Is Surfshark a good VPN? The plan, renewal and tests

What the plan covers, and what the pages disagree on

Surfshark’s own review page says you can connect to 4,500+ servers in 100 countries and use the VPN on unlimited devices at the same time. Security.org’s feature table gives the same server count and adds that the servers are all RAM-based; vpnMentor says all 4,500 servers are 10Gbps. On protocols, Surfshark’s trust center lists WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2 and a protocol it built itself, Dausos, with AES-256-GCM encryption, ChaCha20 for WireGuard and AEGIS-256X2 for Dausos. Security.org adds that Surfshark’s post-quantum version of WireGuard was, when it wrote, available for Mac, Linux and Android, with iOS and Windows still pending.

There are three plans. vpnMentor says Starter is the standard VPN plan and One and One+ are personal security bundles. AllAboutCookies says antivirus and breach monitoring are not in Starter. Security.org says One adds antivirus and phishing protection, and that One+ adds Incogni, which it describes as Surfshark’s data removal tool. Security.org lists the average monthly cost by length of commitment, which the first figure reproduces.

The prices differ from page to page. Security.org and AllAboutCookies give $16.45 for one month of Starter; vpnMentor gives $15.45. For two years, Security.org and AllAboutCookies give $2.49 a month, vpnMentor’s table gives $1.99 with three extra months, and TheBestVPN gives about $2.39 for 27 months bought upfront with a coupon. AllAboutCookies headed its page with a Black Friday offer, and the pages were updated on different dates. When we opened Surfshark’s own review page, the price box showed a message that it had an issue loading prices. We therefore give the range and the dates, not one price.

Two extras appear in the pages. Security.org says a dedicated IP address costs $3.75 a month on top of the subscription. vpnMentor says there is a seven-day free trial on Android, iOS and macOS, through the Apple or Google store. Four of the eight pages we read are review sites that say they earn money from the services they review: vpnMentor mentions affiliate commission, Security.org says it may earn compensation, AllAboutCookies says it receives compensation and TheBestVPN says it may earn a commission from links. Each claim below carries the name of the page that makes it.

What the small print says about the second year

Surfshark’s terms of service, clause 4, say that paid services renew automatically at the end of each service period and that the chosen payment method is charged again, unless you cancel the automatic payments before the renewal. The terms add that Surfshark will inform you by email in advance about the renewal if the subscription is longer than one month. They also say Surfshark may change the price, including recurring fees, and will communicate changes in advance. The text points to a page of currently applicable recurring fees; we did not open it, so the renewal price is not in what we read.

The refund terms are narrower than the headline. The 30-day money-back guarantee, the terms say, applies only to the initial purchase and is limited to one refund per service; all recurring payments are non-refundable. The terms also say Surfshark cannot refund a subscription bought from resellers other than Paddle, Google Play or Cleverbridge, or bought with a prepaid or gift card, and that an anonymous dedicated IP and the Alternative Number feature are excluded. A deleted account is not refunded for the unused part of the period. vpnMentor describes its own test of the guarantee: it asked through live chat, gave a reason, was approved right away and had the money back four days later. That is one test by one review site.

What the renewal costs is where the pages differ. vpnMentor says renewal prices can almost double and that on the 24-month plan the cost can rise to nearly $5 a month. AllAboutCookies says Surfshark “renews at full price” after the first term. TheBestVPN lists, as its only con, that discounts are for longer subscriptions only. The Security.org page we read does not mention the renewal price, and the pages we read do not give the exact second-year figure for a one-year plan or say how many days before renewal the notice email arrives.

The way to switch renewal off is on Surfshark’s support page, updated on 11 September 2026. For a plan bought on Surfshark’s website, the second figure lists the steps. The page says the subscription stays active until the end of the current billing period, that no further payments are charged unless auto-renewal is turned back on, and that refunds are not provided for the unused part of an active period. For a plan bought through Google Play, the Apple App Store or an Amazon account, the page says renewal is cancelled on that platform, not on Surfshark’s site.

Where it is based, who owns it and what it keeps

Surfshark says in its trust center that it is based in the Netherlands and that Dutch law does not establish an obligation to log or retain user data. Security.org and vpnMentor point to the other side of the same fact: the Netherlands is part of the Nine Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, and Security.org says that means member countries can compel Surfshark to hand over user data. Surfshark’s answer, in Security.org’s words, is a no-logs policy.

On ownership, vpnMentor says that in 2022 Surfshark merged with Nord Security, the company behind NordVPN, to form one holding company, and that Surfshark still operates separately. TheBestVPN dates the merger to early 2022 and says both companies said they would keep operating independently. Surfshark’s review page says the same in a sentence: the two merged under one holding company but still operate independently.

On what is kept, Security.org says Surfshark collects identity and payment data, and also stores your IP address during active sessions to prevent abuse, deleting it within 15 minutes of disconnection. vpnMentor says Surfshark temporarily processes a user ID, an IP address and connection timestamps, deleted after 15 minutes. Security.org puts the IP recording in its list of drawbacks, as not best practice for a “no-logs” VPN, while its own experts say in the same article that they are fine with the practice. It says Deloitte’s 2025 audit verified the deletion time.

What the audits are, and what we could not read

The audit list is on Surfshark’s trust center, so it is Surfshark’s own account. It lists no-logs assurance reports by Deloitte for 2023 and 2025, and says the full report is available in a user’s Surfshark account. It lists Cure53 audits of the browser extensions in 2018, of the infrastructure in 2021 and of the infrastructure and the Dausos protocol in 2026, and two SecuRing assessments in 2025, one of the infrastructure and one of the web, desktop and mobile applications and browser plugins. On its review page Surfshark lists four ticks for the 2025 Deloitte report: the no-activity-logs policy verified, “No IP address storage confirmed”, privacy-relevant settings checked and the server infrastructure reviewed. It marks the full Deloitte report as available only to Surfshark users.

The review sites cite the audits differently. vpnMentor writes that the main no-logs review was completed by Deloitte in December 2022, and does not mention 2023 or 2025; its page was updated on 22 June 2026. AllAboutCookies says Deloitte audited the no-logs policy in June 2025. TheBestVPN says Deloitte audited in 2023 and again in 2025, and Security.org cites the 2025 audit. vpnMentor adds a MASA audit of the Android app in December 2023, which Surfshark’s trust center also lists, and a warrant canary, which the other seven pages we read do not mention.

Two things in these pages sit side by side without an explanation. Surfshark’s review page ticks “No IP address storage confirmed”, while Security.org and vpnMentor say the session IP is kept and deleted within 15 minutes. The pages we read do not say how the two statements fit together. We did not read any of the audit reports: Deloitte’s is behind a Surfshark login, and we did not open the Cure53 and SecuRing links. What we can report is what Surfshark and the review sites say the reports found.

Where the tests disagree

Kill switch. Security.org says that while running its torrenting tests the connection dropped for a second and Surfshark instantly severed internet access. AllAboutCookies says Surfshark failed its kill switch test: it connected to a server in Canada and then to one in Mexico with the kill switch on, and ipleak.net detected DNS requests going through the testers’ internet provider’s servers in Texas, with both the soft and the strict mode. TheBestVPN says it disconnected the VPN to simulate a crash and that Surfshark correctly halted all traffic. These are different tests, a dropped connection against a server change, so the results do not contradict one another outright. Our page on what a VPN kill switch blocks describes Surfshark’s two modes and a test of your own.

Speed. Security.org’s text says that on a server across the ocean Surfshark slowed its download speed by about 10 percent. The table in the same article lists download drops of 31% on a MacBook and 17% on an Acer, and for the Acer a ping that went from 7 to 199 ms. AllAboutCookies says download drops stayed under 18% across four servers, that the Fastest Location option picked a Dallas server and cut downloads by 4%, and that uploads fell 24% on the US server, 76% in the UK and 84% in Australia. The sites tested different machines and routes, so the numbers cannot be laid over one another.

China. Security.org says Camouflage Mode hid the fact that it was using a VPN and counts Surfshark among the VPNs it recommends for users in China. vpnMentor says customer support confirmed that Surfshark does not work in China, Russia or Turkey. TheBestVPN says that in its 2025 tests in China, with obfuscation on, Surfshark did work, though not as consistently as some top rivals.

Torrenting and streaming. vpnMentor says Surfshark has 110 P2P servers and that the app does not label them clearly; TheBestVPN says all servers support P2P. vpnMentor also says router use needs manual setup on firmware with a WireGuard, OpenVPN or IKEv2 client pre-installed (our page on VPN routers covers routers in general). Security.org says a 4 GB torrent of non-copyrighted content finished about five percent slower than without the VPN. On streaming the three pages that tested it agree: AllAboutCookies unblocked the Netflix libraries of the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, vpnMentor says BBC iPlayer worked on all four UK servers it tried, and Security.org says Netflix changed region without a hitch. All three are sites that earn money from sign-ups.

Scores. Security.org rates Surfshark 9.5 out of 10 and says NordVPN, at the top of its list, scored 9.7. AllAboutCookies calls it “the best value VPN we’ve tested”. We repeat these only as what each site wrote, not as a ranking of ours.

What the pages let you check for yourself

The pages we read do not turn into a yes or a no, and this one does not either. They do point to things a reader can look at directly. The terms and the support page give the refund window and where auto-renewal is switched off, and the pages disagree on price while Surfshark’s own page did not show one, so a price has to be read on the day. The terms say the guarantee covers the first purchase only. The kill switch results differ between reviews, and our kill switch page describes a test a reader can run on a given device. On the renewal, the terms say the 30-day guarantee runs from the initial purchase and that recurring payments are non-refundable, while Surfshark’s support page says that after you cancel auto-renewal the subscription stays active until the end of the current billing period; the terms also say Surfshark will email you in advance about a renewal of a subscription longer than one month, without saying how many days before. A reader can therefore note the purchase date, the end of the 30-day window and the renewal date before paying for two years.

We did not read the Reddit thread on whether Surfshark is a good VPN, Surfshark’s page of current prices, the audit reports or the page of recurring fees the terms link to. We did not subscribe to Surfshark or run any test.