FastestVPN overview

Value When Reviewed

From $1.11 per 30 days (10 units)

Greatest Costs At the moment: FastestVPN

Utilizing superlatives in your organization identify is a daring technique, particularly when that identify is FastestVPN. Once we final reviewed the service in the direction of the top of 2022, we remained unimpressed general.

Nevertheless, seven months later, the corporate contacted us to say they’ve been working exhausting to deal with our criticisms. One essential factor was to get an impartial audit that confirmed it actually does stick by its no-logs coverage, and the opposite was to roll out the WireGuard protocol for quicker speeds.

So, do these enhancements make FastestVPN worthy of your shortlist?

Briefly, sure. Whereas the VPN service doesn’t rival one of the best – equivalent to NordVPN – general, there’s nonetheless sufficient right here to make it enticing to some folks.

The most important attraction remains to be the worth. FastestVPN is certainly one of few VPN providers that gives a lifetime subscription. It’s now twice as costly because it was, however at simply $40 it’s nonetheless a discount. That’s lower than plenty of rivals cost for a single 12 months.

A lifetime subscription is strictly what it seems like: you pay as soon as and may use the service for the foreseeable future.

It seems like a rip-off, but it surely isn’t. Clearly there are not any ensures the corporate can be round to supply the service in 10 years’ time, however at this value, you possibly can’t actually lose.

To be exact, you possibly can’t lose if FastestVPN does the stuff you need it to. And to search out out if it does, learn on.

Options

• Servers in 39 nations
• Double VPN (three choices)
• 6 P2P servers
• Streaming-optimised servers in 7 nations

FastestVPN has a comparatively small variety of servers in comparison with NordVPN, CyberGhost and others. There are round 100 that are unfold throughout 39 nations and 55 areas. 10 of those are within the USA in varied states, with a quantity in Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland after which only a single server in lots of different nations. The UK and Japan have two apiece.

There’s a server in India, but it surely’s marked as digital. The legal guidelines in India now pressure VPNs to log person knowledge which is why plenty of VPN providers have pulled their Indian servers and provide solely digital Indian areas, if in any respect. FastestVPN advised us that the Indian server is definitely positioned within the Cayman Islands, the place the corporate is headquartered.

P2P is supported on just some servers – in Finland, Portugal and Germany – and there are seven streaming-optimised servers in Korea, Japan, India, USA, UK, Canada and Italy.

The D-VPN means double VPN. And that, in case you’re nonetheless none the wiser, means it routes your connection by way of two VPN servers as a substitute of 1, including one other layer of safety. Nevertheless, there are solely three choices at the moment: France by way of UK, Germany by way of Spain, and UK by way of USA.

The most important disadvantage of getting a small variety of servers is the danger of them being overloaded. And since the apps don’t point out how ‘full’ or busy every location is, you’ll solely know there’s an issue if you get gradual connection speeds.

With different VPN providers which have many servers at every location, there’s much less of an opportunity of this taking place.

Apps

With regards to apps, FastestVPN provides them for Home windows, Mac, Android and iOS. It lists many extra units, equivalent to Apple TV, Roku and video games consoles, however that is deceptive: it’s potential to run a VPN on lots of these units solely in case you can configure your router to make use of a VPN, which additionally means all your property units run by way of the VPN, which isn’t one thing most individuals will wish to do, and never one thing all routers assist.

Jim Martin / Foundry

The Amazon Firestick app isn’t obtainable within the app retailer on the machine, which is a ache. As an alternative it’s important to side-load the Android APK by first putting in the Downloader app. That’s inconvenient and one thing you don’t must do with NordVPN, Surfshark and others.

There’s assist for varied Linux distros, however solely by way of the command line: there’s no graphical interface.

It’s additionally deceptive to name the Chrome and Firefox extensions ‘VPN for…’ as a result of these are proxy providers, not VPNs.

The Firefox extension is just a little clearer about this reality in its description, however calls itself “FastestVPN Proxy – Free VPN for an Unrestricted and Safe Web Expertise“. It isn’t free, and it isn’t a VPN.

The Chrome extension known as FastestVPN Proxy for Chrome, however the description misleadingly says,

“FastestVPN is constructed on the cutting-edge VPN know-how to ship unmatched safety and efficiency.

Hailing from the Cayman Islands, you possibly can ensure that your actions can be stay nameless. This Chrome VPN extension comes with a zero-log coverage and stands by its dedication to person privateness.”

It then talks about VPN one other half-dozen instances. Most customers would assume that their exercise in Chrome would have the identical stage of safety as utilizing the VPN app, however in reality a proxy service doesn’t encrypt all knowledge in the identical method, and typically by no means.

We’re all the time disillusioned after we see VPN providers claiming to make your exercise nameless.

The apps will mechanically choose one of the best protocol by default, but it surely doesn’t let you know which one it’s utilizing. If you wish to make certain it’s utilizing WireGuard, you must choose that manually within the settings.

All of the apps have an analogous design (besides Linux, after all) so it’s straightforward to change between units and see a well-recognized interface.

The cellular apps have been developed the furthest, though even now they’re solely simply getting options rivals have all the time had of their apps, equivalent to the power so as to add favorite servers. It’s good you could long-press on a rustic to see particular areas and these are ordered by ping so you possibly can faucet on the primary to get what must be the quickest speeds.

Home windows

We final checked out FastestVPN in November 2022, and located fairly just a few points with the Home windows app. These has largely been resolved, and the installer not throws up a warning as a result of it didn’t have a sound digital signature.

It does, annoyingly, nonetheless trigger a Home windows PowerShell popup each time you launch the app, which asks you if it’s okay for the app to make modifications to your system. That is one other factor that FastestVPN wants to deal with, as a result of different VPN apps don’t do that and, even for individuals who extra technically educated, it’s nonetheless a worrying message that may make you’re feeling uneasy about precisely what it’s doing.

The app is way from one of the best round, however it’s pretty simple to make use of and there’s now a Favourites tab for servers you connect with recurrently. So as to add a favorite you must click on the tiny, unintelligible icon subsequent to the server identify. Look intently and also you’ll spot it’s a gray coronary heart with a line by way of it: this turns into a pink coronary heart when you’ve clicked it, and the server then seems within the Favourites part.

In contrast to the cellular apps, you possibly can’t see every server’s ping. There’s no method to inform how busy each is in any of the apps.

Jim Martin / Foundry

General, there aren’t a great deal of options. The corporate’s web site says there’s malware safety and ad-blocking, however you gained’t see any point out of this within the apps, together with the Home windows model. And there was no proof that any adverts have been being blocked whereas we used the service.

You will get the app to auto-launch with Home windows and auto connect with the VPN. However there are not any settings to specify which server it ought to connect with, no auto join when your machine joins an unknown or unsecured Wi-Fi community, no cut up tunnelling and no advert or tracker blocker that plenty of rivals have.

The kill change, which is off by default, is only a tick field: it’s on or off. When it’s triggered, it shows a pop-up to ask if you wish to reconnect to the VPN or resume web connectivity. These are confusingly worded, because the latter means “use the web with out a VPN”, but it surely’s higher than no notification in any respect. With another VPNs, you’re left with no web entry and no thought why.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Android and iOS apps

The 2 apps use an equivalent interface however as with all VPNs the Android model will get a much bigger serving to of options. Not many, thoughts you. It has cut up tunnelling, letting you select which apps use the VPN and which don’t, and a kill change.

On an iPhone there’s Good Tunneling which “permits VPN safety for added domains even when the app will not be open”. It’s important to add every web site manually, and there’s no method to decide on (as with cut up tunnelling) which apps do and don’t use the VPN.

There are three tabs, with the identical choices in every.

Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry

The iPhone app is trickier to make use of. Its interface makes use of a combination of again buttons and sliding pop-ups, which it’s important to slide downwards to return. The difficulty is that it’s not all the time apparent if you’re a pop-up, leaving you looking for a non-existent again button.

It isn’t the slickest: among the textual content may be very small and someday textual content cuts off so you possibly can’t see, for instance, which server is used for the Germany double-VPN connection.

Jim Martin / Foundry

To see particular person servers inside a rustic, it’s important to faucet and maintain, which isn’t a well-recognized gesture to iPhone customers. Then, you do the identical on a particular server so as to add it as a favorite.

Weirdly, the record of Favourite servers is on the Account display screen, however you can even discover it on the backside of the primary servers display screen.

One optimistic factor concerning the iPhone app is that stay chat assist is in-built and – not like final time we tried it – it truly works now so you possibly can communicate to a consultant from throughout the app. The one snag with that is you could’t return to the app to test something whereas the chat is open: faucet the Shut button and your chat is ended.

Privateness & safety

Registered within the Cayman Islands for its beneficial privateness legal guidelines, FastestVPN’s privateness coverage states “We don’t retailer your logs in anyway. Any info or logs associated to your shopping historical past – the web sites you go to, the content material you obtain or stream, your site visitors locations, or your DNS queries – stays with you and also you alone.”

So, it is a no-logs VPN, which is what you’d count on.

And there’s nice information: the service has now been independently audited to show that it isn’t logging your exercise or every other knowledge. The report is offered solely to subscribers, which is a disgrace, however does verify that, on the time when the audit was carried out, FastestVPN was not logging the information it says it doesn’t log.

The essential a part of the report states this: “On the dates of our overview, Altius IT didn’t discover any proof of system configurations and/or system/service log recordsdata that, independently or collectively, might result in figuring out a particular particular person and/or the particular person’s exercise when utilizing FastestVPN service.”

FastestVPN doesn’t provide any particulars about whether or not its servers are rented, nor how they’re configured. Nevertheless, the corporate did inform us that its servers run in RAM solely, like NordVPN and Surfshark’s.

Efficiency

One massive lacking function after we final examined FastestVPN was assist for WireGuard. It has now rolled this out, and a few of its servers have been upgraded to 10Gbps uplinks. So, naturally, we wished to see if this had made any distinction.

Under you possibly can see the outcomes from these assessments, which have been carried out on a Gigabit fibre connection in San Francisco, with the identical speeds obtainable for uploads in addition to downloads. Clockwise from top-left the areas are New York, Tokyo, Sydney and London.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Surprisingly, the quickest speeds got here from the Sydney server the place add and obtain speeds have been each over 450Mbps. The best velocity was nearly 550Mbps from the New York server, and the bottom from London at simply 140Mbps.

That’s truly slower than after we first examined FastestVPN (in March 2022) the place we noticed round 200-240Mbps for obtain speeds (however solely 25-45Mbps for add utilizing IKEv2 within the Home windows app).

You’ve got to remember that speeds range on a regular basis, however we did run these assessments a number of instances and noticed comparable figures.

Nevertheless, to place these speeds in perspective, we noticed over 500Mbps from the LA server and nearly 50Mbps add a 12 months in the past utilizing IKEv2 (beneath, backside proper). And, general FastestVPN – sadly – doesn’t stay as much as its identify. There are an excellent variety of quicker VPN providers, together with NordVPN and Surfshark.

Connecting to London – at nearly 8pm GMT, the identical time we ran the assessments in March – noticed speeds of simply 31Mbps down and 14Mbps up.

Oddly, a server in Tokyo offered a lot quicker obtain speeds of 145Mbps, however that was about 100Mbps lower than we received earlier than.

It turned out that these have been achieved utilizing OpenVPN, which is often quicker than IKEv2. However not in FastestVPN’s implementation.

That stated, these speeds are a lot quicker than the 9-15Mbps downloads we noticed again in March.

IKEv2 speeds have improved too, with over 500Mbps on the LA server and nearly 50Mbps add. That’s good, but it surely’s nonetheless method lower than the 900Mbps connection we have been utilizing to check with, and that’s in each instructions, up in addition to down.

Jim Martin / Foundry

There’s excellent news in that, as soon as once more, we discovered no IP or DNS leaks, and since there’s nonetheless no IPv6 assist, these connections are merely blocked, and so they have been in our assessments.

One potential challenge we found whereas testing the kill change within the Home windows app was that our actual IP tackle was briefly seen for a second or two earlier than the kill change kicked in and blocked web entry. This occurred when manually disconnecting from a VPN server, although, and shouldn’t be a significant challenge for most individuals.

Unblocking

Unblocking content material was an actual weak level. Nevertheless, the choice of streaming servers has solved this.

We related to the UK Streaming server from France and had no points watching BBC iPlayer or ITVX, which was refreshing.

From the UK, we additionally examined the US Streaming server and located that it equally unblocked Disney+ and Netflix and allowed us to look at NCIS and different US exclusives.

The corporate says that it’s going to additionally unblock Hotstar, which we didn’t take a look at.

Since there’s no streaming server for Australia, you gained’t be watching 9Now from every other nation. It’s additionally price remembering that solely seven nations are lined. So in case you wished to unblock Neflix’s French library to look at one thing unique on there (equivalent to the newest season of Miraculous), you gained’t be capable to.

Value & plans

We’ve already talked about how a lot FastestVPN prices, and it’s exhausting to think about anybody would resolve towards the lifetime subscription (US$40 – round £32.50) and choose to pay yearly for $25 (round £16). There’s no free trial or free tier, so the most affordable method to take a look at the service is to enroll in a month for $7 (round £5).

You’ll be able to’t pay by cryptocurrency: the choices are PayPal or a credit score or debit card.

There’s a 15-day money-back assure on all plans, which is half so long as most rivals provide. You would possibly assume it is a method to check out the service free of charge, but it surely isn’t tough to search out sad individuals who have posted on-line to say that they have been unable to get a refund once they requested one.

The subscription permits you to have 10 units related on the identical time. And within the unlikely occasion you want extra, you possibly can add extra for $4 every, and you are able to do this afterward out of your account dashboard.

Verdict

Though the worth has doubled, $40 remains to be a discount for lifetime entry to a VPN that gives first rate speeds, unblocks in style streaming providers and has an audited no-logs coverage.

And for anybody who already took out a lifetime subscription for $20, they’ll improve to get WireGuard and entry to the 10Gbps servers for streaming, double VPN and P2P. It may appear a bit unfair to must pay once more, however you possibly can select to not and proceed to get the identical service and options as earlier than.

It’s good to see that the service has been improved since we final examined it and, in case you’re pleased with the speeds on provide, it’s a first rate choice for individuals who need an audited no-logs VPN at a rock-bottom value.

There are nonetheless loads of indicators that it is a ‘low cost’ VPN, although, from the restricted variety of servers to the considerably clunky apps. We’d hesitate to belief the kill change totally to maintain our IP tackle firmly underneath wraps and also you’ll discover extra options – notably on Home windows – in a lot of rival VPNs.

Nevertheless, once more, FastestVPN ticks plenty of the essential bins. As long as you don’t wish to watch one of many extra obscure streaming providers (equivalent to Australia’s 9Now that we already talked about), FastestVPN is good worth.