FastestVPN Review: Cheap Lifetime Subscription

Value When Reviewed

From $1.11 monthly (10 gadgets)

Finest Costs Right now: FastestVPN

Utilizing superlatives in your organization title is a daring technique, particularly when that title is FastestVPN. After we final reviewed the service in direction of the tip of 2022, we remained unimpressed total.

Nevertheless, seven months later, the corporate contacted us to say they’ve been working arduous to handle our criticisms. One necessary factor was to get an unbiased 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 the very best – akin to NordVPN – total, there’s nonetheless sufficient right here to make it engaging to some folks.

The largest attraction continues to be the value. FastestVPN is considered one of few VPN companies that gives a lifetime subscription. It’s now twice as costly because it was, however at simply $40 it’s nonetheless a cut price. That’s lower than plenty of rivals cost for a single 12 months.

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

It appears like a rip-off, however it isn’t. Clearly there aren’t any ensures the corporate will likely be round to supply the service in 10 years’ time, however at this value, you may’t actually lose.

To be exact, you may’t lose if FastestVPN does the belongings you need it to. And to seek out out if it does, learn on.

Options

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

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

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

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

Jim Martin / Foundry

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 an alternative 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 largest 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 whenever you get sluggish connection speeds.

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

Apps

In relation to apps, FastestVPN affords them for Home windows, Mac, Android and iOS. It lists many extra gadgets, akin to Apple TV, Roku and video games consoles, however that is deceptive: it’s doable to run a VPN on lots of these gadgets solely if you happen to can configure your router to make use of a VPN, which additionally means all your own home gadgets run by way of the VPN, which isn’t one thing most individuals will need to do, and never one thing all routers assist.

Jim Martin / Foundry

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

There’s assist for numerous 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 companies, not VPNs.

The Firefox extension is a bit of 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 is named FastestVPN Proxy for Chrome, however the description misleadingly says,

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

Hailing from the Cayman Islands, you may make certain that your actions will likely 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 degree of safety as utilizing the VPN app, however in reality a proxy service doesn’t encrypt all knowledge in the identical method, and generally in no way.

We’re at all times disenchanted once we see VPN companies claiming to make your exercise nameless.

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

All of the apps have an identical design (besides Linux, after all) so it’s simple to modify between gadgets and see a well-recognized interface.

The cell apps have been developed the furthest, though even now they’re solely simply getting options rivals have at all times had of their apps, akin to the flexibility 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 may 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 principally been resolved, and the installer now 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 adjustments to your system. That is one other factor that FastestVPN wants to handle, 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 are feeling uneasy about precisely what it’s doing.

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

Not like the cell apps, you may’t see every server’s ping. There’s no method to inform how busy every one is in any of the apps.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Total, 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 advertisements 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 aren’t any settings to specify which server it ought to connect with, no auto join when your gadget joins an unknown or unsecured Wi-Fi community, no break up tunnelling and no advert or tracker blocker that plenty of rivals have.

The kill swap, 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 and not using a VPN”, however it’s higher than no notification in any respect. With another VPNs, you’re left with no web entry and no concept why.

Jim Martin / Foundry

Android and iOS apps

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

On an iPhone there’s Good Tunneling which “permits VPN safety for added domains even when the app will not be open”. It’s a must to add every web site manually, and there’s no method to decide on (as with break 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 a must to slide downwards to return. The problem is that it’s not at all times apparent whenever you’re taking a look at a pop-up, leaving you trying to find 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 may’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 a must 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 checklist of Favourite servers is on the Account display screen, however you can even discover it on the backside of the principle servers display screen.

One optimistic factor concerning the iPhone app is that stay chat assist is inbuilt and – in contrast to final time we tried it – it truly works now so you may converse to a consultant from throughout the app. The one snag with that is you could’t return to the app to verify 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 visitors locations, or your DNS queries – stays with you and also you alone.”

So, this can be 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 another knowledge. The report is accessible 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 necessary 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 individual and/or the individual’s exercise when utilizing FastestVPN service.”

FastestVPN doesn’t supply 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 large lacking characteristic once 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 needed to see if this had made any distinction.

Beneath you may see the outcomes from these exams, which have been carried out on a Gigabit fibre connection in San Francisco, with the identical speeds accessible 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 pace was nearly 550Mbps from the New York server, and the bottom from London at simply 140Mbps.

That’s truly slower than once 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 have got to remember that speeds differ on a regular basis, however we did run these exams 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 (under, backside proper). And, total FastestVPN – sadly – doesn’t stay as much as its title. There are variety of quicker VPN companies, together with NordVPN and Surfshark.

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

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

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

That mentioned, 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, however it’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 may be nonetheless no IPv6 assist, these connections are merely blocked, they usually have been in our exams.

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

Unblocking

Unblocking content material was an actual weak level. Nevertheless, the number 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 observe NCIS and different US exclusives.

The corporate says that it’s going to additionally unblock Hotstar, which we didn’t check.

Since there’s no streaming server for Australia, you gained’t be watching 9Now from another nation. It’s additionally value remembering that solely seven international locations are lined. So if you happen to needed to unblock Neflix’s French library to observe one thing unique on there (akin to the most recent season of Miraculous), you gained’t be capable to.

Value & plans

We’ve already talked about how a lot FastestVPN prices, and it’s arduous to think about anybody would determine 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 cost effective method to check the service is to enroll in a month for $7 (round £5).

You may’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 supply. You may assume this can be a method to check out the service at no cost, however it isn’t troublesome to seek out sad individuals who have posted on-line to say that they have been unable to get a refund after they requested one.

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

Verdict

Though the value has doubled, $40 continues to be a cut price for lifetime entry to a VPN that gives respectable speeds, unblocks widespread streaming companies and has an audited no-logs coverage.

And for anybody who already took out a lifetime subscription for $20, they will improve to get WireGuard and entry to the 10Gbps servers for streaming, double VPN and P2P. It might sound a bit unfair to should pay once more, however you may 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, if you happen to’re pleased with the speeds on supply, it’s a respectable choice for many who need an audited no-logs VPN at a rock-bottom value.

There are nonetheless loads of indicators that this can be a ‘low cost’ VPN, although, from the restricted variety of servers to the considerably clunky apps. We’d hesitate to belief the kill swap absolutely to maintain our IP handle firmly below wraps and also you’ll discover extra options – notably on Home windows – in plenty of rival VPNs.

Nevertheless, once more, FastestVPN ticks plenty of the necessary packing containers. As long as you don’t need to watch one of many extra obscure streaming companies (akin to Australia’s 9Now that we already talked about), FastestVPN is good worth.

The Home windows app nonetheless has vital points, and that’s along with not having the mandatory digital signature.

In order for you a VPN for privateness, then you’re higher off choosing a VPN service that has been independently audited, akin to Non-public Web Entry, NordVPN, PureVPN or ExpressVPN.

It nonetheless feels ironic {that a} service referred to as FastestVPN nonetheless doesn’t supply WireGuard and, objectively, merely isn’t wherever close to as quick because the fastestVPN companies on the market.

All of this makes FastestVPN a much less engaging choice than lots of its rivals. However if you happen to simply desire a VPN on your telephone to get round regional blocks and watch US Netflix, Disney+ or BBC iPlayer then at $20, the lifetime subscription is a steal.