Surfshark VPN Review 2025: Fishing for the Best Cheap VPN Service + Best Deal Inside

☑︎ This guide has been last updated in July 2025

Ahoy, digital voyager! If you’re reading this, you’re also wondering:

…is Surfshark just another flashy little fish in the VPN sea – or a true apex predator worth your money?

Having tested Surfshark for 8+ years 🤓 we’ve compiled everything you need to know to make an informed decision – let’s… dive in!

So come aboard: in this definitive guide, we will answer all key questions about Surfshark – with zero foam and minimum jargon:

• 🦈How is Surfshark different from other VPNs?
• 🔒How secure is your private data with Surfshark?
• 🏄How fast and reliable are its servers?
• 💰Which plan if any, should you choose?

And speaking of plans – there’s a bonus section at the end where we show you how to unlock the best possible Surfshark price.

To start, let’s look at the unique features:

How Is Surfshark Different from Other VPNs?

Let’s face it, most VPNs in 2025 look sleek, let you pay in crypto, and promise airtight security.

Surfshark? It delivers a bit more – and seems to be able to do it without inflating the price tag 🤑

Here’s what truly sets Surfshark apart from other VPNs:

• Super-low prices: their 2-year plan remains one of the cheapest among top-tier VPNs, often beating 3-year plans of competitors! And yes – you can unlock even more bonus months using a promo trick we explain later.
• Unlimited devices: unlike most other VPNs, Surfshark allows you to use its service not on 5, not on 7, but on any number of devices, simultaneously.
• Surfshark Nexus new in 2025 a unique architecture that routes your traffic through a full network of servers rather than a single location, rotating IPs in real-time. This improves stability and speed while making it even more difficult to track you:

  

• Surfshark Everlink new in 2025 a new feature that keeps selected websites continuously accessible – even during VPN reconnects or changes – without breaking your session. It’s like a private tunnel-within-a-tunnel for sites like your bank, crypto wallet, or Google Docs.

  

• Warrant canary: Surfshark is one of the very few VPNs that maintains a page explicitly stating that they have not received any official security letters or disclosure orders.

That last one is an interesting little feature that deserves a couple words:

…warrant canary 🐦 exists because in some countries (most notably the United States) companies are not allowed to talk openly about any disclosure orders they receive from the government.

As a response to that, some smarter companies maintain public statements saying they have NOT received any such orders – which is NOT prohibited.

In other words, if you see zeroes on Surfshark’s warrant canary page, you can be sure there have been no governmental meddling in their operations:

While we’re on the topic, let’s keep the course and see if we can trust Surfshark to protect our personal data:

Security and Privacy

Can Surfshark keep a secret? In 2025, talking about “military-grade encryption” is like a ship boasting a keel – every serious VPN comes with AES-256-GCM.

…WireGuard/OpenVPN protocols, MultiHop, and kill switches have also become industry standard at this point. So does Surfshark really pack any extra plating below the waterline?!

• Camouflage mode obfuscates packets so even your Internet Service Provider can’t tell you’re using a VPN – useful for bypassing VPN blocks, such as streaming services, work networks, and countries with Internet censorship, such as 🇨🇳 China, 🇹🇷 Turkey, 🇷🇺 Russia, and the 🇦🇪 UAE
• Nexus Dynamic IP 2025 rotates your exit IP mid-session while keeping connection stable – great for maximum privacy and bypassing IP filters; note that it’s ⚠️ not ideal for services that expect a persistent IP, such as online banking.
• Optional 2FA and passkeys 2025 allow you to lock down your account with a tap instead of a password – no more typing passwords, and no more panic if your inbox gets compromised.

In our 15+ years using VPNs, there’s nothing, really, that comes to mind.

Bottom line? When it comes to security, Surfshark doesn’t try to reinvent the sail – instead, they methodically tick all the boxes; a fortress for your digital life, nothing less.

That covers Surfshark’s defensive gear – now let’s see what kind of privacy compass they’re steering by.

Surfshark’s privacy stance comes down to three pillars:

1. No-logs policy: connection timestamps, IPs, browsing history – none of it is stored, period (section 1 of Surfshark’s Privacy Policy)
2. RAM-only servers: every Surfshark server uses an immutable image to initialize; no data is stored in permanent memory, i.e. everything is purged on reboot (rolled out across all Surfshark servers since 2023)
3. Independent audits: international big-4 auditor Deloitte last confirmed Surfshark’s no-logs claim in 2025. 🇩🇪 German cybersecurity firm Cure53 scrutinized and green-lit the new Nexus architecture in late 2024.

Surfshark re-incorporated in the 🇳🇱 Netherlands in 2021, moving from British Virgin Islands. Yes, it’s one of the 14-Eyes countries –

…so why, by Neptune’s beard, did they do that?!

This seemingly weird decision boils down to a combination of two factors:

• Firstly: of all developed countries, the Netherlands maintains the most favourable privacy legislation which does not require companies to log or retain user data – supporting Surfshark’s no-logs commitment.

  And without logs there’s nothing to hand over, even if authorities come knocking.

• Secondly: being in the EU, it also falls under the GDPR regulation – the strongest user-centered privacy law in the world.

  Especially relevant is the so-called “right to be forgotten”, which applies to all clients of Surfshark regardless of location – now that the company itself is based in one of GDPR-enforcing countries.

In other words,

Dutch domicile combines the stability and international reputation with supportive privacy laws and golden-standard EU privacy protection.

To add to that, Surfshark offers several more handy privacy tools that go beyond industry standard:

• Every plan comes with an 🥸 alternative ID generator that can create masked email addresses and random personal details, to be used on websites you don’t completely trust.
• Higher plans offer 🚨 personal data leak alerts that monitor the web for any incidents involving your ID, credit card, and other sensitive data becoming public.
• The One+ plan also bundles 🕵️‍♀️ Incogni – a service that automates personal data removal from company databases and “people search” sites; no more random sales calls and creepy emails.

Bottom line? Surfshark’s motto could be summarized as “the only personal data that bears zero risk is NO personal data AT ALL”. And they are pretty meticulous about following that philosopy. This ship’s tight.

So, privacy and security: ✅

How does it fare in the digital seas, though? Let’s talk performance:

Speed and Locations

According to their website, Surfshark operates 3200+ servers in more than 100 countries. It should be noted that while all of the servers are physical, some of the locations are virtual –

for example, if you wish to connect via Albania or Chile, you will get a local IP, but the actual server which handles your connection might be located in Germany or Colombia, respectively.

This does not influence your speed or privacy, but you might see online content in an unexpected language if you use such virtual locations.

Anyway, while there’s nothing remarkable for a modern VPN to offer thousands of servers in dozens of countries, we still need to investigate if Surfshark is up to standard.

So, how’s the speed?

In order to answer this seemingly simple question, it’s not nearly enough to just turn on the VPN and run a speed test on a random location.

When we test VPN connectivity, we measure the speed from every available location, in each case using 2 independent tools (SpeedTest and Fast.com), with up to 5 attempts each.

Our base connection speed (without the VPN) is on average 50 Mb/s using SpeedTest and 40 Mb/s using Fast.com.

Here are select results for the most popular locations using Surfshark:

According to our tests, connection speeds around the world average to about 30 Mb/s for SpeedTest and 20 Mb/s for Fast.com – which is a solid result for a large VPN.

In most locations Surfshark’s speed was so close to our “without-VPN” figures, that we couldn’t tell the difference even using specialized testing software.

Keep in mind that your specific speed will vary depending on many parameters, including your location, your internet provider, as well as time of day and day of the week –

Yet in any case, tests like these still provide a rough benchmark as well as the possibility to compare between locations 📋

2P2 and Torrents

There’s one area where both speed and privacy are quite important for a VPN user: peer-to-peer networks (P2P) and torrenting in particular.

Now, before we proceed, let’s set the record straight:

Torrents and the rest of P2P tech are legal in every country of the world. Some governments do impose restrictions on downloading copyrighted content via peer-to-peer networks – but in others, like Spain and Switzerland, it’s perfectly fine as long as you’re doing it for personal consumption.

With its advanced security and privacy features we discussed earlier, Surfshark comes in handy for torrent users for two main reasons:

• Firstly, thanks to the encrypted connection and anonymous IP, your personal download history becomes inaccessible to the prying eyes of any third party.
• Secondly, Surfshark has P2P-optimized servers in almost all of its locations, which means shorter torrent download times.

Quite counter-intuitively, the second point also implies that Surfshark can actually make your internet connection ⚡ faster when downloading torrents since your Internet Service Provider cannot limit your speed based on your activity anymore.

For even better protection, use the Kill Switch or the new 2025 Everlink feature that automatically pauses your internet connection if your Surfshark VPN connection gets interrupted:

Torrent like a pro with Surfshark VPN

And yes, it goes without saying – but let’s still spell it out:

Regardless of whether your decide to use a VPN, we recommend downloading and seeding only non-copyright-infringing torrents from trusted sources to avoid harm to your computer (and potentially wallet).

Next up: how good is Surfshark at bypassing location-based restrictions?

Unblocking and Streaming

In addition to extensive speed tests, we also manually check whether a VPN enables you to use popular streaming services like Netflix from each of its server locations.

Our tests indicate that, following the tighter filtering implemented by Netflix since January 2020, the streaming service is available through major Surfshark locations, including the US, the UK, Singapore, and the European Union:

In most other locations via Surfshark VPN, you can open the Netflix app or website, but you won’t be able to reliably stream any video content.

In most cases, though, you will only need the US version of Netflix as it contains the widest selection of movies and series.

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As for restrictive countries (foremost China, but also places like Turkey, Russia, and Singapore), Surfshark has several cards up its sleeve:

• No Borders mode, available as a switch in the application settings; what it does is automatically activate a special list of servers specifically designed to operate under government blocks.
• OpenVPN interface (Windows) or IKEv2 (MacOS) that allow connecting via Surfshark’s servers in countries with internet censorship.
• Shadowsocks protocol for bypassing China’s Great Firewall, specifically; Shadowsocks is a proxy, so it does not encrypt your traffic – but if accessing content is all you need, this is a viable option to try in case nothing else works.

Overall, while it’s not really possible to predict whether a VPN will work in all locations across a country like China 🥡 – even if it does work a specific city – Surfshark gives you an extensive toolkit to maximize your chances of success.

In any case, we recommend setting up all of the above options before actually flying to China, as even the official websites of many VPN providers are blocked in the Middle Kingdom.

What if something doesn’t work though? Is it easy to get your problem solved with Surfshark? Let’s have a look at client support:

Surfshark Customer Support

There are 3 ways you can get help with your VPN issues as a client of Surfshark (or even if you’re just considering a subscription):

• Live chat with a representative of Surfshark support team, which we’ll discuss in more detail below
• Contact form for non-urgent questions; you will receive a reply to your query via email
• Self-help knowledgebase for cases when you feel that your problem/question is a fairly standard one

Since chatting with a human in real time is usually the preferred way for the vast majority of users, let’s look at this support channel in more detail.

The live chat is available from the bottom right corner of any page of VPN’s official website, or through the app’s “Settings” section.

At first the chat system will ask you to describe your problem and provide Knowledgebase articles that might help; if there’s nothing useful there, click on the blue “Live chat” button at the bottom:

After that you will need to fill out a short form with your details and click on “Start chat” to be connected to a live representative.

During our tests, the wait times were 10-20 seconds in the vast majority of cases, even on Sunday evenings (which is probably the most popular time for VPN problems to pop up).

The representatives we talked to were polite and quick – sometimes even too quick 💨 which might be explained by the rapid growth in this VPN’s client base in the recent months.

Overall, even our silliest and vaguest questions were treated patiently and got successfully resolved.

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Alright, now that we’ve made sure Surfshark ticks all the boxes when it comes to speed, security, privacy, and reliability, the final dimension to consider is the money:

Pricing and Refunds

While Surfshark seems to work hard to deliver on all fronts that are important for a VPN service, their strongest card in this game is undoubtedly the price.

How do we know that?

Easy – we constantly watch VPN prices across the market. A picture is worth a lot of words, so here’s a little chart we’ve compiled, showing the prices of the cheapest plans for the most popular VPN services:

Indeed, Surfshark seems to “swallow its competitors whole” when it comes to pricing…

It outperforms even those competitors which offer a 3-year plan, while its own cheapest offer is for a 2-year billing cycle, meaning you need to pay even less upfront, for a lower per-month price.

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At this point you might be wondering:

Does it make sense to pay for 2 or 3 years in advance for a service which I haven’t even tried yet?!

Fair point. Unfortunately, VPNs typically don’t offer free trials – but you can still try a service like Surfshark without any risk.

Here’s how their 30-day money-back guarantee works:

1. Log in to your account on Surfshark’s official website and click on the blue chat button in the bottom right corner.
2. Type anything and hit “Enter” – you will see some suggestions from their knowledgebase as well as a “Live chat” button. Click on it.
3. Write a message to the support team saying that you’d like to cancel your account based on their 30-day money-back guarantee.

(and yes, we’ve successfully obtained a full refund for a cancelled account as part of our tests)

Regardless of whether you provide a specific reason for leaving Surfshark, the support team representative will probably try to persuade you to stay – it’s their job, after all 🦸‍♀‍

Just reiterate that you’d like your account closed and refunded – and as long as it’s less than a month old the support team will eventually grant your request.

Expect 5-7 business days for the money to reach your account. Done!

Given what we’ve found about Surfshark so far, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever need to use the money-back guarantee – but it’s nice to know that you have this option, right?

Speaking of options: here’s neat little trick for those who do decide to try Surfshark.

BONUS: Surfshark coupon

Did you know that it’s possible to 👑 unlock an even better deal at Surfshark using a special code?

By default, 12-month and 24-month plans come with 3 extra months, already offering higher value than most other VPNs.

With our code, you can get an extra month completely free – in other words, an even better price!

Follow these steps to unlock it:

1. To start, visit the official Surfshark order page by clicking the button below (the direct link will open in a new window):

   Get 1 extra month free at Surfshark ›

2. Choose any plan you like, as long as it’s a 12-month or 24-month billing cycle.
3. On the next screen, click ‘x” to remove the surfsharkdeal coupon that’s applied automatically:

   

   Then paste this code into the coupon field:

   satori
4. Click “Apply”, and you should see the pricing table change: a 24+3 month plan will become a 24+4 month plan with an even better price.

Alright, that’s done – it’s time to sail for shore…

Surfshark FAQ

Before we wrap up with our final verdict, here are answers to some of the most common questions people have about Surfshark VPN in 2025:

Our Verdict + User Reviews

Security breaches, malicious agents, regional content filters, governmental restrictions, hyper-targeted ads based on your private information…

Is Surfshark VPN a worthy ally in navigating the murky waters of the modern Internet? 🌊

Here’s the TL;DR:

If you’re tired of overpriced VPNs with clunky apps, random disconnects, and limits on how many devices you can use – Surfshark feels like a breathe of fresh salty (encrypted) sea air:

• Top-tier security: AES-256 encryption, Kill Switch, Everlink MultiHop, Camouflage mode — it’s all here, plus new toys like Nexus and Everlink.
• No-logs policy + RAM-only servers: Even if someone asked for your data, there’d be nothing to hand over.
• Vast server network: 100+ countries, great speeds worldwide, solid streaming access.
• Ridiculously good pricing: Cheaper than most — and with extra months if you follow our coupon trick.

Plus, there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can test-drive it completely risk-free.

Conclusion?

Surfshark gives you 110% of what other “big” VPNs offer – at about 30% of the price. And you can use it on as many devices as you want ;)

(If you do decide to try Surfshark, be sure to check out our step-by-step instructions on unlocking an even better deal in the previous section)

Get Surfshark at the Best Price ›

…still unsure about Surfshark? Have suggestions for improving our analysis? Or maybe you’ve already tried this VPN and would like to share your experience?

In any case, leave a review or take part in the discussion below – let’s help each other make reasonable decisions!

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Affiliate disclosure:

some links in this review are affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you buy through them — at no extra cost to you. It helps keep our ship afloat, arrr!