Surfshark VPN Review 2024: A Fast and Versatile Option (2024)

There are a lot of VPN options, but Surfshark is one of the few that stands out. We just finished testing Surfshark on our Windows and macOS devices, as well as on our iPhones and Android smartphones. And in it, we saw a VPN that offers a lot of features, is affordable, and has the right technology to provide reliable and secure connections.

That’s just scratching the surface though. There are a lot of things we learned about Surfhsark. Things that we’ll share with you in this Surfshark review. So if you’re considering Surfshark for your private browsing needs, keep reading.

Surfshark Features Overview

Editor's Rating

Video Review

Company Background

It’s always a good idea to do a background check about the VPN company you’re planning to deal with. You never know; what if they are actually out to profit off of your data instead of protecting it?

Surfshark’s location in the Netherlands puts it in a good position. The Netherlands is privacy-friendly. However, the country is part of an international band of countries that share data with one another. And these countries can even force companies under their jurisdiction to share sensitive customer information.

It’s a good thing Surfshark has a “no-logs” policy. Under this policy, it won’t capture any sensitive browsing data – what files you downloaded or websites you visited – while you’re connected to the service. Concerningly, though, Surfshark does log the IP address of users connecting to its VPN. Most trustworthy VPNs don’t do that.

In Surfshark’s defense, it deletes that information within 15 minutes after you disconnect. That was confirmed by a third-party auditing firm that evaluated Surfshark’s servers.1 Plus, knowing your IP address by itself isn’t harmful. As long as Surfshark doesn’t know what websites you visited, there’s no way your IP address can be used to backtrack your VPN activity. In short, Surfshark is trustworthy, despite its logging of IP addresses.

Surfshark Features

Now that you know Surfshark as a company, it’s time to get to know Surfshark as a VPN. We tested Surfshark on multiple devices, and we’re ready to break down to you the features that it offers.

Of course, as a VPN, Surfshark’s primary job was to hide our IP addresses and web activity, and we’ve proven that it does exactly that with our DNS and WebRTC leak tests below.

Aside from that, Surfshark had other features that made us giddy. Check them out below.

Torrenting and Streaming

We use VPNs primarily to protect our privacy, but there’s no harm in using them for a little entertainment, right? Surfshark let us torrent from our favorite torrent sites and stream on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and a bunch more services. In fact, it was one of the best torrenting VPNs and best VPNs for streaming we’ve ever tested.

Here’s why that’s important: Our government frowns upon the use of torrenting services because torrenting is often used for piracy, so using a VPN when torrenting is necessary. It keeps your online activity hidden away from Big Brother’s watchful eyes, so you can download torrent files to your heart’s content.

On the other hand, streaming from a streaming platform with a VPN allows you to unlock regional libraries outside your own. For example, if you connect to a server in Australia, the streaming service will see your Australia-based IP address, so you’ll gain access to, let’s say, Netflix Australia. Surfshark changed our Netflix region in a snap.

It’s also worth noting that Surfshark has an Apple TV app now. It was already one of the best Apple TV VPNs even before the app, back when Apple TV still didn’t have native support for VPN apps. And now that the Surfshark app for tvOS is live, it’s now even easier to connect Apple TVs to Surfshark for streaming.

Camouflage and No-Borders Mode

Back to the more serious stuff. Camouflage Mode and No-Borders Mode are both Surfshark settings that make it easier and safer to connect to a VPN when you’re in a more restrictive country. There are countries that ban the use of VPNs, and while using Surfshark can land you in jail in those countries, it has features that can help you evade detection.

Camouflage Mode, otherwise known as obfuscation, makes your VPN traffic look like normal traffic so that governments don’t detect that you’re using a VPN. This is helpful in countries or territories where using a VPN is illegal or frowned upon by the government. Essentially, aside from hiding your browsing activity, Surfshark hides that you’re using a VPN, which is why Surfshark was one of the VPNs we tested that worked in China.

No-Borders Mode, on the other hand, automatically kicks in when Surfshark detects that you’re in a restrictive country, and will limit your selection of servers to those designed to bypass censorship specifically.

Just remember that these features aren’t fool-proof, so use it at your own risk. Better still, stay on the good side of the law and don’t use a VPN when you’re in a restrictive country unless absolutely necessary.

Kill switch

No VPN is perfect, and dropping a connection unexpectedly every once in a while is normal. However, if that happens, it could expose your online traffic to your ISP. That’s where the kill switch feature comes in. It automatically disrupts all your internet traffic to prevent it from ever leaking out in case of dropped VPN connections.

Many VPNs have a built-in kill switch, including Surfshark. It’s a necessary VPN feature. For instance, when our Wi-Fi dropped unexpectedly during one of our tests, the kill switch immediately stopped our internet connection while waiting for Surfshark to reconnect. It saved us because we were doing our torrent download test at the time, which could have resulted in another piracy notice from our ISP if not for the kill switch.

Split tunneling

Through a feature called Whitelister, you can configure certain apps or websites to bypass Surfshark’s VPN tunnel. This is useful if you’re using services that don’t allow connections through a VPN, such as online banking. Instead of turning off Surfshark, which would compromise all the other tabs you have open on your browser, you can simply whitelist the online banking website to access it outside Surfshark’s VPN tunnel.

For Surfshark’s browser extensions, split tunneling is available through a setting called bypass list. There, you’ll list all the websites and domains you want to bypass Surfshark’s encryption, so that next time you open those sites, they’ll automatically connect outside the encrypted tunnel.

Dedicated IP Address

This feature wasn’t included in our subscription, but it’s an optional add-on service for an additional $3.75 per month. It’s quite pricey, but it’s something you might need.

As we explained earlier, using a VPN changes your IP address to that of the VPN server. Normally, you won’t be able to control which IP address will be assigned to you. This will change every time you connect. That’s called a dynamic IP address.

>> Learn More: Dynamic and Static IP Addresses

Moreover, VPN IP addresses are shared, so if you and another user connect to the same server, it’s possible you’ll have the same VPN IP address. That’s fine for most users, although it could cause some minor inconveniences. For example, if Google detects that more than a handful of users are connecting to its services using the same IP address, it might require them to solve a CAPTCHA before letting them proceed. Even worse, Google and websites could blacklist a shared IP address.

A dedicated IP address solves that. If you buy a subscription to one, Surfshark will give you an IP address only you can use. The IP address can be either in the U.S., the U.K., or the Netherlands. And with your own VPN IP address, you won’t have to worry about IP blacklisting anymore.

MultiHop and Dynamic MultiHop

Want some extra security and privacy? MultiHop, otherwise known as a double VPN, connects you to not just one but two VPN servers. That means twice the data encryption and double the privacy.

Surfshark’s Dynamic MultiHop feature goes the extra length to provide a pleasant experience. Most VPNs that offer multi-hop have limited and pre-selected server pairings that determine the first and second servers for you. That seriously limits your options. With Surfshark, you’re free to choose your server pairings from a list of servers that support Dynamic MultiHop. Not all its servers support Dynamic MultiHop, though, but it’s still a whole lot better than having a fixed menu of pairings.

Alternative ID

This isn’t a VPN feature per se, but it helps protect your privacy and anonymity. And with Surfshark, you get this feature no matter which package you go for.

Alternative ID does exactly what its name implies. It gives you an alias. Let’s say for example you’re signing up for a company’s email newsletter to hear about their latest deals. You could provide your real name and email address, but that’s risky if you don’t read their privacy policy. They might be selling data to third parties and advertisers, or worse, they might not have enough data security in place, opening up their databases to breaches.

With Alternative ID, you can create a fake online persona complete with a name, email address, and even birthday that you can use to sign up. In case of a data breach, your real personal information will be safe.

Surfshark added the Alternative ID feature in 2023 as part of the Surfshark One package, which we’ll discuss next. But in January 2024, it made the feature available to all Surfshark subscribers.

Surfshark One

Lastly, Surfshark One is an all-in-one digital security subscription that includes access to the Surfshark VPN, antivirus software, secure search engine, and identity monitoring service.

Surfshark One is designed to enhance your online privacy and identity protection using a combination of those features. The antivirus software protects you from malware that could be used to steal digital data. The identity monitoring service monitors the internet for breaches that contain your personal data. The secure search engine offers an alternative to popular search engines that can be risky to your privacy, such as Google.

Surfshark One comes in two levels. The standard Surfshark One plan costs $3.49 if you pay for a two-year subscription. This plan includes all the features mentioned above. The advanced plan called Surfshark One+ costs $6.49 per month, again, if you pay for two years. It adds in personal data removal from people search sites and data broker lists, enhancing your identity protection.

How Fast Is Surfshark?

It’s no secret that using a VPN tends to slow down your internet speed, as your online traffic has to go through encryption and be routed through a VPN server. Fast VPNs, however, can keep the speed loss to a minimum.

To test Surfshark’s speed, we connected both a Macbook Pro running macOS and an Acer laptop with Windows 10 to the VPN and performed a few speed tests. It performed better on the Macbook, but its performance on Windows wasn’t half bad either.

However, speed is determined by a large number of factors, including your distance to the server, device make and model, operating system, browser type, and more, so take our speed tests with a grain of salt.

Later, we tested Surfshark again against other VPNs, and we used a more comprehensive testing process this time around. While Surfshark didn’t come out the fastest, its performance was solid, delivering high download speeds, passable upload speeds, and a consistent latency. You can read more about this test on our VPN speed test page.

How Secure Is Surfshark?

If your VPN isn’t taking good care of your data, you may be experiencing a “the call is coming from inside the house” situation. But have no fear: we walked around this proverbial house checking under every bed frame, and here’s what we came out with.

Encryption Methods

Using outdated encrypted methods is kind of like using an old lock on a safe; sure, it’s better than nothing, but we want better protection for our valuables. So, after some digging, we found that Surfshark encrypted our information using AES 256-bit, which is what we expect from VPNs in 2024.

On top of that, Surfshark encrypted our traffic through multiple servers, hiding our web traffic even more. This isn’t usually the case for even the best VPNs on the market, so we feel good about Surfshark protecting our web activity.

Logging Policy

But that wasn’t enough for us. No, we wanted to actually read the fine print of Surfshark’s privacy policy to see what data of ours they kept and vice versa. Our findings?

• What Surfshark logs: There are two types of data logging in VPNs. The first one is when you sign up for the service, and the data logged for this one usually consists of email address, subscription information, and payment information. Surfshark collects all those, but they are absolutely necessary for creating a VPN account. The second type is the data logged while using the service i.e. when you’re connected to Surfshark. And while Surfshark has a “no-logs” policy, its servers do store user ID and IP address information, but deletes them no more than 15 minutes after a session ends.
• What Surfshark doesn’t log: Surfshark didn’t keep our IP addresses, session information, browsing history, the times we connected, the amount of bandwidth we used while connected to the VPN, our network traffic, etc.

Compared to other VPNs we’ve tested, Surfshark keeps the minimal amount of data necessary to run its service, making it a great choice for privacy. In fact, it’s on our list of one of the best no-log VPN services out there.

DNS Leak Tests

A DNS is a domain name server, meaning, the common name that comes with an IP address; think Security.Org (our domain name) as opposed to 13.35.89.25, one of our website’s IP addresses.

Of course, if a VPN isn’t hiding our DNS when connected, something is off, which is why we tested it out. Fortunately for us, the test showed a different IP address when connected versus not connected. That means Surfshark hid our web activity when we tested it out on both our Mac and Windows computers. Checkmate!

WebRTC Leak Tests

Finally, we also performed a WebRTC leak test using Surfshark. A little background info: whenever we video chat with friends, transfer files, or live stream Netflix, our computers use something called WebRTC, which is basically a collection of technologies that let web browsers communicate directly with each other as opposed to going through a middle-man server.

Sure, this creates faster speeds and rids us of excessive lag, but it also requires the two devices to know each other’s private IP address; no thank you. The question remained: did Surfshark leak our private IP addresses?

The short answer is: no, it didn’t. Even while we chatted on video, Surfshark hid our real IP addresses. So as far as privacy and security are concerned, Surfshark is at the top of its game.

Surfshark Pricing Overview

After our seven-day free trial with Surfshark ended, we had several options when it came to paid subscriptions. In essence, all subscriptions gave us the same features, like being able to connect unlimited devices to Surfshark. The only thing that differs between the subscriptions is its term lengths, namely one month, one year, or two years.

Surfshark’s monthly rate is notably more expensive than NordVPN’s pricing, but if you plan to sign a longer subscription, you’ll eventually get more value from Surfshark.

For example, NordVPN’s two-year plan costs about $3.49 a month, while Surfshark’s costs $2.19. That means in two years, you’ll save nearly $30 if you go with Surfshark rather than NordVPN. Of course, there are other factors like features and performance, but price-wise, Surfshark comes out on top. Compare Surfshark vs. NordVPN VPN connections further.

With prices as low as $2.19 a month for its two-year package, Surfshark isn’t only secure; it’s also about as cheap as VPNs come. For more information, read our Surfshark subscription page, or read about Surfshark deals and Surfshark Black Friday deals.

Recap

Like any other VPN, Surfshark has its flaws, but they’re very minimal and the benefits definitely outweigh the costs, financial and otherwise. With military-grade encryption, an impressive privacy policy, and extremely low prices, Surfshark is a good fit for most people who want to hide their web activity.

Using a VPN isn’t the only way to protect yourself online. Check out our list of the best digital security practices for more tried and tested methods.

Surfshark FAQs

Surf’s up! We’re not done riding the wave of Surfshark, so sit back, relax and enjoy the answers to our most frequently asked questions.

• Is the Surfshark VPN any good?

  Surfshark is a very good VPN and is among one of the best VPN services, with AES-256 bit encryption, a kill switch, split tunneling, Netflix, and torrenting access, plus a headquarters outside of the Five Eyes alliance. And with more than 3,200 VPN servers in 65 countries, it can work for users around the world with fast speeds, particularly on Macs.

• Is Surfshark better than NordVPN?

  Surfshark is not better than NordVPN. Both VPNs include thousands of servers in over 60 countries each, but NordVPN has about 2,000 more servers overall. Also, both VPNs include split tunneling, torrenting and Netflix access, kill switches, AES-256 encryption, static IP addresses, and 30-day money-back guarantees, but NordVPN has better mobile apps on both iOS and Android than the Surfshark app on either operating system. If you want a better Android app and browser extensions, choose NordVPN over Surfshark.

• Is Surfshark a Chinese company?

  Surfshark is not a Chinese company nor a company based in Hong Kong. Rather, its parent company, Surfshark Ltd., is based in the Netherlands and was founded in 2018.

• Is Surfshark better than ExpressVPN?

  They’re close, but ultimately, Surfshark is better than ExpressVPN. Surfshark is more user-friendly, having responsive and intuitively-designed apps, easy-to-use features such as double VPN, and a much lower price range. Surfshark plans cost as low as $2.49 per month, whereas ExpressVPN costs at least $6.67 per month even with discounts.