Hide.me Review

Hide.me keeps a temporary log of connection data in order to solve problems. This includes a randomly caused username and an internally assigned IP address. All the data you record is presented in a well structured and written privacy policy of shape simple .

This connection data is delete every few hours . Your location, source IP address and browsing behavior are not monitored or stored , which means that your activity can never be linked to your real identity. Hide.me is what closer to zero logs than most VPN services. 

It only requires an email address to sign up for Hide.me, which is typical of most privacy-friendly VPN providers. Some ask for more personal details, so it's good to see Hide.me keeping it to a minimum. The company encrypts and stores this email address and may use it to communicate with you, but you can choose not to receive these communications if you prefer.

Hide.me makes it clear that, if requested, it will hand over any information it has about a user who is being investigated by the authorities. However, the service keeps so few logs that it is highly unlikely to affect you, as long as everything you do online is legal.

Is Hide.me reliable?

There is nothing fishy about Hide.me's approach to privacy. It was actually one of the first VPN services to undergo an objective third-party evaluation to verify its reliability.

In 2015, Hide.me was audited by analyst Leon Juranic from security testing firm DefenseCode LTD. , who verified their safe logging practices. 

We do not necessarily agree with the audit conclusion that Hide.me has "completely zero logs" as the VPN service still keeps some temporary connection logs. However, we possibly agree that Hide.me is a private VPN What is it totally safe to use.

The VPN is owned by a private company called eVenture Ltd, an IT security company incorporated in Labuan, Malaysia . It was established in 2011 by a group of people that Hide.me describes as "tech fans" who "felt stifled by increasing levels of restrictions, monitoring and fraud."

Very little information is available on the names or structure of the company. It's not a very transparent company at all, but it seems to exist outside of the larger corporate property, unlike many VPNs today. It has a twitter page and a LinkedIn profile which lists your location as Zagreb in Croatia, which is probably where your workers operate.  

Being incorporated in Malaysia is a positive attribute to the company's privacy credentials because Malaysian law does not require VPN providers to keep logs of customer connections or network activity. Hide.me is clear about this, stating: "We intentionally established our headquarters in a jurisdiction that, by law, cannot ask us to record your data."

Malaysia is outside the surveillance arrangements found in most European countries, North America, and China. All five eyes / 14 eyes are blind in Malaysia, making it an ideal privacy haven for VPN users.

The company also publishes regular transparency reports , which list any legal requests for:

• Illegal activities (DDoS attacks, scams, spam, botnets)
• Violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)
• Law enforcement and police requests

In 2019, Hide.me received 105 requests associated with illegal activities on its network, more than 27,000 DMCA complaints, and two requests for compliance with the law. The official statement of the company on these requests is as follows:

"We respond and act on every request, but since we can't store any information, we don't have any data to present when it is requested."

Hide.me also makes donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) , is a member of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) and has a huge blog on Internet privacy and security issues worldwide. These gestures indicate that Hide.me really cares about privacy.

Overall, Hide.me is an impressively private VPN. It's close to zero logs and has clearly worked hard to prove its status as a VPN you can trust. Their independent audit and regular transparency reports are impressive, and there has never been a public safety breach in the company's history.

Long distance speed test results

We also test Hide.me's speeds on long-distance connections by connecting to servers in far-flung countries, including Germany, the US, and Australia. Physical distance always slows down VPN speeds, but some services perform better than others. 

We found that Hide.me performed about average on long distance connections:

• USA: 58 Mbps (download) and 46 Mbps (load) - 42% stall
• Germany: 91 Mbps (download) and 91 Mbps (load) - 10% stall
• Australia: 30 Mbps (download) and 19 Mbps (load) - 70% stall
• Singapore: 41 Mbps (download) and 43 Mbps (load) - 59% stall

A loss of speed from the 42% when connecting to the US It is a very good result compared to quite a few other providers. CyberGhost, as an example, recorded a speed drop from the 74%. Having said that, there are much faster VPN providers than Hide.me on the market.

Overall, Hide.me offers VPN speeds that are above average across the board. It performs quite well when connecting to nearby servers and offers solid speeds when connecting internationally. 

However, the VPN drastically affected our latency, which is the negative characteristic that stands out the most. We suggest that anyone who wants to use a VPN while gaming avoid Hide.me for this reason. However, if you are looking for a fast and free VPN, Hide.me Free is a great option.  

How fast is Hide.me compared to other VPNs?

Along with these results from the manual speed test, we also ran a VPN speed test tool personalized in the that Hide. worked great for me.

You can compare Hide.me's speed with other popular VPNs by looking at the graph below. All of these VPNs run on our New York server and the speed tests run automatically four times a day. Test connection speeds are limited to 100 Mbps to recreate a typical home Internet connection.

The chart below shows the average speed loss for each VPN in percentage points compared to speed when using a 100 Mbps internet connection without any VPN. The lower the percentage, the better.

The results go back four weeks so you can get an idea of the long-term reliability of VPNs, not just how fast they are at any given time. 

Use our speed test tool to compare Hide.me speeds in different cities.
As you can see, Hide.me's performance goes up and down much more than its competitors. It's a rollercoaster of ups and downs, which means its speed performance isn't constant, not at all. Over an eight week period, it dropped to 54 Mbps. On the other hand, it went up to 91 Mbps, the maximum throughput during this period.

The ideal VPN has consistently high performance, as you can see with private internet access. We cannot guarantee that this inconsistency will not have repercussions when using Hide.me VPN.

Hide.me uses industry standard 256-bit AES encryption to protect your personal data, hide your IP address, and keep your connection safe on public networks.

The service offers a wide range of connection protocols, including WireGuard, OpenVPN (UDP / TCP), IKEv2, SoftEther, and SSTP. There's built-in leak protection, custom DNS functionality, IPv6 support, Stealth Guard, and a kill switch to protect your IP address in the event of an unexpected connection drop.

Both desktop and mobile applications allow users to select from all of these protocols. Good to see consistency in Hide.me applications.

Our tests show that Hide.me protects against DNS, WebRTC, IPv4 and IPv6 address leaks. You can test this yourself using our VPN leak test tool.

We test the privacy and security of Hide.me by running it using the  εxodus tool , which generates a report on the trackers and permissions present in Android applications. Hide.me contains zero trackers and 11 permits, including two that are considered 'dangerous' or 'special' according to Google's protection levels . This is not as permission-free as Astrill VPN, which doesn't have any permission, but what Hide. is asking me does not have nothing threatening and it's nice that there are no trackers included.

Hide.me is totally virus free . We analyze the Hide.me installation software using VirusTotal to see if it presented any kind of threat to your device. It is not like this. No viruses or malware of any kind were detected in the Hide.me application.

Hide.me Free users also benefit from precisely the same level of security than its paid subscribers, making it one of the most secure free VPNs available.

The VPN also comes with a feature Stealth Guard , which enables you to select applications or services that will not work unless you are connected to a VPN server. This helps ensure that you don't accidentally use an app or service that compromises your privacy without the security of a VPN.

Through the advanced settings menu, you can also configure custom DNS functionality and select to use a random port for each connection, which is sometimes referred to as a Dynamic Port or Ephemeral Port. This makes it difficult for ISPs to track and block your VPN usage. There is even a password generator and one DNS leak test internal .

Hide.me also offers a free browser duration that works as a proxy to access blocked websites. We recommend that if you are already using this, it is important to highlight downloading the complete VPN service and without costs to benefit from its encryption.

While Hide.me's security is strong, it is not without its weaknesses. While testing the app, we received a warning that kill switch could not be enabled , which suggests that we contact the support team.

A reliable VPN kill switch is important for any premium VPN service. It is disappointing that Hide.me still experiences errors when it consists of such an important feature.

Overall, Hide.me is a secure VPN that uses strong encryption and a good range of advanced features. Even though you can likely rely on it to protect your data, security-conscious users should be wary of a faulty kill switch.

Our experts tested both versions of Hide.me to find out how well it works with streaming services like Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and Disney +.

The Netflix servers by Hide.me work to unlock four of the five options . It unblocks Netflix from the US, UK, Germany and Italy, but is not as reliable when it consists of France. Hide.me was unable to determine a connection to its optimized server in France.

Hide.me works very well and reliably with BBC iPlayer a through your optimized server. It has three UK streaming servers for BBC iPlayer, Disney + and UK Netflix and they all work effectively. For British television, Hide.me is a good choice. It also works to unlock Disney +.

However, when using Hide.me on Mac, you will find that the quick connect feature via the menu bar does not list which streaming services the servers are optimized for. As an example, there are six streaming servers for the US and they are all indistinguishable as 'United States'. To understand which one works, you have to expand the window and head to the main Hide.me screen, rendering the quick connect feature useless.

Hide.me used to only have streaming servers optimized for US services, so good to see it expand to other global libraries. However, the results at the moment are inconsistent and not as comprehensive as CyberGhost, which has streaming servers in cities everywhere.

We would like Hide.me to include optimized servers to stream in other popular locations and correct your optimized France option. That being said, there is a new 'request location' option in the app itself, suggesting that the company is looking to expand this feature soon.

The free version of Hide.me works with Netflix and BBC iPlayer intermittently, but does not provide any optimized servers for streaming. Combined with a 10GB data limit, this means we don't suggest Hide.me Free if you're looking to stream content regularly. 

Overall, Hide.me is a good choice if you want to stream from US services and BBC iPlayer. However, other countries are not reliable. If you are going to watch movies or TV shows from countries other than the US or UK on a regular basis, we recommend that you choose a better VPN for streaming.

Does Hide.me support P2P and torrents?

The consistent speeds, strong security, and secure privacy policy of Hide.me seem to make it a good option for torrenting. However, even though the VPN has been updated to allow P2P activity on all of its servers, we found some issues with the VPN kill switch that could put your data at risk. 

The free version of Hide.me also enables P2P activity on three of the five available servers. There are no speed restrictions for torrent traffic, and the 10GB data limit is more generous than most competing free VPNs. 

The service recommends using its Stealth Guard feature to download torrents safely. This option provides additional security by limiting your VPN connection to specific applications and services. This way you can ensure that you never connect to your torrent client without active protection.

Hide.me also offers a specialized SOCKS proxy that can be used for faster P2P connections. This proxy is not encrypted, but you can use it with the VPN for added protection. Can find instructions complete to configure a SOCKS proxy on the Hide.me web portal. 

The Hide.me web portal it also lists Brazil, India, Mexico and the US as locations that "block P2P traffic due to US regulations that our data centers must adhere to."

However, it should be noted here that there are many VPNs that do not place restrictions on the servers that you can torrent to, including all the locations mentioned by Hide.me. You can see the best VPNs to download torrents here .

Overall, Hide.me is a secure, P2P-friendly VPN that works reasonably well for torrenting. However, its limited server network and unreliable kill switch means there are better VPNs available for this purpose. If it is a typical torrent that requires fast speeds and a well-optimized server network, we suggest ExpressVPN .

Hide.me lags behind its competitors when it consists of the number of available server locations. The paid subscription plan offers 1,700 in 70 locations , with between four and eight IP addresses per server. Although this network is not small, it does not compare with competitors such as HideMyAss or LeVPN . If you are looking for a large network of servers or a wide range of locations, look elsewhere.

Hide.me free is limited to five server locations, including Canada, Netherlands, Singapore, US East and US West.

The choice of servers in the paid subscription plan is specifically limited to non-Western countries. Asia is represented by just four cities: Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo. If you want to stream Japanese Netflix, this reduced server selection is likely to affect your VPN speeds due to congestion.  

In the same way, the African continent is represented only by Morocco. There is a server in India, one in the United Arab Emirates, and one in Brazil. This is likely not expansive if you require fast speeds anywhere outside of Europe and North America.  

The number of server locations in western countries is much higher. But it still can't compete with the best VPNs on the market. There are two cities available in the UK (Manchester, London), two cities in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona) and two cities in Australia (Sydney, Melbourne, both on the east coast).

We would like Hide.me to invest in a larger and more diverse server network. This will give your users a more extensive selection of city-level locations. There is still a large part of the US thousands of miles from a server, even with those nine to select from. 

Even though they are relatively few, Hide.me's servers are very secure. The company claims that the entire network is "handpicked, security-hardened, and self-sustaining," which is more than can be said for some competing VPN providers.

We spoke with a Hide.me representative to find out precisely how the VPN provider implements its server network. We discovered that Hide.me does not use any virtual server ; Instead, it rents a completely physical server network from multiple third-party hosts. They told us:

"We do not own physical hardware, we choose all third-party hosting providers very carefully, so we can make sure that there are certain security standards (ISO 27001) and no unauthorized person could have access to our servers."

Choosing to rent VPN servers from third parties is not an inherent security risk as long as the hardware has been properly examined .

For this case, Hide.me has been open and transparent about how it implements its network, which is a rare and commendable trait.

Thanks to an update in June 2020, the Hide.me client now enables you to choose servers specifically for streaming. Go to the server selection menu and you can select by country, transmission service or even from your own list of favorites.

Users also have the option of automatically connecting to the best server location to achieve optimal speeds.

In general, Hide.me's server network is large, safe and perfect for broadcasting in the USA . USA . Servers are easily changed and you can use the search bar feature to find a location quickly and easily. Servers that are optimized for torrenting and streaming are also usefully designated.

We would still like you to expand your network, primarily in non-European regions that you neglect, such as Asia, India and the Middle East. More than that, Hide.me should invest in more city options. Today, only a handful of countries offer the option to select servers at the city level, which is nowhere near the level offered by other major VPNs.

Even though Hide.me rents its servers, which is not ideal, we were impressed that it is a completely physical network. 

Hide.me VPN includes a number of features that make it ideal for use in highly censored countries like China.

However, reports from users and the VPN company itself show that the service cannot always be trusted to constantly bypass the great firewall.

When it comes to circumventing censorship, Hide.me announces its TLS-Crypt obfuscation tool patented . Described as a "hardened security OpenVPN," this feature disguises your VPN traffic and makes it much more difficult for governments to identify and block it.

According to Hide.me, TLS-Crypt:

“Add a round of encryption and decryption operations on each OpenVPN packet through the use of a preconfigured static key. This means that each OpenVPN packet is encrypted twice, once with the static key and once with a symmetric TLS key '.

TLS-Crypt can be downloaded from the Hide.me members area once you have purchased a subscription. 

Hide.me also manage your own encrypted DNS servers that protect your web portal requests and prevent malicious third parties from monitoring your activity. This is an essential feature of any VPN service looking to bypass censorship.

The list of server locations includes Hong Kong and several other countries near China, such as Korea, India, and Japan. Servers close to your physical location will generally provide better VPN speeds; however, a limited number of servers per location means that your chosen server may experience congestion.  

Hide.me also supports UDP and TCP SoftEther connections. SoftEther is a multiprotocol technique designed to penetrate firewalls through the use of HTTPS to mask your VPN traffic. This is particularly important when trying to circumvent heavy censorship in countries like China.

The Hide.me web portal provides instructions on how to configure VPN with SoftEther , so you should have no problem using it, even if you are a beginner. Hide.me also encourages its users to contact their 24/7 technical support before attempting to use the VPN in China, as “it cannot ensure that all protocols and servers they work ».

The Chinese government has blocked the Hide.me web portal and listings on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store, so making sure to download the software before traveling is essential. 

Overall, Hide.me shows great promise as an anti-censorship tool thanks to its support for SoftEther, TLS-Crypt obfuscation, and self-managed DNS servers. It is an effective alternative for highly censored countries like Russia, Turkey or Iran, but its performance cannot be assured in China. 

This has been the case for most VPN services since the Chinese government began to aggressively identify and block VPN use. Even though the Hide.me blog claims it works in China It also explains that it cannot "ensure the availability of all protocols and servers." 

Even if successful, Hide.me's Eurocentric server network means that server congestion in Asia is likely to be high. Even though all the essential functions are included, we would like to see an expanded server network and more positive feedback from users before we can recommend it as a sensible option for use in China. 

Hide.me's VPN apps are easy to use and come with a design interface similar to most premium VPNs. We found that the clients were packed with advanced features, but the apps were frustratingly unreliable - Hide.me crashed or lost connection multiple times during our testing.

MacOS client

The Hide.me Mac application home screen opens with a large 'Enable VPN' button that will connect you to the closest server. A full list of server locations at the country and city level can be found in a separate menu along with basic information about your VPN's IP address and location.

A search box and a bookmark system make finding the desired server location particularly easy. However, no server load or usage data is displayed, which means that it is difficult to judge which server will perform the best.

Experts get more granular control over the VPN than with most competing VPN apps. There is the opportunity to customize your DNS servers, MTU settings, and even port alternatives for OpenVPN. 

Hide.me's MacOS application includes support for Apple Silicon and Big Sur and additional advanced features include split tunneling, the addition of the WireGuaard protocol, IPv6 support, Stealth Guard, and the ability to run custom scripts when your connection drops. This is a good package and these options are well labeled, making it extremely easy to find the desired configuration or switch between protocols. 

Windows Client

Hide.me's Windows client is similar to its Mac client in most ways, and just as impressive. It comes nicely packaged with custom DNS, split tunneling, Stealth Guard, a kill switch, and a diverse selection of security protocols.

One of the strongest features of Hide.me is the large number of protocols on offer. It has the best and most secure (OpenVPN is our preference) and integrates options that many other VPNs do not offer, such as SoftEther and WireGuard. 

At the same time, the Windows version has a toggle option to enable the Reservation Protocol, which the Mac application does not have. If your chosen protocol stops working for any reason, Hide.me will automatically reestablish the connection. As it is, Windows client is more equipped .

Android and iOS client

Hide.me mobile applications are very good, they are equipped with a huge settings menu that preserves the functions of desktop applications. The alternatives, buttons, and user interface are well presented and easy to navigate. 

There are two small differences between Hide.me's Android and its iOS client. The iOS app comes with a toggle option to choose or deselect 'No random port on every connection' while the Android app doesn't.

On the other hand, the Android client has a neat split tunnel option in its settings menu that allows you to easily choose applications on your phone that you do or do not want to connect via the VPN. This is useful because some services may not work when using a VPN, such as online banking. Hide.me's Android client lacks this super simple feature.

The Hide.me user experience

While easy to use, we found that Hide.me apps were often unreliable . During our testing on MacOS, the application would shut down or disconnect without warning, and often unresponsive when trying to use a feature or switch servers. Although not a deal breaker, this type of issue creates a frustrating user experience.

Random connection drops are not totally uncommon, which is why a VPN kill switch is an important feature. Nevertheless, Hide.me's kill switch was only effective intermittently : sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Hide.me warns you when it's not working, but it means contacting tech support or restarting the VPN. 

The combination of a VPN that often loses connection and an unreliable kill switch it is a safety obstacle , but it is also basically a problem for a smooth and uninterrupted user experience.

The connections would also take a long time to establish and sometimes not at all. This was one of Hide.me's biggest drawbacks in our experience: its technical issues caused it to its use out of frustrating to despite the quality of service. 

Hide.me offers many technical settings for advanced users, but there are also many for beginners. Although it is not packed with proprietary features like Surfshark, it is well designed and covers the basics effectively. We'd like to see improvements in app speed and reliability before we can recommend Hide.me for its user experience. 

Hide.me has an extensive customer support system that includes helpful setup videos , an extensive database of knowledge in line , an active online community and 24/7 live chat support. Customer support is also precisely the same for Hide.me Free users.

You can even request a support ticket from the app, which is extremely convenient and perfect for VPN beginners.

We tested the live chat feature on the main page of the Hide.me web portal. Our inquiry was sent automatically as an email instead of starting a live chat, so it appears that the service is not always available 24/7.

Having said that, our other tests found that the live chat agents were quick and somewhat informative in their responses. For more complex inquiries, we were asked to email support more often than we would like. But if the query is simple enough, the chat team is very helpful. The ticket system is attentive to your privacy allowing you to opt out of sending system logs and diagnostics.

Plus there's an in-app messaging system that keeps you up to date on all the latest Hide.me developments, including the addition of new servers or additional features.

Overall, Hide.me offers a wealth of information and customer support for both newcomers and long-term users. The online knowledge base, detailed setup guides, and active user community will solve most common problems. To solve more specific problems, live chat is available. 

Hide.me offers a generous 30 day money back guarantee at your service. This gives you access to all of Hide.me's premium service for one month with the guarantee that you will get a full money back if you are not satisfied.

You can pay for your Hide.me subscription using several common payment methods, including:

• American express
• MasterCard
• PayPal
• SEPA
• IMMEDIATELY
• Everyone

This gives users many options to select from, but it also offers 80 anonymous payment options. Some of these include:

• Bitcoin (BTC)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
• Script (DASH)
• Dogecoin (DOGE)
• Ethereum (ETH)
• Ethereum Classic (ETC)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Currency (XMR)
• NEO (NEO)
• Peercoin (PPC)
• PIVX (PIVX)
• Verge (XVG)
• Zcash (ZEC)
• ZenCash (ZEN)

That's a wide variety of alternatives for people who want the most privacy-friendly ways to subscribe to Hide.me.

Hide.me Free

Hide.me offers a totally free VPN that does not require registration and does not display ads. Free users get full customer support, access to all connection protocols (except WireGuard), and the same level of privacy and security as paid users. 

The free VPN comes with five server locations to connect to:

• Canada
• Netherlands
• Singapore
• Eastern US
• Western US

The app can only be used on one device at a time, as opposed to the 10 simultaneous devices allowed with the premium subscription.

The free version is limited to 10GB of data usage per month, which equates to approximately 10 hours of streaming time. There are no speed restrictions within this data limit, making Hide.me Free one of the fastest free VPNs available .

Once the 10GB data limit has been exceeded, you will still be able to continue using the service, but Hide.me will restrict it to a single server. 

Hide.me Free's generous data cap, robust security, and reasonably fast speeds without the support of commercial promotion make it one of the best free VPNs on the market in 2021. However, as with most free VPN services, there are still areas where you could improve. 

The free VPN does not support P2P traffic and lacks the advanced settings available in the paid plan. Optimized streaming servers are also not available, which means Hide.me Free is not a reliable alternative for watching US Netflix, Disney +, or other popular services.

Overall, Hide.me Free is a great VPN service that is perfect for beginners who want to try the software before committing to a long-term subscription.

Hide.me is an above-average VPN service that provides all the privacy and security features you'll need to hide your IP address, encrypt your browsing traffic, and protect your data on public WiFi networks.

While it doesn't stand out as a leading service for unlocking P2P file sharing or streaming services, Hide.me offers reasonably fast speeds and a compilation of advanced configuration alternatives that make it ideal for experienced users. Their registration policy and company history are waterproof and their customer service system is excellent.

We would like to see improvements in app performance and reliability when it comes to user experience. While the free VPN is great, the price of the paid subscription is hard to justify given the reliability issues we encounter with the VPN kill switch and unresponsive apps.

Hide.me's optimized servers in the US are perfect for streaming American Netflix, but the service could benefit from expanding this reach to other countries with popular streaming libraries.

We suggest the free version of Hide.me for those who want to try a secure VPN service. Paid subscription plans are ideal for users who want a service that prioritizes privacy, but there are better VPNs on the market if you're looking to stream or torrent regularly.