The Best VPNs with Static IP Addresses

You can easily purchase a dedicated IP address within your Surfshark client area, and then activate it in the app.

Unlike PIA, anonymous setup is optional. You need to manually select ‘Make me anonymous’ in your client area to disassociate the dedicated IP with your account.

You must log into your Surfshark account to make your dedicated IP anonymous.

Quite frankly this anonymity setting should be enabled by default. Make sure you make your dedicated IP anonymous, otherwise your internet activity will be directly linked to your Surfshark account.

Surfshark also provides configuration files for manual setup. We found this particularly useful for using our dedicated IPs on our Linksys router.

We recorded an average download speed of 88Mbps while connected to Surfshark’s New York dedicated IP from overseas.

This is a speed reduction of just 12%, from our 100Mbps standard internet line, and is more than fast enough for most web activity.

These fast speeds served us particularly well while we tested Surfshark’s dedicated IPs geo-unblocking capabilities.

Just like its standard dynamic IP addresses, Surfshark’s dedicated IP addresses bypassed most streaming geo-restrictions.

We used Surfshark’s UK dedicated IP to stream BBC iPlayer.

Surfshark’s dedicated IP is only available as a monthly subscription of $3.75 per month.

Though much cheaper than PIA’s ($5.00 per month), it would be great to have the option of a long-term subscription with a discount, just like a typical VPN plan.

Once purchased, Surfshark’s dedicated IP is combined with your standard VPN subscription. As such, you can’t cancel your dedicated IP until your VPN subscription expires which can sometimes last multiple years.

Surfshark should adopt PIA’s approach, where the dedicated IP subscription is separate to the VPN plan and therefore can be managed separately.

When it comes to the shared static IPs, the major problem is that every Surfshark subscriber has access to them.

This means thousands of users will be potentially using the same exact IP address, largely negating the benefits of using a static IP, aside from hosting game servers.

Your browsing activity will still trigger CAPTCHAs; whitelisting your IP for remote networks or IoT devices will also leave them accessible to other Surfshark users; and streaming services will just as easily recognize your traffic as coming from a VPN.

Surfshark’s static IP was immediately flagged as a VPN connection.

PIA generates an activation key for its dedicated IP feature that only you can access, ensuring total anonymity.

Put simply, it is impossible to link your purchased dedicated IP with your VPN account.

PIA’s dedicated IP address worked without any issues.

This feature costs an additional $5.00 per month on top of your standard VPN subscription, if purchased monthly, or $2.50 per month on a 3-year plan.

Though affordable, we discovered that you can only have one dedicated IP address active at a time. As such, you’ll have to wait for your dedicated IP subscription to expire before you can purchase a new IP.

What this means is that if you want to have more than one dedicated IP with PIA, you’ll have to create more than one account. It’s far from ideal and PIA should fix this.

You can use Private Internet Access to connect to a dedicated IP address in 10 country-based server locations:

• Australia
• Belgium
• Canada
• Germany
• Japan
• Singapore
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• UK
• USA

This is slightly less than the 11 country locations offered by Surfshark, but it still offers good coverage of Europe, the US, and Asia.

There are also city-level choices in multiple country locations, like Australia and Canada.

While connected to a dedicated IP in New York, we recorded an average download speed of 85Mbps from overseas.

This is a good speed result, although its surprisingly slower than Surfshark, which tends to be a slower VPN than PIA across most VPN connections.

Nevertheless, speeds were fast enough for smooth streaming in high definition and its dedicated IP address in the US successfully unblocked services like Disney+ and Max from overseas.

We successfully unblocked Max with PIA’s dedicated US IP.

Windscribe’s streaming success is largely attributed to its use of residential IP addresses.

This disguises your internet traffic, as residential IPs are taken from a pool of IP addresses that have been reserved for households.

Normally, streaming services detect VPNs by maintaining a database of known IP addresses from VPN servers, as well as monitoring accounts that log in from multiple geo-locations.

A residential IP bypasses both detection methods by appearing as a household IP address and retaining the same virtual location.

Windscribe’s residential VPN IP wasn’t detected by an IP lookup tool.

By using Windscribe’s residential IP address in Chicago (associated with AT&T), we were able to unblock US Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and Hulu.

And its Toronto residential IP unblocked the likes of DAZN Canada and fubo without issue.

You can purchase a shared static IP address from seven different countries: the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada, and Switzerland.

Windscribe is not without its drawbacks, though. It doesn’t provide dedicated IP addresses, citing ‘privacy reasons’ as the reason for their omission.

Considering PIA and CyberGhost’s token-based solution, Windscribe should really revisit its stance and start offering anonymous dedicated IP addresses.

Also because the residential IPs it maintains aren’t the fastest. We experienced a 33% internet speed loss when using the Chicago and Toronto residential IPs.

Not to mention that each residential IP sets you back $8.00 per month, which is considerably higher than a Surfshark or PIA dedicated IP.