play.

The only hiccup we encountered happened when we attempted to check out Prime Video. The site sniffed out our VPN usage and refused to display any streaming content until we relented and switched Windscribe off. This isn’t a deal-breaker in our books, but it is something to keep in mind if a lot of the content you love is exclusive to the platform.

Failing only one of our test sites is a very impressive result. If only a 100% track record will do, though, ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Private Internet Access, ProtonVPN, PureVPN, and Surfshark all unblocked every one of our test services in their last review.

Windscribe fully supports P2P and torrenting (Image credit: BitTorrent)

Torrents

VPN providers generally don’t boast about their torrent support, and it can be a challenge to figure out what you’re allowed to do. TunnelBear was so quiet about its P2P policy that we had to email tech support to ask.

Windscribe is much more open and transparent. Just point your browser at the company’s Status page and you’ll see its full list of locations, which of them support P2P (most) and which of them don’t (India, Lithuania, Russia, and South Africa, at the time of writing).

Your options are just as clear in the Windscribe apps. Locations where torrents aren’t allowed are marked with the same crossed-out ‘P2P’, but select anything else and you can download whatever and whenever you like.

We don’t like to take a provider’s website promises for granted, even when they’re from a VPN we trust, so we tried downloading torrents from three P2P-approved servers. Everything ran smoothly, and our downloads completed with no connection or performance issues at all.

Factor in Windscribe’s free plan and various anonymous payment options (cryptocurrencies, gift cards), along with its decent performance levels, and the company makes a great torrenting choice.

Windscribe offers clients for most major platforms (Image credit: Windscribe)

Client setup

Tapping the ‘Get Started’ button on the Windscribe site took us to the Download page. The website detected and highlighted the best choice for our laptop – the Windows client and Chrome extension – but there were also links to downloads for Mac, Android, and iOS, extensions for Firefox and Edge. Plus guides to cover setup on routers, Linux, Kodi, Amazon Fire TV, and other devices.

Still not enough? No problem. Paying customers get tools to build custom configuration files for OpenVPN, WireGuard, and IKEv2. These can be used to manually set up connections with third-party apps, routers, and more.

Installing the Windows app is easy. You’re able to create an account just by entering a username and password, which gets you 2GB of data a month. Hand over your email, too, and you get 10GB. Tweet about Windscribe, just once, and you get an excellent 15GB a month forever (not just a one-off.)

To put all that in perspective, TunnelBear’s generosity stops with a 2GB monthly data allowance, and Avira Phantom VPN’s free package gives you a tiny 500MB.

Windscribe’s Windows app features a smartly designed interface (Image credit: Windscribe)

Windows app

Windscribe’s Windows app has real visual panache, with rounded corners and classy flag backgrounds (check the screenshot above) to highlight your current location.

It’s more cluttered than most, with plenty of text, icons, and buttons crammed into a very small space, but there’s also been real thought put into the design and overall it works well. Hover your mouse over an icon, for instance, and a tooltip explains what it’s about.

Windscribe’s full location list shows you countries to begin with, which can be expanded to view available servers (Image credit: Windscribe)

The app displays your current protocol and port, always helpful, but it’s not just a static label. Click it and you can change the protocol and settings to whatever you need. The app even offers to set the protocol as a default for that network. So, if you have to use one protocol to get online at the library and another at the coffee shop, you don’t have to change them manually. Once you’ve connected, allow the app to save your settings for that network, and it’ll automatically connect next time.

Tapping Locations displays the full location list. This opens with a list of countries and you can expand any of these to view its available servers. Each server has a latency indicator to help you find the fastest option. You can also mark countries as Favorites, displaying them at the top of the list for zero-scroll reconnections later.

The Windows client has lots of useful expert-level settings (Image credit: Windscribe)

The interface is very configurable. You can order locations by alphabet, latency, or location. You can even display latency as bars or figures, have the interface docked or a free-floating window, display notifications for events or hide them, and the list goes on.

There are many interesting connectivity features, and these are often as tweakable as the UI.

Windscribe gives you plenty of choices when it comes to VPN protocols (Image credit: Windscribe)

Supported protocols include WireGuard, OpenVPN, IKEv2, Stealth, and WStunnel, connection times were speedy at 1-2 seconds, and the app uses helpful notifications to tell you when you’re connected, and when you’re not.

OpenVPN is securely configured with AES-256-GCM encryption and SHA512 authentication. We couldn’t find any issues with Windscribe’s WireGuard setup, and it’s good to see IKEv2 connections that don’t store your credentials and are configured to use maximum-strength encryption so that they’re not vulnerable to theft.

Split tunneling allows you to decide which traffic is routed through the VPN, and which bypasses it. Unlike most VPNs, this isn’t just for apps, you can set up rules for specific IP addresses and host names, too.

Unusual extras include the ability to set up your device as a Wi-Fi hotspot (if your OS and network adapter supports it), or as a proxy gateway for use by TVs, gaming consoles, or anything else that can work with a proxy server.

One surprising feature is that Windscribe’s desktop clients can import custom OpenVPN and WireGuard configuration files from other providers, and then display those servers alongside their own. If you use another VPN but its app is underpowered, you might be able to use Windscribe’s instead. You don’t need a subscription.

There’s a lot to like here, especially for advanced users who like to tweak every aspect of their VPN. If you can find the settings you need, that is. We got lost several times scrolling up and down, clicking various icons, opening drop-down lists, and generally trying to figure out what’s what.

If you’re happy with the basics, the good news is you won’t even see most of the complexities unless you go looking. As long as you can choose a country from a list and click a Connect button, Windscribe’s apps will work just fine.

Windscribe’s Mac app is an impressive piece of work (Image credit: Windscribe)

Mac app

If you’re a Mac user then you’ll doubtless be very familiar with VPN providers largely ignoring all your needs, saving their best features for Windows and leaving you with the bare minimum. But here’s some good news: Windscribe hates that approach just as much as you do, and its Mac app is as close a match to the Windows edition as anyone could expect.

Take the interface, for instance. There are no pointless variations, no ‘do it this way on Windows, but that way on Mac’ rules to remember. It’s the same stylish look, the same icons, the same main menus, and almost the same options, all in the same order.

Mac VPN apps generally don’t have as many advanced features as Windows, mostly because Apple’s security model doesn’t give them as much control over your device. Seems like no-one told Windscribe this, though, because its Mac app has all the key features we saw on Windows: WireGuard support, the firewall (kill switch), custom DNS settings, MAC spoofing, split tunneling, port and protocol options, network allow-listing, proxy support and more.

If your VPN needs are simple, or you’re just not interested in the low-level tech, all this power might sound intimidating. No need to worry, though: unless you click the Menu icon and go exploring, you’ll never even know these options are there.

Whether you fine-tune every setting or ignore them entirely, the Mac app is generally very easy to use. Tap the On/Off button and you’re speedily connected to your nearest server, then tap again to disconnect, and there’s a list of other locations if you need them.

The app still looks a little more complex than some of the competition, just because it has more icons, buttons and status information. But, generally, it’s a well-designed mix of functionality and ease of use, and a must-see for any Mac user looking for a little extra power.

The mobile apps are good, too (Image credit: Windscribe)

Mobile apps

Windscribe’s Android app follows a similar design to the Windows version, with the same gorgeous background flags, the big On/Off button, and details on your new IP and preferred protocol.

A list of countries (expandable to city level) makes it easy to find the server you want. You can switch to list Favorites and specialist Streaming locations. There’s also a Custom Config list that might enable using other VPN servers with Windscribe’s interface and features.

A comprehensive Preferences screen comes absolutely stuffed with features. The Connection panel alone enables choosing between WireGuard, OpenVPN UDP, TCP, IKEv2 or Stealth, and selecting your preferred port, as well as choosing which apps use the VPN, and which don’t (split tunneling). It also provides integration with Android’s Always-On feature to let you set up a system-wide kill switch, or enable GPS spoofing, define a packet size, allow or block local network traffic, and more.

A Network Whitelisting tool enables automatically connecting to Windscribe whenever untrusted networks are accessed while ignoring others. So, for instance, you can configure the service to automatically connect when you access Wi-Fi on the train, but stay offline when you’re at home or work.

Windscribe’s iOS app earned bonus points immediately for an unusual privacy plus. The app detects your external IP and network but can blur them, ensuring you won’t give away clues to your identity if you share a screenshot.

Although the app can’t match the Windows edition for power, it still has wide protocol support, kill switch, and ad, malware, and content blocking. That’s already outperforming most iOS apps, but it’s Windscribe’s more unusual options that really help it stand out from the crowd. Most VPN apps can’t access servers from another provider, for instance, or allow you to set a preferred protocol depending on the network you connect to.

Windscribe even offers browser extensions for most popular web browsers (Image credit: Windscribe)

Browser extensions

Windscribe’s Chrome, Edge, and Firefox extensions provide a quick and easy way to connect to the VPN from your browser. This has its limitations – they’re simple proxies and only protect your browser traffic – but if you only need the VPN for basic browsing tasks, they’re your most convenient and straightforward option.

The extensions make an immediate positive impression, courtesy of a stylish interface along the lines of the desktop and mobile apps. The basic operations work much as you’d expect. Autopilot mode enables connecting to the best location with a click, you’re able to choose countries or individual cities from a list, and set your most commonly used cities as Favorites.

There are some nifty privacy features with the extensions (Image credit: Windscribe)

Need more? The extension can block WebRTC leaks, fake your GPS location, time zone, and language to match your chosen Windscribe server, keep switching your browser user agent to make you more difficult to track, stop websites begging you to let them show notifications, and even delete first or third-party cookies when you close the tab.

The browser extensions support Windscribe’s ad and malware-blocking tool ROBERT, even for free users. Known malicious and phishing sites, bandwidth-sapping ads, trackers, social media widgets, and other nasties can all be exterminated in a click or two.

The sheer volume of options can make the extensions look complicated but Windscribe does a lot to help. A small start-up tutorial explains which buttons do what, and a useful additional introduction is that the many settings each have a sentence or two describing what they’re all about.

Put it all together and this is a very capable extension that delivers far more than you’ll get with other VPN providers, and even many standalone Chrome privacy extensions. Don’t just take our word for it – the excellent 4.7 rating on the Chrome store suggests most users agree.

Windscribe has a knowledgebase but it’s rather lacking (Image credit: Windscribe)

Support

If you have any technical troubles, Windscribe’s support site is a good place to begin looking for answers. Resources start with collections of articles on common topics, including ‘getting started’ guides, technical troubleshooting, billing questions, and some general FAQs.

These tutorials don’t always have the range and depth we’d like, but they more than cover the basics. The Android setup guide doesn’t just say ‘go install the app at Google Play’, for instance, as we often see with lesser providers. It quickly explains what a VPN is for, gives a link to the Play Store, an alternative direct APK download if you need it, and covers the setup and usage basics, complete with helpful screenshots.

If your problem isn’t covered by the website, you can always contact support directly via a ticket system (there’s no live chat). In our experience, replies can sometimes take around a day to arrive. When they do, they’re friendly, accurate, and complete. We think they’re generally well worth the wait.

Windscribe review: Final verdict

Windscribe is a likable VPN, with good-looking and powerful apps, expert-level features, and one of the most generous free VPN plans around. The array of advanced options and settings means this probably isn’t the best choice for newcomers or anyone only looking for the VPN basics. If you’re unsure about Winscribe, there’s an easy and risk-free way to find out for sure. Just install the free version and see how it works for you.

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August 26, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Norton VPN review: serious upgrades but not without its limits

by admin August 20, 2025

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Norton has long been a household name for antivirus software, yet despite launching its first VPN, Norton WiFi Privacy, in 2017, it’s never achieved the same pedigree status in the space. Its original iteration, Norton Secure VPN, offered little to shout about, though a recent revamp seems to have set the service on a much more promising path.

Although not yet rivaling the likes of NordVPN, Norton VPN offers surprisingly quick speeds, a super-friendly interface, and a great array of features you’d expect from a top VPN service. While some gaps in the service remain, it’s clear the Norton VPN team is striving to bring the same security pedigree seen on its antivirus software to its VPN, and pretty quickly, too.

We’ve put this new and improved service to the test. Both in day-to-day scenarios and more rigorous, proprietary tests, we’ve uncovered where the service has made great strides, and where it should look next to ensure it reaches the heights its aiming for, all to help you decide whether Norton VPN is the choice for you.

Norton Secure VPN subscription options:

Norton Secure VPN for $29.99 per year

Features

Norton VPN’s recent revamp has seen a host of expectable but mightily important features arrive across several platforms. Plus, it continues to improve its fundamentals – even if some areas still have some work to do.

As far as VPN protocols go, Norton offers OpenVPN, WireGuard, IPSec, and Mimic, its proprietary protocol designed for obfuscation. iOS and Mac users are limited to only IPSec and Mimic, which is disappointing given OpenVPN and WireGuard’s improved capabilities – although IPSec can be fast, WireGuard offers a faster, less device-intensive experience. Luckily, wider support for these protocols is said to be in the works, though an exact release date is unknown.

Users on iOS and macOS have a limited protocol choice, with only IPSec and Mimic available (Image credit: Future)

As for extra features built into Norton VPN, there aren’t any particularly unique choices, though each is beneficial and often seen among top VPNs. Wi-Fi detection allows you to auto-connect to the VPN when connecting to public Wi-Fi. On macOS, it also auto-connects on “compromised networks”. It’s unclear how Norton decides if a network is compromised, but all wireless networks are considered public by default.

Norton also offers ad and tracker blocking. Tracking is blocked at a DNS level to reduce the risk of your data being used for targeted ads while you browse online, and can be turned on by simply toggling the option. Although the tracker appeared to work, its ‘Trackers Blocked’ counter seems to run on a delay, rather than in real time, so while we know 50 trackers were blocked across a period of our testing time, we don’t have any indication of when each was blocked.

Ad blocking is undertaken by a browser extension. Although this means another download and sign-in process, we did find the ad blocker to be effective – even if not quite as effective as dedicated ad-blocker services. Scoring 77% in our tests, it is definitely worth turning on should you use Norton VPN, though don’t expect a flawless display. NordVPN and Surfshark only achieved 84% in our latest tests, and ExpressVPN only achieved 90%, so there isn’t far for Norton VPN to go before leading VPNs in this field.

A key area of improvement has been in Norton VPN’s security-focused features. Firstly, Norton VPN offers a simple-to-use kill switch, ensuring your internet traffic stops immediately when you lose connection to the VPN, preventing you from broadcasting unencrypted traffic over public Wi-Fi networks. If you’d prefer, you can choose whether you’d like to keep your access to local devices over a LAN even when the kill switch is active. The kill switch isn’t enabled by default and requires you to dig through a few menus to set it up, but if you’re on macOS, Norton gives you an easy set of guidelines to follow so you can quickly set it up.

The new Norton VPN app houses all of its improved features in an easy-to-use design resemblant of other Norton products (Image credit: Future)

Outside the kill switch, Norton VPN has added an array of features. In April 2025 alone, Norton VPN gained Double VPN, IP Rotation, Pause VPN capabilities, and the ad-blocking browser extension mentioned above.

Double VPN is available across 8 servers. While your connection options are fixed, for example, USA via Canada, they are bi-directional, and give you access to Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While it’s not completely customizable, like Surfshark’s Nexus technology allows, its 8 locations put it only two behind NordVPN, which offers 10.

IP rotation also features, something not even NordVPN can say. Only Surfshark also offers IP rotation among the best VPNs. While Norton’s offering isn’t quite as expansive, it does offer servers in the US, Japan, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Germany to use. What’s more, Norton’s offering is much simpler to access, and connects in almost no time at all, no matter the server you pick. In our testing, our IP seemed to change every few seconds, meaning it should be good enough to give you a new IP for every website you visit.

Pause VPN is the final feature worth mentioning. Overlooked by the likes of PIA and ExpressVPN, pause VPN gives you the choice to temporarily end your VPN connection for a set time, with the VPN reactivating once the time ends. This is a great tool should you briefly wish to search for something or use an app outside of the connection without risking forgetting to turn your VPN back on. Norton VPN’s implementation is extremely simple to use, and is easily accessed, though it’d be great to see a minimum pause time shorter than 15 minutes as, frankly, most times when we’ve needed it we’ve been finished in five minutes rather comfortably.

Server Network

Norton VPN’s server network isn’t up there with the very best VPNs quite yet, but it’s seen massive expansion in recent months. Since our last review, Norton VPN has expanded from servers in 29 countries to servers in 65, with 104 total locations. For comparison, Norton VPN now has more locations than Mullvad, which offers 89, and only a few less than Windscribe, which offers 112.

What’s good is the spread Norton VPN offers. 25 locations in the US are great for streaming enthusiasts, plus 6 countries in South America and 5 countries in Africa is superb given the lack of coverage these areas traditionally recieve. Asian coverage is weaker, with only 12 countries, though the most popular locations are included among these.

Given Norton VPN’s rate of increase, it wouldn’t surprise me if its country spread increased further over the coming months. If so, it’d be good to see the service fill the various gaps left in Asia and, since it already has a strong presence in South America and Africa, bulk out its presence in Europe and the US to account for key sites and services located in currently omitted regions.

Norton VPN’s global coverage is especially impressive in South America and Africa, though its Asian coverage could be better (Image credit: Future)

Apps

Norton’s VPN app is available for Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. It’s also available on Apple TV and Android-based smart TVs. For Android TVs, you need version 10 or later, whereas Apple tvOS requires version 17 or later.

Notably, there’s no Fire TV or Linux support, so if you need to cover your Ubuntu or Linux Mint install, Norton won’t cut it quite yet – there’s not even support for a command-line VPN. Norton does not offer configuration files for OpenVPN or WireGuard either, so there’s no way to use Norton with an unsupported device.

It’s worth mentioning that Norton VPN’s apps have several instances of feature disparity. As highlighted already, iOS and macOS users are already limited in protocol choice, but these platforms also lack split tunneling and some auto-connect functionality. The lack of protocol choice is especially disappointing in this instance, given that other providers have offered OpenVPN and WireGuard on these platforms for a while now.

Otherwise, there’s nothing really to dislike about Norton VPN’s apps on any platform. They’re simple to look at, easy to navigate, and look so unapologetically Norton-like that anyone new to VPNs who’s familiar with its antivirus tools will quickly gain the sense of security often felt when using other Norton tools.

Ease of use

Norton VPN is a breeze to install, likely thanks to the years of experience Norton has with its other products in making complex systems simple to introduce.

Once you’re in, the experience is impressively simple, though at the expense of a couple of handy extra tools. The menus aren’t overcomplicated with features, settings, and data – though the option to set favorites or see the best servers at any time would be nice – the settings are all explained in simple enough terms for beginners, and there’s easy access to any extra tools you might have in your plan, or guides you may need to help set up your VPN connection how you’d like it.

In true Norton fashion, the experience you have is as close to identical as possible across any device you might have, too. This makes Norton VPN a superb choice should you be new to VPNs and looking for easy, quick access to the settings you need, without worrying that your usual server, connection type, or setting may be hiding somewhere new.

Even Norton VPN’s Advanced Servers, meaning its P2P-optimized, double VPN, and IP rotation optimized servers, are easily accessed. With dropdown menus giving you the information you need to understand where you’re connecting to, and any additional routing your connection might take.

Speed and performance

Norton’s speeds are its biggest area of improvement since our last round of testing. Starting with the headlines, we recorded an average speed of 909Mbps download using WireGuard from our testing server in the UK, rivalling the likes of NordVPN, ExpressVPN and Proton VPN as a result.

Our connection to the US wasn’t quite as impressive, as we only recorded speeds of 463Mbps, which is around the middle of the pack. It’s still more than enough to watch multiple 4K streams simultaneously, but it’s a pretty big dropoff compared to our initial UK tests.

How we perform speed tests

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

We test from two different virtual PCs, one in the UK and one in the US. We’re expecting big things out of NordVPN, as both of these servers have a 1 Gbs connection. You can find out more in our VPN testing methodology.

As for OpenVPN performance, Norton didn’t do as well. Our average speeds were around 260-275Mbps, whether connecting to the UK or US, which is also more than enough for most internet activities, but pales in comparison to the speeds we’ve seen elsewhere.

Our latency recordings were about what we’d expect for a top-tier VPN connecting to UK servers. In Norton’s case, 3.5ms. Most of the providers we’ve tested clock in around the 2-5ms mark, which is barely perceivable. One or two milliseconds’ difference won’t make a difference to most internet apps or online gaming sessions.

As for the US connection, Norton tops our list in terms of low latency at 66.6ms, just barely beating out NordVPN to take the top spot. If you’re gaming or running a video call and want your connection to be as responsive as possible while connected to the US, Norton is the ideal solution.

Unblocking

We’ve tested Norton VPN works with them with loads of your favorite streaming services and it worked with them all! Netflix is cracking down on VPNs, but we were able to watch Netflix US, UK, Australia, Canada, and Japan all from our local testing centers. The same goes for Amazon Prime and Disney Plus, however, we weren’t able to access US Youtube.

As for regional providers, it’s a mixed bag but mostly positive results. We were able to access BBC iPlayer, ITV, Channel 4, 7Plus, and 9Now, but TVNZ+ intermittently failed, and we couldn’t access 10Play at all.

Norton VPN does have P2P capabilities, and our testing showed it works reasonably well. It’s worth mentioning that Norton doesn’t support port forwarding, which means that you won’t get incoming requests for sharing when torrenting, limiting your connectivity.

Norton only has two P2P servers, one in the Netherlands and one in Dallas. It’s a far cry away from the full P2P connectivity of a provider like PIA, but even Avast’s competing SecureLine VPN offers eight P2P servers.

On the plus side, Norton does allow you to connect automatically when you boot up a supported P2P app, but you’ll have to enable this option from the settings menu first.

Privacy and security

Norton is clearly taking the necessary steps to ensuring its VPN is secure and private. Its no-logs policy is extensive yet clear, outlining the data collected by the VPN app at any instance, your browsing data is never stored on their servers, including DNS requests, which are instead served by a private DNS server run by Norton, preventing ISP spying, and it’s had its no-logs policy audited to ensure trust.

In August 2024, VerSprite audited Norton’s policy, noting two issues that could result in sensitive user information being disclosed. Norton took the necessary steps to address these issues, and once remedied, VerSprite agreed the no logs policy was both accurate and implemented correctly.

However, Norton does collect some anonymized information from the VPN client. This includes connection timestamps, platform details such as OS and timezone, and crash logs. They also aggregate overall data transmission for network planning. So, if you’re extremely concerned about your privacy, Norton might collect slightly too much information for comfort. As it stands, Norton’s acceptable for day to day browsing, but you might consider Proton VPN instead if you need rock-solid privacy guarantees.

Norton is clearly taking the necessary steps to ensuring its VPN is secure and private.”

Rob Dunne – VPN Editor, TechRadar

Something that may ease some privacy concerns would be if Norton VPN implemented RAM-only servers. These servers wipe when rebooted, meaning you cannot store any data on them, thus eradicating the risk of any user data being available should a data request be submitted by authorities. Not having RAM-only servers isn’t an issue as such, though it adds a layer of trust for users, and is becoming increasingly common among top VPNs.

Given its privacy focus, we wanted to know more about Norton VPN’s proprietary Mimic protocol. In addition to offering obfuscation, Mimic is powered by TLS 1.3 ciphers (AES-256 and ChaCha20), as well as CRYSTAL-Kyber-512 for post-quantum cryptography. It’s good to hear that Norton is already thinking ahead when it comes to quantum security, which puts them significantly in front of most of the VPN industry.

Meanwhile, Norton’s standard VPN protocols, OpenVPN and WireGuard, use AES-256-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption, respectively. These are considered the top encryption methods used by all of the best VPNs, a strong demonstration, therefore, of Norton’s intent to found its service on strong privacy staples.

Customer Support

Norton’s customer support staff are very helpful. There’s a community forum where you can post issues you’re having with Norton VPN, where other members and support staff can pitch in with their own advice. From the interactions we’ve had, they’re very knowledgeable and quite prompt in returning with information.

However, the support materials on the site are a different matter. When you search for help topics on Norton’s website, you’re immediately given an AI prompt for your search, which looks like it’s powered by Gemini. It’s not totally useful when you’re trying to find specific help on a topic, and you have to scroll past it to get to the actual results.

As for the knowledge base, it’s not particularly in-depth – most of the articles consist of bullet point lists and some are thinly-disguised marketing material. If you want help with Norton, we’d stick to contacting their customer support directly through the forum or over the phone. There’s also a 24/7 helpdesk upgrade if you need around-the-clock customer service.

Pricing and plans

Norton offers three tiers of pricing. The standard VPN package starts at $39.99 for the first year, which works out at roughly $3.33 per month. After the introductory offer is over, it renews at $79.99 per year. That makes Norton one of the cheapest VPNs we’ve see.

However, there’s one major limitation: you’re only allowed five device connections (or worse, only one if you’re in some regions including the UK), significantly under the 8-10 you’ll find from most other providers. Surfshark and PIA both go even further, offering unlimited device connections on their cheapest subscription plans. It should also be clarified that Norton’s device limit isn’t a traditional simultaneous connections limit. Instead, Norton’s five device limit refers to the number of devices with the VPN installed. Should you wish to install on a sixth device, you’d instead be asked to remove one of the previous five devices, rather than merely disconnecting from the VPN.

Upgrading your subscription costs an extra $10 per year, making your subscription cost $4.17 per month initially and $109.99 every year after that. There’s no meaningful change to the VPN, but you get extra features from Norton’s security suite, including virus protection, password management, dark-web scanning, 10GB encrypted cloud storage, and AI-powered scam detection.

The Ultimate subscription package will set you back an extra $20 per year, making it $5 per month initially and $129.99 per year after the first. In addition to extra family-safety features for monitoring your child’s devices, the device count is bumped up to 10, so you can take full advantage of Norton’s security features on most of your household’s devices, and you get 50GB of secure storage (or 150GB should you activate auto-renewal).

To its credit, Norton offers an above-average 60-day money-back guarantee and a true 7-day free trial when you sign up. We love 7-day free trials as an entry point into VPNs as they offer a ‘try before you buy’ solution, without some of the hassles caused by a 30-day money-back guarantee. Seeing Norton VPN be one of the first to offer this, then, puts it in good stead to be among the best VPNs for beginners in the future.

Switching from its current install-based device limit also seems like an easy win Norton VPN could take advantage of. While increasing the device limit with more premium plans does help this slightly, removing the confusing of registering and removing devices is an easy way to make the service more accessible to newer users and takes away the sting of the small device limit on the standard plan.

Should you use Norton VPN?

Norton VPN is a rapidly improving VPN. In the space of a few months, it’s brought in a spread of features you’d expect to see in a top VPN, alongside some features some top VPNs don’t think to include. Its performance has risen to a point where it can rival top VPNs like Surfshark and NordVPN, it has apps simple enough for anyone to use, and it brings Norton-pedigree security to make anyone trust its privacy guarantees.

That said, there are several areas it still needs to address. Primarily, sorting the device install limit will add to its already high-value package by reducing connection roadblocks for users. Outside of this, expanding the feature pool, adding Linux and Fire TV support, and eradicating the feature disparities for macOS and iOS users will quickly put Norton VPN among the best value VPNs available if done right.

For many, now might not be the right time to pick up Norton VPN due to any one of the limitations mentioned. That said, it’d be wise to keep an eye on Norton VPN over the coming year or so, as, from what we’ve seen already in 2025, it looks as though the provider could quickly become a high-value, high-security VPN from a name renowned for its security capabilities.

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August 20, 2025 0 comments

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