Price
$15.45 a month, $48 for the first 15 months (then $79 a year) or $60 for the first 27 months (then $79 a year)
Latest Tests
No leaks detected, 17% speed loss in 2023 tests
Network
3,200-plus servers in 100 countries
Jurisdiction
Netherlands
Pros
- Fast
- Unlimited simultaneous connections
- RAM-only server infrastructure
- Lots of unique features
- Split tunneling on Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS
Cons
- 14-Eyes jurisdiction (Netherlands)
- Major renewal price increase
Surfshark is no longer the budget-friendly option it once was. At CNET, we consistently praised Surfshark for providing a top-tier VPN service at a price that wouldn’t break the bank. But Surfshark has bumped up its renewal prices by 33% this year. Even though it’s still cheaper VPNs like ExpressVPN and NordVPN, Surfshark’s price hike has made the service much less of a bargain.
I ran Surfshark through a gauntlet of tests across various platforms over several weeks in February 2025. These included more than 200 individual speed tests, DNS leak tests, a rigorous evaluation of its streaming capabilities and an assessment of its overall value. I also took a close look at its corporate structure and pored through its privacy policies, with special consideration to data collection and no-logging claims. Throughout the process, I communicated with Surfshark representatives via email and videoconference.
I found that Surfshark is still an excellent VPN that gets the job done for casual VPN users. It’s fast, has lots of servers, it’s great for streaming, is easy to use across platforms and it has some cool and unique features. Although it no longer fits for the most budget-conscious people, as PIA or Mullvad still does, Surfshark is a great choice for someone who wants unlimited simultaneous connections and a slick user interface that’s packed with useful features. I’m also encouraged by Surfshark’s improving commitment to transparency. Here’s what you need to know about Surfshark and whether it’s the right choice for you.
Surfshark is an excellent budget-friendly VPN
Speed: Consistently a top speed performer
- 21% speed loss in 2025 tests
- Number of servers: 3,200-plus
- Number of countries: 100
Aside from a significant but short-lived speed dip in 2023 that company engineers quickly corrected, Surfshark’s speed performance has been consistent over the years. While other VPNs’ overall speed test results have fluctuated (at times dramatically) from year to year in our testing, Surfshark has maintained an even keel. Over the past four years of speed testing Surfshark, we’ve calculated a 19% speed loss once and a 17% speed loss three times. When I tested Surfshark’s speeds in 2025, I registered a marginally higher speed loss of 21%.
Although the speed loss I calculated was higher this year, the difference is negligible. In practical terms, it’s extraordinarily unlikely that you’d notice any difference in performance whether you’re losing 17% or 21% of your download speeds when using Surfshark. VPN speed testing is a notoriously inexact science, and while we do our best to try and replicate the conditions you’re likely to encounter in the real world, we can only give you an approximate idea of what kind of speed performance you can generally expect from the VPN. If I tested Surfshark’s speeds a week or two after I originally tested them in early February, I could have conceivably registered a speed loss of 15% as easily as I could have 25%.
Either way, the point is that Surfshark is a fast VPN and you should expect to enjoy solid speed performance from the VPN with minimal speed loss. As a comparison, Surfshark’s speed performance sits behind the 3% speed loss we calculated with NordVPN and ahead of the 35% with ExpressVPN.
I tested Surfshark’s speeds from my location in Ohio to Surfshark’s VPN servers in New York, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Singapore and Australia. I found Surfshark’s speed performance to be generally consistent with my expectations across all protocols, platforms and server locations that I tested. The only anomaly I noticed over the course of my speed tests was with OpenVPN on MacOS where speeds to New York were slower than any other server location I tested. Generally, the closer the VPN server is to your physical location, the faster your connection speeds through the VPN should be. Which is why I was surprised that the closest server location I tested yielded the slowest speeds on MacOS when using the OpenVPN protocol.
On MacOS through OpenVPN, I registered an average speed of 269 Mbps on Surfshark’s New York servers. That’s slower than the 310 Mbps I registered on Surfshark’s France and Germany servers and the 291 Mbps I averaged through the UK. More surprisingly, speeds to New York were slower than the 276 Mbps and 282 Mbps that I averaged through servers in Australia and Singapore, respectively — locations that are halfway across the globe from where I sit. New York is a popular VPN server location with a potentially higher load than other locations, which could lead to slower speeds. However, Surfshark says it has 78 servers in New York, which should be able to handle the traffic.
I didn’t experience this anomaly while testing Surfshark’s speeds through OpenVPN on Windows. Instead, as expected, my speeds to the New York servers were faster than any other server location during my Windows tests through OpenVPN and WireGuard on both Windows and MacOS. The fastest speeds I registered were through New York City servers on Windows when using the WireGuard protocol — which was also somewhat of a surprise because VPN speeds are usually faster on Mac than they are on Windows. My average speeds to New York came to 328 Mbps through WireGuard on MacOS and 349 Mbps on Windows.
That said, speed performance was fastest on MacOS through WireGuard with an average speed across all locations coming in at 307 Mbps — a 17% speed loss from my approximately 370 Mbps internet connection. Otherwise, I registered a 20% speed loss on MacOS through OpenVPN, 23% on Windows through WireGuard and 25% on Windows through OpenVPN.
Key takeaway: While the 21% speed loss I registered in 2025 technically constitutes a slight drop in performance over previous years, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Surfshark has established itself over the years as a consistently speedy VPN that can easily handle just about any online activity, including data-heavy activities like streaming, gaming and torrenting.
Cost: Surfshark’s recent price bump bites
- $15.45 a month, $48 for the first 15 months (then $79 a year) or $60 for the first 27 months (then $79 a year)
- Money-back guarantee: 30 days
- Payment options: Credit card, PayPal, Google Pay, Crypto
- Apps: Available for MacOS, Windows, Linux (GUI), iOS, Android, Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, routers
- Works with: Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, Max, Amazon Prime Video and others
Surfshark used to be the budget-friendly darling of the VPN world (certainly at least of our VPN world here at CNET). With its stack of useful premium features that rivaled those of its pricey rivals at an impressive discount to their prices, Surfshark stood out as a worthy alternative that stayed true to its economical roots. That said, it’s still the same VPN provider and its updated renewal price is significantly cheaper at $79 a year than both ExpressVPN ($117 or $150 a year) and NordVPN ($140 a year).
In absolute terms, we could say that Surfshark is comparatively even cheaper to ExpressVPN and NordVPN now than they were before all three providers increased their pricing. Not long ago, the price difference upon renewal between Surfshark and ExpressVPN/NordVPN was $40. Now, Surfshark’s annual renewal price is $61 cheaper than NordVPN and is either $38 or $71 cheaper than ExpressVPN, depending on which subscription plan we’re comparing it to.
Even so, Surfshark’s 33% bump over the previous $60 annual renewal rate makes the VPN a less attractive option than it once was.
The signs of an impending shakeup were there when the company’s monthly subscription price ballooned last year to a comically expensive $15.45 a month. For reference, most VPNs charge around $10 to at most $13 a month — but even that’s more than you should pay for a VPN service for a month. If you only need a VPN for a single month, I recommend going with Mullvad, which costs only $5 a month and doesn’t renew automatically as other VPN services do. In short, don’t choose Surfshark’s monthly plan unless you go into the transaction with the intention of asking for a refund within the first 30 days.
Surfshark’s been doing a bit of experimentation with its introductory prices. The adjustments are slight but they’ve come at a regular clip, seemingly changing every other week. It was impossible to keep track of each little update, but prices generally stayed within a tight window during that time and renewal pricing remained unchanged. And, to be fair, Surfshark representatives had hinted to us in recent conversations that some pricing changes were in the works. Still, I wasn’t expecting such a significant change to renewal pricing from Surfshark — a change that has me re-evaluating Surfshark’s overall value.
“We understand that any increase is never ideal, especially for budget-conscious users. However, this adjustment was due, because our initial bundle pricing remained unchanged since September 2020, while we have significantly enhanced our product and tackled steeply rising business operating costs (salaries, bandwidth costs, servers, and others),” Surfshark’s Senior Partnerships Manager Vilius Jastremskas told me via email. “Over the past five years, we’ve continuously improved our offering by introducing new key features such as Alternative ID, Dynamic MultiHop, IP Rotator, iOS and browser extension bypasser, web protection features for AV, just to name a few. We have also expanded our server country locations from 65 to 100, and upgraded all our VPN servers worldwide to 10Gbps.”
As of this review’s publication, Surfshark’s base VPN plan costs $15.45 a month, $48 for the first 15 months (then $79 annually) or $60 for the first 27 months (then $79 annually). Surfshark’s Starter tier is its most basic subscription plan and includes the VPN and Alternative ID features. Other, more expensive subscription tiers are also available that include Starter features along with additional tools like antivirus, data leak alerts, private search and data removal services. However, my evaluation of Surfshark focuses solely on Surfshark’s Starter tier.
Surfshark remains a top-tier VPN
The considerable price hike notwithstanding, there’s still a lot to like about Surfshark, and it still stacks up nicely against more expensive VPNs like ExpressVPN and NordVPN. Surfshark’s app interface is slick, nicely laid out and easy to use across all platforms. I like the recent subtle tweaks that make the app even more user-friendly. Specifically, it displays the settings you’ve enabled, including the protocol you’re using, the kill switch, Bypasser, CleanWeb and Rotating IP. Also displayed are your connection time, current VPN IP address and server you’re connected to. It’s a lot of information, but it’s all helpful information to have at your fingertips and Surfshark pulls it off without being obtrusive or making the app interface seem cluttered.
I also like how you can just tap or click right on the app interface to go directly to each of the displayed feature’s settings without having to navigate through the settings menu. It’s a small detail, but it makes the app a lot more intuitive and shows that Surfshark cares about the finer details of the user experience.
Other key features you’ll get with Surfshark’s VPN include a kill switch, Dynamic MultiHop, Bypasser (split-tunneling), rotating IP and an ad and tracker blocker. All features worked smoothly across platforms including Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Apple TV and Fire TV.
Surfshark is one of the only other VPNs besides PIA to offer split tunneling on iOS and MacOS, which is impressive considering that changes Apple made in 2020 caused issues with VPNs’ split tunneling functionality on Apple devices. Most other VPNs that include split tunneling haven’t offered the feature on Apple devices since, usually reserving it for Android and Windows users. Surfshark’s Bypasser feature allows you to route specific websites outside the tunnel on iOS, while on MacOS it allows you to bypass websites as well as apps.
I was happy to see marked improvements in overall app performance across platforms as well. In the past, Surfshark often took an inordinate amount of time and multiple attempts to establish a successful connection. It was a minor issue, but nonetheless unwelcome when it occurred because these days you’d expect technology to respond instantaneously rather than 30 seconds after issuing a command. However, in my latest round of testing, I encountered no such issues. Surfshark’s app connected in a flash every single time I went to connect to a server regardless of what platform I was using or what location I was connecting to.
A couple of minor issues with streaming, but otherwise Surfshark performs well
Streaming with Surfshark was also mostly a smooth experience during my latest tests. That’s no surprise because the VPN is well-equipped for streaming geographically restricted content with its fast speeds and large server network. I was able to stream content from various popular streaming services like Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu, Max and Amazon Prime Video through a number of different Surfshark server locations from across the globe — though not without a few bumps in the road.
Netflix took quite a bit of time to load up when connected on my Mac, even through nearby US server locations. But after it got loaded up, everything seemed to work as expected. Also, Hulu detected the VPN when I tried to stream content on my Amazon Fire TV Stick. Otherwise, streaming with Surfshark on Fire TV Stick, Apple TV and other platforms was excellent and in line with what I would expect from a top-tier VPN.
Buying a Surfshark subscription is a simple affair, which you can do with a credit or debit card, PayPal, Google Pay or various cryptocurrencies. I like how Surfshark has made information regarding its subscription renewals much clearer than it had in years past on its checkout page. Far too many VPN companies still struggle with subscription renewal transparency, as if they’re afraid to concede that prices will increase upon renewal or as if it’s on the customer to make that assumption. But Surfshark serves as an example of transparent renewal terms don’t have to be scary.
Key takeaway: Surfshark is still an excellent VPN, but the jump in its renewal prices means it’s no longer the wildly budget-friendly option it once was. If you’re on a strict budget, you can get Mullvad or PIA for cheaper.
Privacy and security: Unique privacy features, but still playing catchup with transparency
- Jurisdiction: Netherlands
- Encryption: AES-256-GCM, ChaCha20
- RAM-only server infrastructure
- No leaks detected
- Protocols available: OpenVPN, WireGuard, IKEv2
Surfshark’s privacy and security posture is mostly solid, and is enough for casual users looking for general online privacy. But there are a few reasons why you may want to look elsewhere if your privacy needs are critical (for example if you’re in a country with strict internet censorship and surveillance or if you’re a journalist, attorney, physician, activist or whistleblower).
One reason I hesitate to recommend Surfshark to privacy-critical users is due to its Netherlands jurisdiction. Although the Netherlands doesn’t impose any mandatory data retention laws, the country is part of the 14-Eyes data-sharing alliance, which may be a deal-breaker for privacy-critical users.
Another reason is that Surfshark still has some catching up to do versus other VPN providers when it comes to transparency. Surfshark representatives told me in an interview that the audit will commence during the second quarter of this year and should be published later on in the second half of 2025. Although I’m encouraged that Surfshark is commissioning an independent no-logs audit this year, it will be the company’s first audit of any sort since 2022.
Not getting audited on a regular basis doesn’t necessarily mean that a VPN isn’t doing what it says it’s doing, but regular audits act as a crucial trust signal that privacy-critical users shouldn’t ignore. As a comparison, ExpressVPN commissions multiple audits every year and has undergone 22 in total since 2018. Surfshark has undergone a total of three audits in the past seven years. However, Jastremskas told me that Surfshark is committed to commissioning annual third-party audits going forward, which is reassuring. I will update this review with the results of the 2025 no-logs audit once it is published.
Surfshark says in its Privacy Policy that the company doesn’t “collect any information about what you do online (your visited IP addresses, browsing history, session information, used bandwidth, connection time stamps, network traffic or any other similar information).” But a VPN’s no logs claims are impossible to verify with 100% certainty, so your only option is to take the VPN provider’s word for it. No-logs audits can help, but can only go so far. And given that Surfshark’s no-logs policy hasn’t been audited in years, it’s been a long stretch of time where all we’ve had to rely on is Surfshark’s word.
That said, I like that Surfshark will be commissioning audits on a yearly basis and that the company has begun publishing a quarterly transparency report — which details the number of legal requests it receives each quarter and if the company was obligated to disclose any user data in relation to the received requests. The latest report states that none of the more than 360,000 requests received between October and December 2024 resulted in Surfshark disclosing user data.
Surfshark’s cool privacy features stand out
Otherwise, Surfshark is pretty solid from a privacy standpoint, with standard privacy protections that work well and some unique privacy features that most VPNs don’t offer.
I’m continuously impressed with the Dynamic MultiHop feature, which goes a step further than the traditional double VPN: While most VPNs that offer double hop connections usually only offer a handful of preset connections, Surfshark allows you to choose any pair of servers you want from its fleet of server locations in 100 different countries. Keep in mind, though, that while a double VPN connection boosts your privacy, your speed will take even more of a hit due to your traffic being encrypted twice.
I also like the option on Windows to set the kill switch to soft or strict mode. The soft kill switch works like a traditional kill switch and cuts your internet connection if the VPN inadvertently disconnects, protecting your privacy and preventing IP leaks. The strict kill switch cuts your internet any time you disconnect from the VPN, even intentionally — which offers greater protection against any potential sensitive traffic going unencrypted. You also have the option to enable a strict kill switch on your Android device using the native Android kill switch, which won’t let you use the internet at all unless you’re connected to the VPN.
One of the most unique and helpful privacy features that Surfshark offers with its basic VPN plan is its Alternative ID tool. With Alternative ID, you can create a full alter-ego complete with full name, birthdate, physical address and email address that you can use online to fill out forms or sign up for email lists without having to provide your actual personal information.
I had a lot of fun playing around with the tool and coming up with different alter-egos. You can either come up with everything on your own manually or have Alternative ID automatically generate the information for you. Your alternative email address will automatically forward emails to your designated actual email address. You can create up to three alternative email addresses and give them different labels based on what you use them for. An alternative phone number is also available for an additional $3 a month. All in all, it’s a really cool suite of features that can help you protect your personal data when you need to provide information to access a website or online service.
The Rotating IP feature is another useful tool that Surfshark offers. When enabled and connected to a server, the IP Rotator automatically changes your VPN IP address periodically every few minutes without disconnecting you from the server. This gives you an extra layer of privacy because it makes it that much more difficult for others to track you online.
Post-quantum protections coming
I’m excited for Surfshark to roll out its post-quantum protection this year as well. As of now only offered by a handful of VPN providers including ExpressVPN, Mullvad and NordVPN, post-quantum encryption is quickly becoming essential for VPN privacy. With post-quantum encryption, VPNs can help guard users against potential future threats from quantum computers.
Surfshark’s post-quantum layer is “an additional layer of security for our VPN protocols. For now, we are mainly working on WireGuard, but also exploring the possibilities to implement post-quantum layer for other protocols like OpenVPN,” Justas Pukys, Surfshark’s Senior Product Manager for VPN told me during an interview. “But since … WireGuard is the main protocol for us … we are focusing towards this one now, and we should actually have it in production quite soon.”
Surfshark CTO Donatas Budvytis confirmed during my call with the team that the post-quantum protections should start rolling out to iOS and MacOS beginning in the first half of Q2, followed by Windows and Android.
In addition to including unique privacy features, Surfshark does well to protect against DNS leaks. I ran thorough DNS leak tests on multiple servers using each available protocol across various devices, and I didn’t detect any leaks whatsoever. Surfshark uses industry-standard AES 256-bit encryption for OpenVPN and IKEv2 connections and ChaCha 20 for WireGuard connections. Surfshark’s Camouflage Mode (obfuscation) is available when using the OpenVPN protocol and disguises your VPN traffic as regular HTTPS traffic, which can be crucial if you’re using Surfshark in a region where VPNs are restricted or outlawed entirely.
I also like the fact that Surfshark employs a 100% RAM-only server infrastructure, meaning that its server fleet runs on volatile memory and theoretically no data is saved to a hard disk, which can help give users extra peace of mind that their data is safe and cannot be disclosed to a third party.
Key takeaway: Surfshark provides enough privacy for casual VPN users, but I’d be wary of going with this VPN if your privacy needs are critical. That said, Surfshark has some unique privacy features that a large contingent of users will no doubt find immensely useful. Still, if you need a VPN for critical privacy, I recommend going with ExpressVPN or Proton VPN.
Surfshark’s overall value has gone down with its price hike, but it’s still a good VPN
Although Surfshark didn’t make any monumental improvements or many other changes since my last review, aside from jacking up its renewal pricing, the company has been working in the background on significant developments in the works for this year. The upcoming post-quantum layer and a fresh no-logs audit definitely count for something and help somewhat alleviate the renewal price sticker shock. Additionally, the team hinted at a few more “non-traditional” parental control- and anti-phishing-related VPN features coming down the pike, which could add value in the future. Nevertheless, Surfshark is still cheaper than ExpressVPN and NordVPN even with the price hike, and I still recommend it to casual users even if its overall value has dropped.
Surfshark is still a top-notch VPN that goes above and beyond what many similarly priced or more expensive alternatives can do. I’m excited to see what Surfshark has in store for 2025 and beyond, and I’m also hopeful that Surfshark will prove this year that its VPN service is worth every penny of its higher price now and in the future.
