Surfshark Review

Surfsharks does not keep identifying logs. We’ve examined its logging policy in detail and can confirm that sensitive data — like your IP address — is not kept. This has also been confirmed by an independent audit from Deloitte.

Surfshark temporarily stores information about which VPN server you connect to, which includes your user ID and connection time stamps. But this is deleted within 15 minutes of disconnecting your VPN, and poses no threat.

The only thing Surfshark stores is your account information, including:

• Email address
• Account registration date
• Encrypted password
• When you use the Smart DNS
• WiFi name if the Auto-connect feature is enabled

Although this means that Surfshark is not technically a no-logs VPN, this is a minor amount of information that’s only used to maintain the service. If you’re particularly concerned about your privacy, you can sign up with cryptocurrency to avoid handing over any personal information.

Surfshark also operates diskless RAM servers that prevent your data from being written to a hard drive. This is an excellent privacy measure that ensures no identifying information will be available in the event of a server seizure.

Based in The Netherlands (EU Jurisdiction)

Surfshark changed its company headquarters from the British Virgin Islands — which is a privacy haven with no data retention laws — to the Netherlands, which is in the EU and has more aggressive data retention laws.

Surfshark has reassured users that being based in the Netherlands allows it to continue its no-logs policy. However, the country is still a part of EU intelligence sharing networks and we’d like to see Surfshark operate from a more private jurisdiction.

Who Owns Surfshark?

Surfshark is owned by Cyberspace, a company incorporated in the Netherlands. The founder of Surfshark is a Lithuanian national called Vytautas Kaziukonis and most of Cyberspace’s employees are from Lithuania, where it has an office.

Cyberspace is the result of a merger between Surfshark (Surfshark B.V.) and Nord Security, which runs NordVPN. Surfshark and NordVPN now work together to improve their separate services.

While the services are very similar, NordVPN performs better in most of our tests and still operates out of a privacy haven – Panama. However, NordVPN has experienced a data breach, whereas Surfshark has never had any controversies.

Access to 9 Netflix Libraries

Surfshark works very well with Netflix. Our test results show that it works to unblock 9 Netflix regions with ease, and streams without buffering.

As well as US Netflix, Surfshark reliably bypasses geo-blocks for:

• Netflix Brazil
• Netflix Canada
• Netflix France
• Netflix India
• Netflix Italy
• Netflix Mexico
• Netflix Singapore
• Netflix UK
• Netflix US

Our tests found that most of Surfshark’s city servers worked to unblock the country’s Netflix library. On rare occasions, though, you may need to connect to a different server to get Netflix working.

We’d like to see Surfshark labeling its servers for streaming needs specifically, as it would make the process of finding a working server much quicker.

Streams Every British & US Streaming Site

Surfshark unblocks HBO Max and Amazon Prime Video. It used to struggle with Hulu, but our recent tests have shown a massive improvement and we can now confidently recommend Surfshark as a VPN for watching Hulu outside the US.

Surfshark unblocks Hulu outside the US.

The first UK Surfshark server we tested unblocked BBC iPlayer, Channel 4, ITVX, My5, Now, and Sky Go without issue, making it one of the best VPNs for connecting into the UK, too.

Surfshark remains the best VPN for bypassing Disney+ blocks and lets you stream Europe-exclusive Star content from the US.

Surfshark is also good for watching the Roku Channel and most other free streaming sites, including Peacock and SBS On Demand.

In our testing, all of these platforms streamed at maximum video quality without any buffering required.

Overall, Surfshark is an excellent streaming VPN, especially considering its price. However, it can’t quite compete with ExpressVPN when it comes to speeds or reliability, particularly with Netflix. Windscribe VPN, meanwhile, unblocks far more Netflix regions in total.

To test its performance, we connected to Surfshark servers in six different continents and measured our internet speeds before and after. We use a 100Mbps internet connection, similar to your baseline speed at home.

Here’s a table showing how Surfshark performed in our speed tests:

Just like any VPN, using Surfshark will slow down your internet — but not by much. When we connected to a Surfshark server in the same country, we experienced a speed loss of only 5% compared to our speeds without a VPN.

Connecting to countries further away, our speed loss was marginal. A VPN connection to the US from the UK resulted in a speed loss of 42% despite over 3,000 miles of distance.

Overall, our unbiased speed tests show that both short and long distance speeds are relatively unaffected when using Surfshark.

These fast speeds are the result of Surfshark capping its server load at 40% to avoid congestion and upgrading many of its servers to 10Gbps. This also makes Surfshark nicer to use, as speeds remain stable and you are less likely to encounter CAPTCHAs due to too many people using the same IP address.

However, despite recent improvement Surfshark is still a bit behind the very fastest VPNs – mostly down to its connections to super remote locations like South Africa and Australia. You can see how it fares in the chart above when compared to some of its top VPN rivals – although they all struggle to some degree. Surfshark could go a step further by adding even more 10Gbps servers to address this.

The security protocols Surfshark offers include WireGuard, OpenVPN, and IKEv2. These are the best options available. Surfshark has taken the right decision to abandon outdated protocols like PPTP.

Surfshark also uses the best encryption cipher, called AES-256. This is what conceals your data and it’s considered unbreakable.

We can confirm this is the case, as we tested Surfshark’s encryption with the packet-sniffing tool, Wireshark. Our analysis showed that our web traffic was completely unreadable and fully encrypted.

Does Surfshark’s Kill Switch Work?

Surfshark’s kill switch is not on by default, which is an oversight in our opinion. We recommend that you go into Surfshark’s settings and toggle it on.

We tested whether Surfshark’s kill switch actually works by using our in-house kill switch test tool. If the kill switch works, our real IP address should never be detected — even when we switch servers or our internet connection drops.

Our results show that Surfshark’s kill switch worked to prevent our IP address leaking, except when changing servers on macOS devices. This is a problem common to many VPNs on Mac. However, VPNs like Mullvad and PIA have come up with a solution, so we expect the same from Surfshark.

Surfshark’s kill switch does not stop IP address leaks when changing servers on macOS.

Impressively, Surfshark’s Android TV VPN app is the only one that comes with a built-in kill switch. With other VPNs, including ExpressVPN and NordVPN, our IP address would leak whenever the connection dropped.

First-Party DNS Servers to Prevent Leaks

We tested Surfshark for IP, DNS, and WebRTC leaks using our own leak test tool. It passed on all fronts and no sensitive data was ever exposed.

This is thanks to the fact that Surfshark uses its own private DNS servers. This means Surfshark handles your DNS requests itself, which is an impressive security feature that should be rewarded.

However, Surfshark has no IPv6 support. Instead, it re-routes IPv6 connections to IPv4. That’s fine as it prevents leaks, but we’d like to see full IPv6 support.
This also needs to be considered if you own a new IPv6-exclusive router, as Surfshark will not work at all.

Surfshark’s server locations are spread across 100 countries. This is one of the biggest and most diverse server networks available from any VPN.

Most of these servers are based in a single city. 11 countries have city-level options, which is an above-average amount. We’d like to see more outside of Europe, but they include:

• Australia
• Belgium
• France
• Germany
• India
• Italy
• Poland
• Portugal
• Spain
• UK
• US

The US has the most city choices — 25 in total, which is very useful if you want to get a US IP address in a specific city to watch out-of-market NFL games or avoid MLB blackouts.

Although it has IP addresses in 100 countries, Surfshark only has 3,200 individual servers. This is significantly less than the 18,651 offered by Private Internet Access, or the 12,000 offered by CyberGhost.

The server locations list in the Surfshark iOS client.

In March and June 2022 respectively, Surfshark closed down its servers in Russia and India following government demands that VPNs log user data. However, you can still use virtual Indian servers to get an Indian IP address.

Static IP Addresses & MultiHop Servers

Surfshark has two additional server types available:

Static IP: This option assigns you an IP address that remains the same whenever you use that server. This results in faster speeds and easier access to geo-restricted streaming sites, but there is a greater privacy risk.

Multi-Hop: Sometimes called Double VPN, Multi-Hop servers ‘bounce’ your traffic from one encrypted server to another before reaching your intended website. This can negatively impact your speeds, but it adds a degree of additional privacy and security.

A Mix of Virtual & Physical Servers

Surfshark uses both virtual and physical servers. It marks its virtual servers with a small ‘v’, which is a helpful touch that allows you to choose between the two.

Surfshark distinguishes between physical and virtual servers with a ‘v’.

Virtual servers assign an IP address from your selected country even if the actual hardware is located elsewhere. This allows you to connect to more locations around the world.

The downside of virtual servers is that if the actual server is a lot further from your physical location than expected, you might experience a drop in performance.

Overall, Surfshark has a large server network and a variety of server types. Casual users can quickly establish a connection through the ‘Quick Connect’ button. But Surfshark also offers an impressive level of control, enabling users to choose between virtual and physical servers, static IP or dynamic IP, and a single server or double VPN connection.

Surfshark is easy to install, set up, and use. You just need to sign up and download the appropriate software, and then sign in with your account.

The experience of using its applications couldn’t be more user-friendly. The apps are well designed and self-explanatory, and there are useful descriptions next to every technical feature.

Here’s a more detailed overview of our experience using Surfshark on every device:

Desktop & Laptop (Windows & macOS)

Surfshark’s apps for desktop are a pleasure to use thanks to the VPN’s easy navigation, clean design, and simple interface.

The server list is organized as a scroll down list descending in alphabetical order, with a search bar attached for direct access to a specific server. There are also buttons for quick connection to the ‘Fastest Server’ or ‘Nearest Country’.

The settings menu is simple. Connection Settings and Advanced Settings work as on and off toggles with helpful explainers, making everything easily accessible.

In terms of customization, we appreciate the addition of a dark mode option and the inclusion of 16 languages in addition to English. On macOS, you can choose where the Surfshark icon is located: either in the dock or on the status bar.

However, we don’t like that the Surfshark Alert, Antivirus, and Search add-ons have been integrated into the main menu as a way to encourage users to buy. It clutters the sidebar menu when the only two options you need are ‘VPN’ and ‘Settings’.

We also don’t like that you cannot manually resize the macOS window. It takes up a lot of screen space. You can manually resize the Windows app, but only by so much.

Mobile (iPhone & Android)

Surfshark’s mobile apps are very similar to its desktop counterparts, which is great as it allows for consistency across apps.

The interface and usability is the same, and you’ll find many of the same features that are on desktop, including CleanWeb, Multi-Hop servers, and a VPN kill switch.

There are only two differences between the mobile apps: the iOS version has a ‘Pause’ button that halts VPN connections without fully disconnecting while the Android app has a distinctive kill switch that cuts the internet for all apps on the device.

Included on Android and Windows only is a feature called Bypasser, a tool that lets you select which apps do and don’t go through the VPN tunnel.

However, like on desktop, we wish the Surfshark One promotion didn’t feature so prominently.

Linux

Surfshark supports Linux on Ubuntu, Debian, and Mint distros.

Once installed, you can use Surfshark’s Linux graphical user interface (GUI). This allows you to easily change servers and switch between protocols without using a command line. It also has a kill switch.

Not that many VPNs offer a Linux GUI. Surfshark used to only operate a command line, so we’re pleased that it’s become one of the few VPNs that now offer a user-friendly GUI for Linux.

All of Surfshark’s servers permit P2P activity. We tested it on torrent clients qBittorrent, uTorrent, and Deluge.

Our torrenting speed tests recorded an average download bitrate of 8.7MiB/s. This is fast enough to download P2P files quickly, but there are faster VPNs for torrenting, including PIA and ExpressVPN, which have a respective download bitrate of 9.6MiB/s and 9.4MiB/s.

We tested Surfshark on torrent clients like qBitorrent.

Though it might not be the fastest P2P VPN, Surfshark is definitely safe to use. Thanks to its private logging policy, AES-256 encryption, and first-party DNS servers, your torrenting activity will be safely shielded from monitoring by your ISP or copyright holders.

That is as long as you toggle on Surfshark’s kill switch via its settings menu. Surfshark does not turn its kill switch on by default. In order to be safe when torrenting with Surfshark, we strongly recommend you turn it on before torrenting.

Surfshark’s kill switch has to be toggled on manually.

Overall, Surfshark is safe to use for P2P file-sharing. But if you’re a regular torrenter, you’ll find that PIA is faster and better optimized.

Surfshark imposes no limit on the number of devices you can install its apps on.

We were able to install it on all of our test devices and connect to a Surfshark server at the same time. It doesn’t threaten to terminate your account if you share your Surfshark account, either.

This is great for Surfshark users, and quite rare, as most VPNs impose a limit on the number of devices you can use the service on – a five device-limit is the average.

Surfshark is very similar across all of its apps, but some features are only available on certain platforms. Here is a table that shows the differences:

Smart DNS is not the same as a VPN. It’s an unencrypted proxy that changes your DNS address to another location, and therefore allows you access geo-restricted streaming and gaming content without changing your IP.

This way you can use Surfshark on your games consoles, too.

You can also access blocked content without using a VPN by installing Surfshark on your router manually. However, it does not have a dedicated app for routers like some competing VPN services, which makes installation much more difficult.

Surfshark’s Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browser extensions change your IP address and encrypt your browser traffic, but not your whole web traffic.

Some useful extra settings include an ad and pop-up blocker, a website safety warning, and a data breach alert. There is also a bypass option that allows you to select websites that avoid the VPN tunnel and the ad blocker, which is a nice touch.

Surfshark’s browser extensions include additional features, like an ad blocker.

These extensions are not free to install like CyberGhost’s browser extensions are — you have to be a paid subscriber to use them. But they are fully encrypted VPN extensions and have been independently audited by Cure53.

Surfshark has excellent security standards, but it also offers an array of advanced security features that most VPN services can’t match.

The first additional feature is Multi-Hop, which routes your traffic through two VPN servers. Though it’s not always necessary, that means double protection.

There’s also a Rotating IP option, which is unusual. This feature changes your public IP address every 5-10 minutes without you ever having to switch servers.

IP rotation isn’t necessary for online protection, and some other VPNs like HMA and AtlasVPN offer similar features. However, it might appeal to the most privacy-conscious users.

Android users can also use Surfshark’s GPS Spoofing feature, which matches your GPS geolocation to your chosen server. This is a very rare feature that helps to bypass geo-blocks set by mobile apps, and something we’d like to see rolled out across all of Surfshark’s apps. It is a particularly useful feature if you want to stream blackout NHL games on Android.

The most substantial security feature is Surfshark’s diskless server network, or RAM-only network. This means that your user data is never stored on physical servers that can be seized and extracted.

For such a low asking price, the extent of Surfshark’s security offering is truly impressive. VPNs with the same advanced features usually cost two or three times more, like Astrill.

Surfshark has an ad blocker called CleanWeb. Our tests show that CleanWeb works to block 77% of all ads and trackers on the web. This ranks it 10th in our list of the best VPN ad blockers.

We used CleanWeb to block ads on popular sites like Spotify and Twitch, but it didn’t work for websites like Google and YouTube.

Surfshark does not work well in China. We’ve been testing it using our Shanghai server every week for a year and can report that it works to bypass Chinese website blocks only 35% of the time.

This is a big improvement from the 18% success rate in 2023, but it’s still not effective enough for us to recommend.

We accessed YouTube from China using Surfshark 35% of the time.

These tests were performed using Surfshark’s NoBorders mode, which is an obfuscation tool that is automatically enabled when connecting from China.

However, Surfshark is one of the few top-tier VPNs that has not yet been banned in Russia, so you can use it to bypass Russian censorship. Likewise, it can also be used in Turkey, Iran, and the UAE.

Unlike VPNs such as ExpressVPN, Atlas VPN, and Proton VPN, you don’t need a Surfshark account to contact the live chat support. We like that it’s accessible to everyone.

However, we aren’t pleased that Surfshark has introduced a chatbot for its 24/7 live chat. Chatbots can give basic information, but they often feel more like a deterrent than a genuinely useful tool. It also communicates in English only.

However, you can get a human support agent quickly by asking the bot to ‘get me a human’, and they can respond in multiple languages.

Surfshark offers quick live chat support.

We’ve been contacting the Surfshark support team for years, and the agents have always been polite and very quick to reply. They are particularly useful for recommending servers for unblocking streaming sites.

However, we find they sometimes lack technical knowledge. For more complex questions, we suggest using the Surfshark support email.

The Surfshark website contains a lot of useful information in a well organized manner, including visual installation guides, FAQs, and a ticket support system.