CyberGhost Review

According to CyberGhost’s privacy policy, the VPN only logs anonymous connection data for statistical purposes.

This anonymous connection data is aggregated, anonymized, and cannot be traced back to you.

Many popular VPNs collect aggregated connection logs, and CyberGhost is no different. While the service is very private, if you insist upon a 100% no-logs VPN then read our Private Internet Access review.

Nevertheless, CyberGhost VPN does not keep logs of user web activity. It won’t log your real IP address, the servers you used, or your web browsing history.

CyberGhost’s Transparency Reports

CyberGhost publishes a quarterly transparency report listing the number of legal requests and DMCA complaints it receives. This used to be annual, which is already a rarity in the VPN industry, but in 2019 it increased the frequency.

The company also commissioned an independent audit on its security practices in 2012. The security audit came back clean.

Audits can never be 100% exhaustive, but we’re still reassured by the results.

We’ve been wanting to see an independent audit of CyberGhost’s logging practices since we began reviewing and monitoring the service, so we were pleased when, in 2022, CyberGhost commissioned an audit of its logging practices by Deloitte. If you’re a CyberGhost subscriber you can even read the whole thing in full. It confirmed:

Server configurations align with internal privacy policies and are not designed to identify users or pinpoint their activities

We applaud this level of transparency. However, CyberGhost also states:

Excerpts from the report cannot be shared with the audience, in order to ensure none of the audit results are taken out of context and misunderstood.

In the effort for 100% transparency, redactions like these worry us. But we remain convinced that CyberGhost is very private.

CyberGhost Is Based in Romania

Cyberghost is incorporated as CyberGhost S.A. in Bucharest, Romania.

Romania is in the EU, but it’s the only member state to have successfully said “no” to the EU’s aggressive Data Retention Directive that commits to the widespread collection of personal data.

Screenshot of the Constitutional Court of Romania’s (CCR) decision

While Romanian authorities may still collect citizens’ online data, this is under specific and legitimate circumstances, as opposed to the indiscriminate collection of data we see in other member states.

For added peace of mind, CyberGhost doesn’t collect personal web logs therefore there is no internet data to be handed over anyway.

Crossrider Controversy

CyberGhost was released in 2011 as a free VPN by German tech entrepreneur Robert Knapp. In 2017, Crossrider Group acquired the VPN company.

Crossrider operated mobile ad platforms and a browser extension development platform. The latter allowed developers to create cross-browser add-ons and monetize them through ad injection techniques.

One of these techniques bundles a ‘Crossrider’ adware PUP (potentially unwanted program) with other software. Once installed, the PUP would serve unwanted advertisements via an internet user’s web browser(s).

Ad injection is not only intrusive but, if misused, potentially unsafe. Some developers may have in fact abused Crossriders’ capabilities for malicious purposes.

Below is a screenshot from a Malwarebytes report into Crossrider PUPs:

Screenshot taken from Malwarebytes’ investigation into Crossrider

Kape’s Commitment to Privacy

Crossrider shut its ad platforms in 2016, prior to acquiring CyberGhost. The company then re-branded to Kape Technologies in 2018.

Since 2017, the company has focused on global privacy and security activities. After CyberGhost, Kape also acquired popular VPN services Private Internet Access and ExpressVPN.

We feel that Kape has made a dedicated effort to user privacy and have seen no real reason for you to not trust CyberGhost.

As you can see, CyberGhost is a very good VPN for streaming. It works to unblock every streaming site we tested it with.

The CyberGhost apps clearly list dedicated servers for specific content platforms. These streaming servers regularly change IP address to bypass the blocks imposed by websites like Netflix.

There are even optimized streaming servers for streaming sites in Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, and Poland.

CyberGhost’s dedicated streaming servers.

CyberGhost Streams 10 Netflix regions

In our testing, CyberGhost was able to consistently unblock 10 Netflix libraries. This is well above-average.

However, CyberGhost is less effective than VPNs such as Windscribe and ExpressVPN, which unblock 32 and 18 Netflix regions, respectively.

CyberGhost unblocks 10 Netflix libraries.

Excellent for UK Streaming

CyberGhost’s UK servers now work reliably with BBC iPlayer and easily access Channel 4 and ITVX from abroad, too. If you’re outside the UK, that means you can use CyberGhost to watch UK TV and lots of sport events 100% for free.

BBC iPlayer’s VPN ban is notoriously hard to beat, and not many VPNs can bypass BBC iPlayer’s geo-blocks.

To test CyberGhost’s speeds, we connected to CyberGhost servers in six different continents and measured our upload and download speeds before and after. We use a 100Mbps internet connection, similar to what might be your baseline speed at home.

Here’s a table showing CyberGhost’s speed test results when connected to a variety of servers around the world:

The local download speed loss of 6% is very good, and similar to other speedy rival VPNs like ExpressVPN and IPVanish.

You can compare CyberGhost’s speed performance to other top-tier VPNs in the bar chart below:

As you can see, CyberGhost VPN is fast on local and long-distance connections, but it’s still lagging behind competitors, especially on long-distance speeds. Based on its overall speed performance, CyberGhost is currently ranked 31st in our speed rankings.

Good Ping Times Won’t Affect Online Gaming

CyberGhost’s ping times, at least when connected to a nearby server, are fine for lag-free online gaming.

CyberGhost keeps ping speeds low while connected to nearby servers – low enough to not impact twitchy shooters like CS:GO.

You’ll always have a certain amount of delay when communicating with an online game’s servers, and using a VPN will almost always add to it.

CyberGhost averaged a ping of just 6ms when connected to a server in the same city as us – anything under 50ms or so will be unnoticeable, even if you’re playing fast-paced games like CS:GO or Fortnite.

CyberGhost masks your IP address effectively using popular and reliable VPN protocols, and protects your internet traffic with 256-bit encryption.

Your IP address is never exposed thanks to a working kill switch, as well as IP and DNS leak protection. However, our kill switch testing revealed that CyberGhost’s kill switch does not protect your true IP address when you change servers.

Make sure that you aren’t in the middle of transferring any sensitive data when switching between servers.

CyberGhost Uses Secure VPN Protocols

CyberGhost’s apps use WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols. For OpenVPN, you also have a choice between TCP and UDP connections.

CyberGhost has its most diverse selection of protocols on Windows.

CyberGhost Doesn’t Leak IP or DNS Data

We also tested CyberGhost’s apps for IP and DNS data leaks. We used our VPN leak test tool to confirm CyberGhost does not leak IP, WebRTC, or DNS credentials.

CyberGhost did not leak our IP or DNS addresses while connected.

CyberGhost Struggles with IPv6

If the router you plan to use CyberGhost with assigns you an IPv6 address, you may want to consider another VPN.

It’s not uncommon for VPNs to provide unorthodox workarounds for IPv6, such as blocking IPv6 connections altogether, but CyberGhost often simply doesn’t work with it.

We found that the CyberGhost app often won’t even start up properly if you’re on an IPv6 connection. It also doesn’t provide any Smart DNS configurations for IPv6.

This isn’t a deal breaker if you can simply disable your IPv6 connection, but if you can’t it actually makes CyberGhost unusable. CyberGhost has no help addressing this issue, leaving less tech-savvy users with a broken app and no idea why. To find out what type of IP address your device uses, try our IP checker tool.

CyberGhost Android App Permission Analysis

Running CyberGhost’s Android app through the εxodus tool, we verified it mostly contains standard usability trackers. This allows the company to quickly address serious bugs and crashes. It recently reduced the number of trackers present from seven to three, which is a great improvement.

CyberGhost has cut down on its number of trackers and permissions, but it can still do better.

These apps are standard analytics tools used by developers, and we have no issue with them being present – some of the worst VPNs contain upwards of 28.

On the flip side, ExpressVPN and Astrill contain only two and zero trackers, respectively.

Some of the Android permissions we found in CyberGhost’s Android app initially concerned us a little more, though.

It has the ability to access your location via your GPS and network information. This permission is considered ‘dangerous’ or ‘special’ according to Google’s protection levels.

But this isn’t uncommon in VPN apps, and CyberGhost clarified to us that users are asked to grant access to this information only when using the WiFi protection feature. You can refuse and the app will still work.

CyberGhost Browser Extension Securely Encrypts Traffic

We tested both the main CyberGhost app as well as its Chrome browser extension to see if it effectively encrypted our traffic.

The results were all positive: using the Wireshark packet sniffing tool we can see that CyberGhost and its browser extension both work to obfuscate all the sensitive data traveling to and from your device:

The string of nonsense characters you can see here is proof that CyberGhost is correctly encrypting web traffic.

Virus & Malware Checks

Finally, we ran the CyberGhost installer through a malware test to ensure it doesn’t contain viruses.

The software came back completely clean, as you can see from the screenshot below:

CyberGhost contains no malware.

Currently, only Private Internet Access has more servers than CyberGhost.

There are 126 specific locations available across these 100 countries, giving you a great choice of server locations around the world.

CyberGhost’s City-Level Choices

You have a choice of servers in multiple cities in the following countries:

• Australia
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Romania
• Spain
• Switzerland
• UK
• US

The total number of servers in Australia recently increased to 213. The service also added new servers in New Zealand, with 13 in Auckland alone.

CyberGhost’s server list highlights which servers support P2P traffic, as well as which server locations are virtual or physical.

The desktop apps display server loads, which is helpful to find less congested servers. It’s rare to see server loads over 50%, so you’re unlikely to experience slow speeds due to congestion.

Currently only 30 countries use virtual server locations, while the remainder are all physical – that’s pretty impressive on a network as large as CyberGhost’s. In our opinion it’s a necessary price to pay to get such an even spread of servers in countries all around the world, particularly in regions often neglected like the Middle East and Africa.

CyberGhost Has Many Server Types

In addition to typical VPN servers, CyberGhost offers several other server types, optimized for certain activities.

Static IP Addresses

Usually, VPN apps assign dynamic IP addresses. This means you are given a random IP each time you connect.

By contrast, a static IP address server assigns you the same IP address every time you connect. This can improve accessing geo-restricted web content, as traffic patterns will appear more ‘normal.’ But, using the same IP address carries some privacy risks.

Dedicated IP Addresses

To get around the privacy risks of static IP addresses, CyberGhost developed a token-based dedicated IP system.

The system is made for internet users who want to use the same IP address, often to access IP-restricted networks.

Dedicated IPs are also ideal for avoiding possible IP bans, or regular Captchas, due to other users’ behavior.

When you redeem a Dedicated IP token, CyberGhost won’t know its details. Therefore, it can’t link your account to any specific IP address.

These token-based dedicated IPs do cost extra, and are only available in the below locations:

• Canada (Montreal)
• France (Paris)
• Germany (Berlin, Frankfurt)
• UK (London, Manchester)
• US (Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York)

CyberGhost’s token-based dedicated IP feature preserves anonymity better than most rival services.

NoSpy Servers

NoSpy servers are also an optional extra. These servers are owned by CyberGhost in a private data center in Romania.

The VPN’s NoSpy servers use top-shelf hardware, dedicated uplinks and come with bigger bandwidth for better speeds.

Virtual Server Locations

CyberGhost marks 60 of its server locations as “physically located.” These servers are physical machines in the country you’re connecting to.

The remaining are virtual server locations. These servers assign the IP address of a specific country, but are physically located elsewhere.

Virtual server locations can provide access to countries in which it’s difficult to obtain a physical server. However, speeds can be slower if the physical machine is much further away from your real location.

CyberGhost is far more transparent about the nature of its servers than most VPNs.

We want to see CyberGhost to go one step further and disclose where the servers that make the virtual servers locations are physically located, like ExpressVPN does.

CyberGhost Doesn’t Own All Its Servers

While CyberGhost owns some of its servers, it also operates third-party ones, which is common among VPN companies.

A well-maintained self-owned server network can have great privacy benefits, as we cover in our IPVanish review.

Becoming a CyberGhost user is a straightforward process. Signup is simple, with only a few options to choose from – it took us no more than a couple of minutes. From there, you just download the app on the device you’re using and log in.

Here’s an overview of our experience testing CyberGhost on different devices and platforms:

Desktop & Laptop: Windows & Mac

At a glance, CyberGhost’s Windows and macOS apps look virtually identical — it’s the advanced settings where they really differ.

Both versions of the desktop app have two different views: a compact view and a windowed view. The compact view shows you fewer options and is designed for when you just want to quickly connect or disconnect from a server – on Mac it drops down from the menu bar, while on Windows it pops up from the taskbar.

This can be helpful, but there’s a chance that first-time users may not be aware that they’re missing out on the full app – make sure you click the arrow button to expand to the full view.

It’s here that the differences start to appear. CyberGhost lists its different specialized servers in the left-hand menu. On Windows you can see servers for torrenting, streaming, gaming, plus dedicated IP and NoSpy options. On Mac, gaming and NoSpy options are missing.

You can still connect to those servers by browsing to their location manually, but there’s no way for Mac users to know which ones they are without stumbling across them by accident or having the Windows app to cross-reference with.

In the Settings menu, CyberGhost for Windows has toggles for DNS leak prevention and a kill switch that aren’t there on macOS. After some testing, though, we can confirm that those options are simply always enabled on Mac.

It’s disappointing there is no OpenVPN option on macOS. While WireGuard is a worthy replacement, we still like to see the option. To use OpenVPN on Mac, instead of IKEv2 or WireGuard, you have to use external software like Tunnelblick.

You can find full instructions on configuring OpenVPN for Mac here.

Mobile Apps: Android & iOS

CyberGhost’s mobile apps are as simple as it gets. The home screen is just a big connect button with a server selection menu beneath it – you can’t really go wrong here.

The only difference on the home screens are your hidden IP address on Android and the name of your WiFi network on iOS.

Differences between the two platforms only emerge when you dive into the advanced settings.

On iOS, there are options for a dedicated IP, domain fronting, and a connection checker. On Android, there’s additional options for split tunneling, an ad and tracker blocker, and protection against malicious websites.

Both mobile apps give you the option to adjust settings for specific networks. This way the VPN will know how to behave at home, school or work, or on public WiFi.

CyberGhost really feels at its best on mobile. It’s so straightforward to use and works so smoothly, even compared to its desktop version, that we think it’s a great choice if you primarily use a VPN on your smartphone.

Linux App

If you’re a Linux user we cannot recommend CyberGhost. It works just fine – the issue is that it still uses a command line interface (CLI) instead of a graphical user interface (GUI).

That means that you control it entirely through the Terminal using command prompts. It’s so disappointing to see a VPN as popular as CyberGhost still doing this in 2024. It’s not the only big-name VPN still doing it, but rivals like Private Internet Access and Proton VPN offer excellent, fully-featured Linux VPN experiences with no compromises.

Fire TV & Android TV Apps

Plenty of VPNs struggle with their streaming device apps, but we actually really like using CyberGhost on both our Amazon Fire TV Stick and our Chromecast.

CyberGhost looks a lot like its desktop app on Firestick, and there’s a surprising array of options hidden behind that settings cog.

CyberGhost’s Fire TV Stick app.

It’s simple and clearly laid out, and it even has a ‘Streaming’ tab where you can see servers sorted by which streaming service they unblock. They don’t always work, but it’s still a helpful feature a lot of the time.

Smart DNS

Smart DNS allows you to unblock specific streaming services on platforms that don’t have the ability to support VPNs, like your games console or Roku

Being able to select a platform and purpose seems nice at a glance, but the DNS addresses actually remain the same regardless of what option you choose. The Netflix UK address, for example, is the same in all five tabs.

Using CyberGhost’s ‘My Smart DNS’ is as simple as logging into your account, noting down the IP address of the DNS server you need, and then entering it into the DNS server field of your streaming device of choice.

Whether or not the service actually works is another matter – we’ve found CyberGhost’s Smart DNS to be very inconsistent in our testing, but it’s at least very easy to set up.

Browser Extensions

CyberGhost’s browser extension is as simple as it gets: a connect button and four servers to choose between in a dropdown menu. There’s nothing else you can do with it, but that’s fine — for an entirely free offering it’s perfectly acceptable.

In our VPN torrenting tests we measured an average download bitrate of 3.9MiB/s when using CyberGhost, much slower than Astrill VPN’s 10.0MiB/s and IPVanish’s 9.9MiB/s.

We tested CyberGhost’s torrenting capabilities on qBit Torrent.

On the plus side, the VPN’s built-in IP and DNS leak protection worked well in our leak tests.

Finding the right server for torrenting is easy. Click on the “for downloading” tab and you’ll see a list of servers optimized for P2P traffic.

CyberGhost shows you every server’s load percentage. Choose the least congested one to maximize upload and download speeds.

CyberGhost has P2P-optimized servers.

The kill switch is automatically enabled and cannot be deactivated on all platforms, so your true IP address will always be protected in the event of a sudden connection issue.

No P2P in 3 Countries

CyberGhost allows torrenting, and even encourages it, on the vast majority of its server network – but not all of it.

Torrenting with CyberGhost is not allowed while connected to Pakistan, Macau, and China.

The good news here is that after years of not allowing torrenting in Australia and New Zealand, CyberGhost has recently made these servers available for P2P activity, which is a big win for torrenters in Oceania.

No Port Forwarding

For privacy reasons, there is no port forwarding setting on CyberGhost.

VPN port forwarding isn’t essential for torrenting, but it allows for faster seeding (file uploads), and bypasses blocks from your router’s NAT Firewall.

Here’s how quickly we could download a 20GB torrent file while using CyberGhost compared to other top VPNs:

Here’s a quick summary of the key differences between the apps on each platform:

CyberGhost VPN is compatible with Raspberry Pi, Synology NAS, and VU+ Solo 2 routers. There are helpful guides on the CyberGhost website to manually setup the VPN on these routers.

The VPN also works on DD-WRT, TomatoUSB and Merlin-Built routers.

CyberGhost lets you install its VPN apps on up to seven devices at once.

Once you go above the seven device limit, you’ll be asked to remove one device from your account.

Some VPNs will let you sign in to the app on as many devices as you like, but restrict how many can be connected at once. However, CyberGhost’s limit applies to simultaneous installs, not just simultaneous connections.

These extensions are entirely free, hide your IP address, and sometimes work to unblock geo-restricted content.

However, these VPN browser extensions are very limited compared to CyberGhost’s full VPN service.

The add-ons only access servers in four countries: Germany, Netherlands, Romania, and the United States. This is fine for a free add-on, but substantially inferior to the paid apps.

Unlike ExpressVPN, CyberGhost’s browser extensions are proxies, not VPNs. Extensions only protect browser traffic, and not all your device’s web connections.

Here’s a table detailing the differences between CyberGhost’s browser extensions and full VPN applications:

In short, there are better VPNs for Chrome and Firefox addons for you to use.

In addition to built-in IP leak protection, CyberGhost provides an impressive range of advanced security features: a malicious URL filter to block malware, automated HTTPS redirection, an ad and tracker blocker, and split tunneling.

All these privacy and security features are included in the standard CyberGhost subscription.

CyberGhost’s connection features.

The “force HTTPS” function redirects insecure URLs to HTTPS versions. CyberGhost is one of the very few VPNs to offer this feature.

Split tunneling is available on the Windows and Android apps. This lets you pick the applications to put through the VPN connection. It’s currently not available on CyberGhost’s macOS client.

CyberGhost’s mobile and Mac apps are secure, but they have less security features than the Windows client.

This is a nice mixture of common and vital features alongside some that are less popular and more of a bonus. If you’re intimidated as a new user then you can just ignore the majority of them, but if you really like to go hands-on with your VPN and customize the experience then CyberGhost’s array of tools is impressive.

CyberGhost doesn’t work in heavily-censored countries like China. This is partly because it doesn’t come with VPN obfuscation technology.

Obfuscation disguises VPN traffic to make it appear like ‘normal’ browsing to web censors. This helps bypass internet blocks in countries where VPN usage is restricted or illegal.

However, users report that CyberGhost has been working, inconsistently, in Turkey for the past year.

Furthermore, CyberGhost has also added a number of servers in Russia to help beat blocks there, although there are far better VPNs for Russia to choose from.

CyberGhost offers excellent customer service. With 24/7 live chat and email support, and detailed online resources, you’ll find solutions to most issues.

You can access live chat in the bottom-right corner of the CyberGhost website. Type in your problem and related support posts will pop up. If you still can’t resolve your issue, you can always chat with a live agent.

The live agents respond promptly and usually answer question in seconds:

The agents are well-informed and the online resources are available in English, French, German, and Romanian.