Windscribe VPN Review: An Exceptional VPN Built on Trust (original) (raw)

While a relative newcomer to the VPN industry, Windscribe has already cemented itself as a leader in privacy, transparency, and communication. It offers 10Gbps server coverage, excellent city-level server support, and strong WireGuard implementation. The company also put its money where its mouth is: Founder Yegor Sak went to court over activity conducted on Windscribe's network and refused to hand information over. Plus, Windscribe's free tier is one of the best no-cost VPN options available. Proton remains the only five-star VPN we've tested thanks to its even larger collection of privacy tools, but Windscribe easily earns our Editors' Choice award for its excellent performance and unrivaled transparency.

Windscribe’s pricing tiers are simple: The monthly Pro plan costs 9permonth(theindustryaverageisaround9 per month (the industry average is around 9permonth(theindustryaverageisaround10), and the annual subscription costs $69.

Windscribe VPN's pricing page

(Credit: PCMag/Windscribe)

There's also a configurable plan, where you can pick and choose exactly which locations you want, starting at a minimum purchase of $3 per month. Each location comes with 10GB of bandwidth, or you can add unlimited data to your plan for an extra dollar. It’s a solid option if you’re only looking to use a VPN in specific regions, allowing you to connect to the locations you want and ditch those that you don’t.

That said, I wouldn’t recommend the configurable plan if you want the whole swathe of servers. Manual selection will only get you nine countries of coverage for the same price as a monthly plan, which covers the total network of 69 locations.

Unlike many other VPN services, Windscribe doesn’t offer constant limited-time deals or use gimmicky sales tactics like countdown timers or pop-up ads. (In fact, the company doesn’t do any traditional advertising, which we'll discuss below.) However, there are occasional deals for the annual membership on certain dates, like the company’s anniversary or during major holidays, that drop the price significantly.

Windscribe has a competitive free plan with two tiers. You can sign up with no information at all and get 2GB of monthly data and access to servers in 10 countries. That limit goes up to 10GB if you sign up using an email address. There are no catches, and you don't have to contend with ads or notifications to upgrade. Aside from server access and bandwidth limitations, free users have access to all of the same features as premium subscribers.

If you are ready to pay for a subscription, you only need to provide a username and password. Supplying an email address is optional, but recommended for being able to reset your password in case you lose it. You can always use a burner email address if you don’t want any personal information tied to the service. You can purchase the base subscription and any add-ons with cryptocurrencies via CoinPayments for maximum anonymity. Standard payment options like PayPal, Paymentwall, and most major credit cards are also accepted. (Cash would be a welcome option, as similarly privacy-focused VPNs like Mullvad accept it as payment.)

How a VPN Works

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How a VPN Works

It's worth noting that the purchase process on the Windscribe desktop page is one of the smoothest, most well-designed sales funnels I've seen. Every element of the signup process can be handled directly from the homepage as various prompts flip in and out of the same box. This isn't just a site that the VPN industry should emulate, but anyone selling a product on the web, period_._

Windscribe limits refunds. The account must be less than seven days old and must not have used more than 10GB of data. This may seem strict, but keep in mind that you can try the service out for free before you pay up. We prefer that model over a service with a money-back guarantee and no free plan.

Windscribe doesn’t bundle many extras or lock the majority of features behind paywalls. Instead, it offers a capable VPN that supports unlimited simultaneous device connections, split tunneling, six connection protocols, and loads of advanced configurations.

Each subscription comes with access to Windscribe’s browser-based proxy service. (You can use the proxy for free, but you’ll be limited to the same data restrictions as the no-cost VPN plan.) Multi-hop is available in the sense that you can connect to both the proxy and the VPN at the same time, but it isn’t quite the same as a one-click multi-hop that you’d see from Proton’s Secure Core feature.

Another feature, Circumvent Censorship, uses advanced obfuscation to bypass restrictive government blocks and censorship. Use this feature and any others like it with caution. We can’t test a VPN’s efficacy in dangerous areas, and, even if we could, there would be dire implications if we got it wrong.

With every subscription, you'll also have the option to configure ROBERT, a tongue-in-cheek acronym for Remote Omnidirectional Badware Eliminating Robotic Tool. It blocks trackers and ads, prevents access to malicious domains, and allows you to set up custom rules and blocklists.

Windscribe's R.O.B.E.R.T. tool description

(Credit: PCMag/Windscribe)

You can also add a couple of niche extras for an additional price. The first is a static IP address, which can come in handy if you need the protection of a VPN but don’t want your IP address to change each time you connect. An address from one of Windscribe’s data centers will run you 2permonth,oryoucansnagaresidentialaddressfor2 per month, or you can snag a residential address for 2permonth,oryoucansnagaresidentialaddressfor8 per month. With any static IP address, you'll get access to Standard port forwarding, but all Pro users can tap what Windscribe describes as ephemeral port forwarding. Essentially, you need to refresh your port forwarding setup each week. This is to prevent users from setting up port forwarding and then going dormant or not using the feature, which could slow things down for other paid users.

Meanwhile, the ScribeForce plan for teams and businesses delivers all of the same base features with an added control hub, centralized billing, and the ability to share purchased static IPs. Prices start at $3 per month, per seat.

Windscribe has six protocols available, depending on which client you are using.

VPN server pages throw around a lot of big numbers; good luck trying to figure out the real, physical server count. CyberGhost—one of the few services that is transparent about its virtual server usage—spells out that its 11,500 servers on offer aren’t all physically located in the countries the service supports. Most are virtual, meaning the real hardware is elsewhere.

What does that mean? Virtual connections offer increased coverage to underserved areas but come at the cost of performance. You could connect to a server in your home country, for instance, only to find that your latency is through the roof and that your speeds have plummeted. This happens when a company uses a virtual server that could be thousands of miles away from the area it is serving.

This context is important because Windscribe doesn’t use virtual servers at all. The company supports access in 69 countries and 134 cities. An exact server count isn’t published since, like every VPN, that figure constantly changes. What may appear to be a small network is actually one of the largest fleets of physical servers available from a VPN provider. Physical coverage extends to locations that many VPNs neglect, even with virtual servers, such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Paraguay.

Additionally, Windscribe does not use virtual servers or virtual locations. In previous interviews, the company founder told us he finds the practice dishonest. The use of virtual servers isn’t inherently a problem, but the obfuscation is. We appreciate Windscribe and the team's unbending level of transparency.

Since our last review, Windscribe has vastly improved its 10Gbps infrastructure, with 102 supported servers as opposed to 23 in 2023. Thanks to RAM-disk servers that do not retain information between boot cycles, no data is written to storage.

The server list is comprehensive. You can see exactly where each server is located at the city level. You also get detailed information regarding which protocols and activities the server supports.

Windscribe’s privacy policy is short, simple, and clear: The company retains next to nothing about its users. At no point is your source IP or browsing history logged. The company uses a bespoke authentication system that discards all unnecessary data regarding connections. It no longer needs to delete unwanted user data, such as usernames and session timestamps, after every session, as that data is never recorded in the first place.

You don’t need to give any personal information to Windscribe to sign up, so the only identifiers tied to your account will be your username or email, if you provided one. Data usage is tracked to prevent abuse of the free tier as well as to routinely prune inactive accounts. The specifics of what you download, browse, or stream are never logged. I recommend reading the policy over yourself as well. There are no red flags, but it’s worth being fully informed before you make a purchase and trust a company with your data.

Beyond a standard privacy policy, Windscribe has a code of ethics, stating that the service is self-funded and self-hosted and that the team doesn’t participate in affiliate deals, advertising, or paid review content. Most competitors can't say the same. More VPNs and privacy services should spell out their ethical policies to give users greater insight into how decisions are made and whether the company’s views align with their own.

You don’t have to take Windscribe’s word for everything, either. You’re right not to trust what a VPN claims. That’s why pretty much every piece of software the service puts out is open source, so you can take a deep dive and verify any claims for yourself. Additionally, a monthly transparency report is kept up to date with every DMCA and law enforcement request received. No requests have resulted in a handover of user data. The company’s founder also went through a lengthy court case stemming from a Windscribe IP address allegedly being used to breach a server in Greece. Long story short, no information was handed over, and the case was dismissed.

Windscribe underwent two in-depth audits in 2024 by PacketLabs. The full scope, results, and testing procedures are publicly available, and I recommend you give them a read yourself. The gist: a full penetration test was performed, as well as in-depth reviews of the VPN’s source code and policies. All vulnerabilities were remediated, and the overall report goes into detail regarding exactly what was done to improve security and privacy across the board. Plenty of VPNs undergo audits, but very few release the full, unedited reports to the public.

Windscribe is also clear on what a VPN can and cannot do. Many believe it to be a fix-all for privacy, but that simply isn’t the case. The company's focus on privacy and transparency is clear in its public statements, and the fact that it avoids common industry practices like sponsored content, affiliate programs, and influencer sponsorships.

Every VPN is going to impact your performance and latency to some degree. I perform a series of tests using Ookla Speedtest, both with and without the VPN running, to gauge how much the service affects speeds. I perform these tests from my local connection in Portland, Oregon, connecting to the closest server offered and comparing the performance against my base internet speeds that day. You can read a full rundown of how we test VPNs for further details. (Note: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag.com's parent company. For more, see the ethics policy in our Editorial Mission Statement.)

Windscribe has made a leap in performance since the last time we reviewed the service. Prior tests produced middling results, but that was certainly not the case this time. I spoke with a member of the Windscribe team, and they mentioned that the team had made efforts to improve the service’s WireGuard implementation, which was causing slowdowns before due to scalability issues.

The company has been rolling out the new implementation on select servers before making it broadly available, so if you want to try it, these are the servers that support it:

My results are based on a regular connection since I evaluate all VPNs on the same metrics. However, I did perform a few extra tests on these servers that do not factor into the chart below and found them to be in line with my local testing.

Windscribe reduced my base download speeds by 10.66%. Upload speeds were similar, with just a 13.20% reduction. The service’s new latency scores put it toward the front of the pack with a 67.01% increase. It beat the industry average in each category, so suffice it to say that I am impressed with the increase in performance since our last review. You can see the full results in the table below:

That said, your experience with a VPN will differ dramatically depending on your location, local network congestion, and ISP. Your base internet speeds fluctuate all the time, and a VPN adds a second variable. So, I strongly advise against using speed as a deciding factor when making a purchase. Instead, I suggest focusing on features, cost, and privacy.

Yes. Though keep in mind that many streaming services block VPNs due to local licensing deals and restrictions. Netflix, for example, may have the rights to broadcast a show in the UK but not Australia. Streaming platforms have been known to crack down on VPN usage, so what is accessible today may not be available tomorrow. If your main use case is to access streaming content, I’d recommend subscribing in the short term and making use of any available free trials to ensure the service works with the catalog you’re trying to access.

During testing, I could access the entire Netflix library in an Open format when connected to all five Windscribe servers I tried, including Canada, Japan, the UK, the US, and Australia. You can learn more about how I qualify the Open format in how to unblock Netflix with a VPN, and you can see the results of our testing in the chart above.

I tested Windscribe on an Intel NUC 12 “Serpent Canyon” running the latest version of Windows 11. The interface is quite small, but it is easy to navigate. A large power button lets you connect to the location you last used. The server you’re using will be displayed clearly, and you can expand a drop-down list of locations at the bottom of the window.

Windscribe's Windows interface

(Credit: PCMag/Windscribe)

You can hover over any icon to get a quick description of what it does, and the home window has quite a few buttons that act as shortcuts to deeper settings menus. There’s also a switch for the app’s firewall, which acts similarly to a kill switch and blocks all traffic if your connection to the VPN falters. A menu button at the top left lets you access account information and advanced settings. I especially like that the server list is searchable. You can also configure favorites or upload custom lists for ease of access.

There are plenty of advanced options, but Windscribe makes them easy to understand: Every option comes with a link to a related support article describing it. If you run into an issue, there are also direct links to the knowledge base and customer support sections.

From the settings menu, you can also configure ROBERT, an allowlist, and an IP filtering tool. ROBERT will filter out ads, trackers, malware, porn, social media, gambling content, and more from your browsing experience.

To get a look at the service on macOS, I tested Windscribe on a 2020 M1 MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.5. The interface is exactly the same as on Windows, and all of the core features are present. The same set of protocols is available. Split tunneling works well out of the box, though you can download legacy versions of Windscribe if you’re facing compatibility issues. To take advantage of the browser extension with Windscribe’s proxy, though, you’ll have to use Chrome, as it isn’t compatible with Safari.

In my iOS tests, I used Windscribe on an iPhone 14 running iOS 16.3. Installation was easy with a direct download available in the App Store. The mobile interface shares many of the same features and design choices. The main difference is that you get an expanded server list to accommodate the extra screen space used on mobile.

Windscribe's iOS interface

(Credit: PCMag/Windscribe)

The iOS app lacks a firewall and split tunneling. However, it has all the other essential features. The full server list is available. R.O.B.E.R.T. can be configured the same as on Windows. Protocol options are identical to the desktop experience with no glaring omissions.

I tested Windscribe’s Android app using a Samsung Galaxy S23 FE running Android 14. The design and layout are on par with iOS, and the app offers the same features as the Windows client.

Windscribe's Android interface

(Credit: PCMag/Windscribe)

A VPN should work flawlessly the majority of the time that you use it, but you’re bound to run into issues every now and then. I evaluate the support options offered to see how problems are handled. Windscribe has a robust knowledge base full of detailed articles, image-guided how-to pieces, and video explainers. There are quick tabs based on operating systems with boxes for common issues on each platform. Alternatively, you can search the archive manually to see if your exact issue comes up. There’s a fairly active Discord server you can try, as well. Actual employees of the Windscribe team run it and engage with user concerns, ideas, and questions frequently.

Then, there’s Garry. Garry is an AI bot that helps troubleshoot questions and concerns, trained on the site’s knowledge base material. You’ll need to chat with Garry before getting the option to submit a support ticket. Surprisingly, I found the bot to be quite helpful. I asked it an array of questions ranging from simple to complex and got adequate answers. That said, you can ask Garry for human support if you’d rather not deal with an AI assistant. The bot will give you the option to submit a ticket, which I found was answered in just a few hours.

Chat logs from Garry, Windscribe's AI support bot

(Credit: PCMag/Windscribe)

Given the company's size, 24/7 live support isn’t offered. However, I didn’t mind the lack of round-the-clock coverage, since my ticket was answered quickly. Plus, many 24/7 support channels funnel you to a support ticket if the question is anything more than a basic one. I’d rather wait and get an in-depth response from a knowledgeable support technician than go back and forth with an agent who isn’t as versed in the product.

Final Thoughts

(Credit: Windscribe)

Windscribe VPN

There's a lot to like about Windscribe. Its 10Gbps server infrastructure, solid WireGuard implementation, and widespread coverage to underserved city-level locations are all big wins in our book. Fresh audits conducted over the course of 2024 reaffirm Windscribe's blunt and honest approach to user privacy and company transparency. Combined with solid app performance, a bevy of settings, and broad Netflix support on both free and paid accounts, you have a terrific VPN that's easy to recommend. Accordingly, Windscribe earns our Editors' Choice award alongside Proton and should be your first choice if transparency is your primary concern.

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About Our Expert

Justyn Newman

Justyn Newman

Senior Writer, Security

Experience

My writing journey started in 2012 and has taken me through various niches, but my main focus has always been on tech. I contributed to several growing PC hardware and software sites, focusing on gaming, peripherals, and privacy.

As the amount of information we put out on the internet has grown, so have the threats and the tools we use to combat them. With VPNs gaining traction in the late 2010s as a tool for the public instead of just an option for business security, I found myself reviewing countless options in this continuously changing landscape.

This led to my role before PCMag over at WizCase, where I honed my knowledge of VPNs and privacy tools and eventually oversaw all of the content produced. I led a talented team of fellow writers and editors to evaluate VPNs, password managers, antivirus, and parental controls.

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