Surfshark

Founded in 2018, Surfshark is one of the youngest players in the VPN market. But despite its youth, it has performed very well in speed, privacy and security tests. It uses advanced technologies such as AES-256 encryption, OpenVPN and IKEv2. Surfshark does not log and has a kill switch to keep your data safe if your connection is dropped.

Split-tunneling, VPN chaining, ad blocking, and link blocking are supported on most servers. Oh, and did we mention 1040+ servers in 61 countries? It’s a great choice for online gaming and video conferencing. Unlike other VPNs that limit the number of devices, you can connect an unlimited number of devices to Surfshark as part of one subscription! Anyone looking for a budget-friendly, fast, reliable and long-lasting VPN service is hard to pass up with Surfshark!

Privacy / anonymity

Surfshark is also good on the security front. It has everything you need: protection against DNS leaks, an automatic kill switch, powerful encryption and even its own version of the Double VPN called MultiHop with an extra level of protection. Surfshark has a ton of additional features. One, called HackLock, instantly alerts you to data leaks; another, CleanWeb, blocks surveillance, phishing and infection attempts.

If you’re tired of endless online ads, you’ll be happy to know about a special feature that hides your browsing history. This means that advertisers won’t be able to find out your preferences and show you tailored ads. And yes, Surfshark works in China, albeit with some manual adjustments. But it’s better than many other services that don’t work at all.

Many people worry about whether a particular VPN provider keeps logs, or activity records. Surfshark only stores user account information: email address, password and payment details. But it does not collect any data about sessions, IP address, channel speed, history of visited pages, packet contents and connection times. The service is based in the British Virgin Islands, that is, outside the so-called Five Eyes Alliance. The only thing that may bother some people is the collection of third-party advertiser IDs for the purpose of advertising, but this can be turned off in the app’s settings.

Speed and reliability

When encryption is strong, there is usually a loss of speed. It can be either barely noticeable or significant, and in the second case, a VPN is of little use. After all, who needs a VPN that doesn’t allow you to play games or surf the Internet in comfort? Fortunately, Surfshark performed very well in all our tests. With an initial speed of 40.70 Mbps through the VPN, the speed was 25.40 Mbps through the US server and 20.07 through the UK server. The connection was stable and sufficient even for massive content such as games and video conferencing. Even through the server in Japan, the connection was not bad at 13.29 Mbps. This is an excellent result, with no glitches or drops in speed.

Platforms and devices

We’ve noted more than once that Surfshark compares favourably with its competitors by supporting an unlimited number of devices on a single subscription. There are secure extensions for Chrome and Firefox. The service is compatible with Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. Surfshark can even be used on Playstation, Xbox, Linux and other gaming consoles – instructions for setting up are on the website.

Server locations

Although Surfshark has been around since 2018, it has managed to build an impressive server network in such a short period of time. It now has more than 1,040 servers in more than 61 countries.

Support

Customer service at Surfshark is top-notch. You can chat 24 hours a day, seven days a week right on the website! When we asked them a question, we didn’t have to wait long for an answer: In less than a minute, a company representative answered the query in a professional and courteous manner. In addition to chat, the support page also has a knowledge base, various instructions and answers to questions.

Prices

Surfshark currently has 3 plans: However, it’s best to pay for 2 years because in this case the cost per month is only €2.27. This makes Surfshark one of the most affordable VPN services on the market. All plans have a 30-day money-back guarantee.

1. 1. Monthly plan: €11.81 per month
   2. Annual plan: €3.64 per month – Save 69%
   3. Two-year plan: $54.60 (€2.27 per month) – Save 82%  ➦ Surfshark

Additionally, Surfshark VPN offers CleanWeb (ad and malware blocker), Whitelister (allows certain applications or websites to ignore the VPN), Kill Switch, Multihop (connect to several countries at once), NoBorders (avoid restrictions).

Conclusion

Surfshark is a secure and stable VPN. It provides high performance servers to maintain high connection speeds even when connecting via remote locations. The bandwidth is sufficient for watching videos in high quality. No log storage and an open customer relationship policy make it a great choice for people who are concerned about privacy and freedom on the internet