Windscribe

Windscribe’s free tier is excellent, and so is its speedy, low-cost and streaming-friendly subscription service.

Introduction

Windscribe is a Canadian VPN service that’s gained popularity as a result of its free service, low prices and reliable performance.

It’s consistently quick and reliable for streaming, and although it lacks long-term subscription options, its annual and monthly subscriptions are both very cost-effective.

Windscribe has previously ranked top in our best VPN group test, and still comes highly recommended, despite a slightly disappointing performance in our latest speed test results.

Pricing and Subscriptions

Windscribe offers a generous 10GB-per-month free tier. Free users get access to locations in 11 countries, not including any of the Windflix video-streaming endpoints. Pay for the full service and you get access to endpoints in 65 countries.

If you like the service enough to pay for it, you can either pay for the $9/£6.45 monthly plan or spend $49/£39.04 upfront for the yearly plan, which works out cheaper in the long run. It’s great value, and a clear and simple price that’s remained consistent for several years now, with no increased renewal fees to sneak up on you.

You can pay using cryptocurrency, if you feel that will help keep you anonymous (although it won’t on its own).

Features and Usability

• Transparent on which data it logs
• Features include kill switch and ad blocker

Windscribe’s privacy and logging policy clearly indicates what data it does and does not keep, with only total bandwidth consumption and the time your account was last used stored in the long term. The service supports anonymous payment via Bitcoin, and you don’t have to provide an email address to sign up.

The Canada-based firm is transparent about its privacy policies and, although it keeps some logs to help manage its service, it says that it doesn’t keep any identifying information. Windscribe maintains a live transparency report, showing both DMCA and law enforcement data requests. None have ever been complied with because Windscribe doesn’t log any identifiable user data.

I found the Windows desktop client simple to use, including a solid range of extra security features. By default, Windscribe activates its integrated firewall feature, which includes a kill switch that prevents any internet traffic from being transferred if you lose your connection to the VPN for any reason.

You can also share your encrypted connection as a secure wireless hotspot, if your router supports the feature. Windscribe’s powerful integrated ad-blocker is handy, but I found that it entirely blocked access to some ad-gated websites and services.

Options in your online account management interface allow you to instantly apply features including ad- and tracker-blocking, as well as an anti-malware filter.

Performance

• Below-average speeds for select endpoints
• Impressive speeds for free tier

All of my testing was carried out on a virtual desktop physically located at a data centre with a high-speed internet connection in London. This testing setup produces results under optimal connection conditions. VPN clients are tested on their default settings.

Windscribe had a bit of hard time in my speed tests through much of 2021, but this has improved this year. Although some of its results were below the group average for a couple of endpoint locations, its paid service never dropped below a blistering 200Mbps, which is fast enough for extremely high-resolution video and live gaming services (latency allowing).

Unlike most free VPN options from commercial providers, Windscribe’s free service performs just as well as the paid-for version, although the selection of endpoints is limited and you don’t get access to its specialist streaming servers.

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