Hide.me Review

Hide.me does not log or sell your sensitive data and your internet activity cannot be traced back to you when using it.

We’ve examined Hide.me’s logging policy and can tell you that Hide.me only logs the email address used to register an account — which is encrypted on secure servers — and the amount of monthly data you use.

When connecting to a Hide.me server, it also maintains a “non-persistent log of connection data.” This means it uses a randomly generated username and an internally-assigned IP address. For added transparency, we’d like Hide.me to be more specific about exactly which types of connection data are stored, and for how long.

This is a safe privacy policy. Crucially, Hide.me does not log any identifiable data, such as your real IP address or the websites you visit. If you terminate your Hide.me account, all data associated with your account is deleted from Hide.me’s systems.

To improve its privacy rating further, we’d like to see Hide.me invest in a fully diskless server network so that data is never stored on physical hardware. This would remove the risk of servers being seized and data extracted.

Furthermore, Hide.me’s servers are rented from third-party hosts. Although Hide.me told us it vets its partners carefully, owning its entire network would elevate its privacy credentials further.

It’s rare that a VPN owns its entire server network, but we have high standards in our privacy assessment, and leading VPNs like IPVanish own 100% of their networks.

Independent Audit & Transparency Reports

In 2015, Hide.me was audited by Leon Juranic of DefenseCode Ltd, which verified its safe logging practices. This was the first independent assessment performed to verify a VPN’s logging policy and trustworthiness.

Certificate awarded to Hide.me from DefenseCode LTD.

The conclusion was that Hide.me is “absolutely zero logs.” We don’t agree with this conclusion, since Hide.me logs aggregated data of monthly use and some account information. But we do agree that Hide.me is very private and safe to use.

We’d like to see an updated logging audit, since this was performed many years ago.

Hide.me also led the way in releasing transparency reports about the legal requests it receives and how it responds to them. It’s been publishing these annually since 2012.

For example, in 2023 Hide.me received 42,487 DMCA complaints and 14 law enforcement requests. Hide.me responds to every legal request it receives and follows the law, but it has no data to hand over. This proves its privacy policy claims.

Who Owns Hide.me?

Hide.me is owned by a company called eVenture Ltd, an IT security company incorporated in Malaysia since 2011.

This is great for the company’s privacy credentials, as there are no data retention laws in Malaysia, and it is not part of intrusive surveillance alliances like the Five Eyes.

Hide.me has never experienced a scandal or data breach of any kind, either — its reputation remains trustworthy.

Hide.me Works with Netflix

Hide.me premium works very well with Netflix. It’s capable of accessing 11 Netflix libraries from overseas, including the US Netflix library, without any buffering.

We’ve tested Hide.me on Netflix for a number of years. Our tests show that these are the Netflix regions it reliably unblocks:

• Brazil
• Canada
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• UK
• US

This is a large number of extra Netflix regions, but the highest-rated Netflix VPNs can stream over 30 libraries.

Hide.me Streams HBO Max, Hulu & UK TV

Hide.me works very well for bypassing geo-restrictions on US streaming services. It’s able to unblock HBO Max and Hulu, and it also has servers optimized for streaming in 15 more countries.

Hide.me has streaming servers available in 16 countries.

We tested all of Hide.me’s streaming servers and were impressed by how easily they unblocked each country’s respective streaming sites, such as CTV in Canada, ProSieben in Germany, and Japanese Netflix.

Hide.me works very well and reliably with BBC iPlayer through its optimized server.

The VPN has UK streaming servers for BBC iPlayer, Disney+, and UK Netflix, and all of them work effectively.

Hide.me Free Doesn’t Unblock Any Streaming Sites

The free version of Hide.me is completely different to Hide.me Pro: it was detected by every international streaming site we tested it with, making it one of the worst free VPNs for streaming.

Hide.me Free fails to unblock all streaming sites.

Hide.me Free doesn’t work with US Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, or BBC iPlayer. Combined with a 10GB data limit, we don’t recommend Hide.me Free if you’re looking to stream content regularly. We recommend Windscribe Free instead.

Using a 100Mbps internet connection, we tested the impact Hide.me has on our internet speeds by connecting to servers on all six continents. Here are the full results:

As you can see, Hide.me delivers very fast speeds both locally and internationally and is one of the fastest VPNs on the market.

On local connections, the VPN reduced our connection speeds by just 4%. Connecting to the UK from the US, we picked up speeds of 92Mbps, which is only 8% less than our normal connection despite over 3,500 miles of distance.

To put these results in context, you can use the bar chart below to compare Hide.me’s speeds with other fast VPNs, like NordVPN and Surfshark:

However, when it comes to overall speed performance, Hide.me is still behind IPVanish and Hotspot Shield, scoring 9.8 in our speed tests compared to IPVanish’s score of 9.8 and Hotspot Shield’s near-perfect 10.0 rating.

Low Latency (Ping)

Hide.me’s ping times are very low. We recorded a local latency of 9ms, which is one of the lowest ping scores in our data set. This makes Hide.me a viable VPN for lag-less gaming.

As expected, Hide.me’s latency increases the further away you connect, so you should stick to local server connections to keep ping down.

We tested Hide.me’s speed and ping performance using our own speed test tool.

Hide.me does everything right when it comes to security and features: it uses AES-256 cipher to encrypt your traffic, offers a variety of secure protocols like WireGuard, and goes the extra mile by managing its own DNS servers and offering double VPN servers.

Secure Protocols & Working Kill Switch

Hide.me offers its users the best VPN protocols available. OpenVPN and WireGuard are included on all desktop and mobile apps. SoftEther protocol is also available, but it’s less secure and remain exclusive to Hide.me’s Windows apps.

Other security features include built-in leak protection and a kill switch to protect your real IP address in the event of an unexpected connection drop.

We tested both of these features and the results were all positive: Hide.me does not leak any DNS or WebRTC data and its kill switch works perfectly across all devices.

In previous tests, we used to get frequent warnings that Hide.me’s kill switch cannot be enabled, but Hide.me has listened to our criticism and fixed it.

Hide.me’s kill switch works perfectly to prevent accidental IP leaks.

However, Hide.me’s kill switch has to be manually toggled on via settings. We think it should be turned on by default.

We also tested to see whether Hide.me actually encrypts your data by running it through a packet-sniffing tool called Wireshark. The results showed that Hide.me effectively encrypts incoming and outgoing network packets:

Hide.me encrypts your browsing data, making it indecipherable.

Self-Managed DNS Servers & Custom DNS

Hide.me manages its own DNS servers, which have been designed to retain no information about you.

This is great for privacy as it means Hide.me handles and encrypts your DNS requests, preventing your traffic from going through your ISP’s less private DNS servers.

You can also set up custom DNS and choose to use a random port for every connection, which is sometimes called Dynamic Port or Ephemeral Port. This makes it harder for ISPs to track and block your VPN use.

As you can see above, Hide.me has a good-sized server network. The paid subscription plan gives you access to 1,800 servers in 55 countries. This has dropped from 2,000 servers since we started testing Hide.me, but it’s still a reasonably-sized network.

This lets you get an IP address from most parts of the world, but its emphasis is in Europe and North America, where there are many city-level server options.

There are city-level servers in the Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, US, and UK.

Hide.me has a large server network with city options in eight countries.

Australia is also notably represented, with six city servers available. This makes Hide.me a good choice if you want to get an Australian IP address.

There are servers in Asia, the Middle East, and South America, but it doesn’t compare to the focus on Western nations and these countries are limited to servers in just one city. Hide.me could address this going forward.

Physical Servers Only

Hide.me is lagging behind other VPNs in terms of server quantity in part because it only offers physical servers – which are more expensive to setup and maintain.

This means the server hardware is actually located in the country listed, which results in better speeds if you’re near to them, and a more consistent ability to beat geo-restrictions.

Hide.me Free Offers 7 Server Locations

Hide.me Free only has 7 server locations available.

This is limiting, but it’s not as restrictive as other free VPNs we’ve tested, which are often limited to a few server locations only, such as Atlas VPN Free and Proton VPN Free.

For an even more generous quantity of free servers, Windscribe Free offers 10 locations.

Having tested Hide.me for years, we appreciate the improvements that have been made to its user experience.

In the past, random connection drops and app crashes ruined our experience and lowered its ease of use rating. Today, we never encounter bugs and all of its apps run smoothly.

Each native app has been updated, loads quickly, and follows the same design principles.

Here’s a breakdown of our experience testing Hide.me on its different apps:

Desktop & Laptop (Windows & macOS)

Hide.me used to be identical on macOS and Windows, but the Windows app has since been updated and is now very different. Alongside customizable widgets, Hide.me on Windows has developed an interactive map you can use to change your VPN location. Both of these are absent from the macOS app.

It’s also a lot more advanced, to the extent that newcomers may be intimidated by the array of settings and advanced features. There are more protocols available, including SSTP, which we don’t think is necessary. You can also customize your protocol connections by using custom ports or changing adapter types. We think this is overly-complicated.

On top of this, there is Fallback Configuration, which allows you to select a backup protocol in case your preferred one is inaccessible. While some tech-minded users might appreciate this, we can’t imagine many people are insistent on specific backup protocols and it feels redundant.

Although we like the customizable widgets on Windows, macOS is a more sleek and user-friendly experience. It is still packed with technical features, but the overall aesthetic is less intimidating.

Hide.me macOS app main screen

On both apps, it’s easy to switch between Hide.me servers by heading to the ‘Locations’ tab. You can choose streaming-optimized servers or multihop, add specific servers to a favorite list, or select a server as your default connection. Either way, we’d like to see more consistency between app experiences.

Furthermore, less obvious features like Stealth Guard and split tunneling come with helpful explainers, and each protocol has a useful description of its benefits. All of this makes Hide.me less intimidating to VPN newcomers.

For improvements, accompanying information about server load would be useful, and integrating the server list on the home screen would make changing servers even more effortless.

Mobile (iPhone & Android)

Hide.me’s mobile applications are similar to its desktop apps, with an identical interface and menu. They’re just as easy to use, sharing most of the same features and customization options. The only feature missing on mobile is Stealth Guard.

Unlike on desktop, both mobile apps have a dark and light mode option. You can also set up Siri shortcuts on the iOS app – something we’ve not seen often in other VPN services.

We tested Hide.me’s torrenting performance with popular torrent clients including qBittorrent and Deluge.

All of Hide.me’s 1,800 servers are P2P-optimized. In terms of speed, we recorded a very fast average download bitrate of 9.6MiB/s. This is one of the fastest bitrates we’ve seen, which means you’re likely to experience fast P2P downloads.

Our tests show that Hide.me Premium downloads files quickly on torrent clients.

In terms of security and privacy, Hide.me is one of the safest VPNs you can use for torrenting. It has a private logging policy that retains no sensitive data about your file-sharing activity.

We were previously concerned about its unreliable kill switch, but that problem has been resolved and it now works to prevent accidental IP address leaks.

Hide.me does not permit regular (static) port forwarding for security reasons. Instead, it has developed a safer Dynamic Port Forwarding (UPnP), which you can manually install via the Members Area.

Hide.me Free No Longer Permits P2P Activity

The free version of Hide.me used to be optimized for P2P activity. However, this is no longer the case.

Besides, Hide.me Free’s hugely reduced speeds makes downloading files extremely slow. When Hide.me Free permitted torrenting, we recorded an average bitrate of 4.5MiB/s when using the free version of Hide.me, which is below average.

You can use Hide.me on 10 different devices simultaneously. This is a generous amount — better than the average five.

However, it’s still not as generous as Surfshark or Private Internet Access, which have no limit on simultaneous connections at all.

It’s worth bearing in mind that not every Hide.me feature is available across all apps. You can use the table below to see which apps offer which features:

Hide.me has an app for Apple TV, but it’s unfortunate that there is no Smart DNS feature,

This would offer a much simpler way to stream geo-blocked content on devices that don’t support VPN applications.

VPN services like ExpressVPN and Surfshark offer effective Smart DNS solutions.

Available under the name “Hide.me Proxy”, these browser extensions are encrypted proxies, rather than full VPN services.

They spoof your real location and encrypt your web traffic, but they do not encrypt anything outside your browser like a VPN does. This is why Hide.me recommends that you use them in combination with the VPN app.

Hide.me Proxy is free to install and comes with servers in Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands. There’s also options to Enable SOCKS, Disable WebRTC, and ‘Always Enable Proxy’.

Hide.me has a free proxy for Chrome and Firefox.

These extensions are a simple and free way to quickly change your IP address and protect yourself against WebRTC leaks. However, there’s no reason to use it if you’re already using the Hide.me VPN.

Hide.me has a useful feature called Stealth Guard, which stops you from connecting to the internet until you’ve established a VPN connection.

This can also be limited to specific apps. Stealth Guard ensures you don’t forget to switch on your VPN protection.

Stealth Guard guarantees you’re protected by a VPN when using the web or specific apps.

Hide.me’s split tunneling feature is also available on every platform except iOS. This enables you to select the apps that run through the VPN tunnel and which do not.

Hide.me also automatically supports both IPv4 or IPv6 traffic, depending on which is available. Many VPNs are still not compatible with IPv6 and just block the traffic, like Surfshark. We prefer Hide.me’s dual stack solution.

Hide.me has multi-hop servers, which allow you to route your traffic through two different VPN servers, providing double protection. Other VPNs like Surfshark and Proton VPN have this feature, but it’s still relatively rare.

Hide.me asks you to manually select your entry and exit server locations, which is great, but we’d like to see an automatic option, too, as some users might prefer to have the locations quickly chosen for them.

Hide.me has a multi-hop feature with manual entry and exit servers.

Hide.me recently released an ad and tracker blocker integrated into the VPN app called SmartGuard. It includes whitelist and blacklist options and a parental filter toggle.

It looks impressive, but our tests reveal that SmartGuard often stopped our internet working altogether. We couldn’t access third-party ad block testers and we were frequently presented with this error:

SmartGuard failed to connect and block ads in our tests.

As a result, we were unable to block any ads or trackers with SmartGuard, making it the worst VPN ad blocker we’ve tested.

Hide.me has an extensive customer support system, including helpful setup videos, a comprehensive knowledge base and community forum, and 24/7 live chat support. This level of support is offered to Hide.me Free users, too.

We also appreciate that you can submit a support ticket from within the Hide.me app. Most VPNs force you to visit the website.

It’s great that Hide.me’s live chat is clearly advertised on the website home page and that there is no chatbot. You also don’t need to be a Hide.me subscriber to start a conversation.

Oftentimes it feels like VPNs are trying to hide their live chat support or deter you with unhelpful boilerplate responses, but not Hide.me.

When contacting support agents via the live chat, we found the responses to be mostly helpful and consistently fast – usually they respond in just a matter of seconds. However, the agents (always called ‘Ian’) can be quite blunt and even rude, lazily sending links rather than communicating in a helpful manner.

Every week, we test dozens of popular VPN services using a test server in Shanghai. These tests are designed to identify which VPNs work to unblock restricted websites in China and other highly-censored countries.

Hide.me used to only work in China 9% of the time, which wasn’t reliable enough for us to recommend it.

However, our recent tests reveal that it now works in China 84% of the time.

This is a huge improvement and an above average result, making it the 4th most effective VPN for bypassing censorship.

We found Hide.me to be particularly effective in China when using its multi-hop tool, but it requires you to set up a ‘Custom Location’ designed to get around China blocks, which is provided by the Hide.me team. You can follow instructions on how to do this in our VPN recommendations for China.

Hide.me gets around censorship using an obfuscation technology called TLS-Crypt. It works by disguising VPN traffic as ‘normal’ traffic. This means Hide.me will also work well in other censoring countries like Russia, Turkey, and the UAE.

The SoftEther protocol is also available on Hide.me’s Windows app. It’s a protocol designed to penetrate censorship firewalls, using HTTPS to mask your VPN traffic.

Despite its improved performance, there are still better VPNs than Hide.me for circumventing censorship. For example, Astrill VPN always works to unblock websites in the most censored countries in the world.