TorGuard Review

Here’s the minimal data that TorGuard collects:

TorGuard was founded in 2012 by VPNetworks LLC. Since then, it’s never been acquired or merged with another company.

It’s founder and CEO, Benjamin Van Pelt, is the only employee we can find on LinkedIn. Florida’s company registration website only lists “Losey PLLC” and “Title Authorized Member” as people associated with VPNetworks LLC.

The company structure is rather unclear. There isn’t a lot of information available about TorGuard’s employees. This isn’t uncommon with VPN service providers, though.

Based in Privacy-Unfriendly US

TorGuard is based in Florida. The US is one the least privacy-friendly countries in the world. This is because the US is a member of the Five Eyes international intelligence-sharing alliance. This means the government can demand surveillance data from companies and share it with an intelligence agency without your knowledge.

TorGuard’s customer support did tell us that it would only comply with an “official court ordered ruling,” but even then, it would only be able to submit “blank hard drives.”

This is because TorGuard has a zero-logs policy, which means it wouldn’t have any user web logs to hand over to US authorities. And since it doesn’t record any customer activity, there’s no way of authorities identifying individual users and their online activity.

TorGuard states it “does not collect or log any data from its Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Proxy services.” We analyzed the service’s logging policy and can confirm it does not appear to collect user activity data.

The company only collects anonymous statistical network data to determine server loads. TorGuard doesn’t log any information that could be used to identify your web activity.

Proven Not to Log in Copyright Court Case

While TorGuard’s logging policy has never undergone an independent audit, it’s already submitted the ultimate proof of keeping no logs: in a court case.

In March 2022 TorGuard settled a copyright infringement lawsuit involving several major Hollywood movie studios. The studios claimed that TorGuard actively assisted users in bypassing blocks on torrent sites.

While TorGuard may have lost the case, and as a result now blocks all torrenting traffic on its US servers, something far more important emerged from the trial: no identifiable users logs were submitted by TorGuard.

This is the best possible outcome for TorGuard subscribers, and definitive proof that you can trust it not to keep any logs.

To test its performance, we connected to TorGuard servers in six different continents and measured our internet speeds before and after. We use a 100Mbps internet connection, similar to what your baseline internet speed at home might be.

Here’s a table showing how TorGuard performed in our speed tests:

TorGuard just manages to break the top 20 VPNs for speed. It offers performance that’s more than strong enough for anything you want to do online, but it is its consistency in almost every global location we test that makes it stand out.

In fact, TorGuard is one of the very best VPNs to choose if you like to connect to a range of locations on various continents. Here’s how its international connections compare to some bigger-name VPN rivals:

Of all the locations we test for, Australia (which is as far away as you can get from where we test in New York, US) is the only location that suffers a significant drop in download speeds.

TorGuard fails to access most streaming services, here’s a list of the platforms it currently unblocks:

TorGuard’s standard subscription is awful for streaming. It didn’t unblock any Netflix libraries and it failed to block other US streaming platforms. However, it does give you access to all UK streaming platforms, including BBC iPlayer and All 4.

TorGuard doesn’t stream Disney+, HBO Max or Hulu

TorGuard was quickly detected and blocked by Disney Plus, HBO Max, and Hulu. You should avoid using TorGuard’s standard plan for streaming on US platforms.

Hulu didn’t even let us login with the VPN service connected. Instead, we received this reminder:

“Error: Hulu is available in the U.S. only, and cannot be used with an anonymous proxy service.”

TorGuard Is Surprisingly Good at Unblocking UK Platforms

We were pleasantly surprised to see TorGuard did a great job at unblocking BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, and All 4. We didn’t experience any buffering, either.

But we don’t know how long it will be working for. Its standard servers are not the most reliable when it comes to streaming.

Dedicated Streaming IP Address

You can pay an extra $7.99 per month for a dedicated streaming IP address, which is more likely to get around streaming geo-restrictions.

However, this is poor value as other VPNs, including VPNArea and CyberGhost, offer multiple streaming servers included in their standard pricing.

Additionally, if you sign up to the Pro plan, you get a dedicated IP address for free with your subscription.

Streaming Residential IP Address

If you want almost guaranteed access to geo-blocked streaming content, you can pay an extra $13.99 per month for a residential IP address in the US.

A residential IP address is rented from an ISP based in the country. It makes the connection look much more authentic and difficult for streaming platforms to detect.

It can also improve your browsing experience as you can often bypass annoying captchas.

However, it’s not the cheapest option if you want an annual subscription. Windscribe offers residential IP addresses to its premium subscribers for a one-time annual fee of $96.00, which translates to $8.00 per month. You can also choose from more countries, such as Canada, Germany, Spain and the UK.

TorGuard’s Streaming Bundle

TorGuard offers a streaming bundle that includes a standard subscription plus two dedicated IP addresses for streaming.

Despite the claim it lets you “Stream What You Want, Whenever You Want,” you’re restricted to only two IPs addresses in either the US, UK, or Japan.

We don’t recommend purchasing the bundle because you only get access to two countries’ streaming platforms. Whereas with other VPNs, you can get access to multiple countries, all without having to pay for an add-on.

Additionally, you only get dedicated IP addresses, not residential IP addresses, so you could still encounter geo-blocks.

Here’s a quick table comparing TorGuard’s streaming bundle with ExpressVPN’s standard subscription.

Here’s how TorGuard performed in our torrenting tests:

Torrenting Attribute	Result
Average Download Bitrate	7.0MiB/s
No. of P2P Servers	3,000+
Logging Policy	No Logs
Kill Switch	Yes
Port Forwarding	Yes

While TorGuard isn’t good for streaming, it’s a very good VPN for torrenting.The VPN service allows P2P traffic on all its servers (apart from those in the US), and it doesn’t log any user web activity.

In our P2P benchmark tests TorGuard achieved an average download speed of 7.0MiB/s, compared to 10MiB/s without a VPN.

It also features a must-have VPN kill switch and a transparent no-logs policy. All necessary attributes of a torrenting VPN.

Seeders can also use port forwarding with the VPN, although this is limited to ports above 2048. It’s supported through protocols OpenVPN, WireGuard and OpenConnect.

US Servers Banned from BitTorrent

On 13 March 2022, TorGuard settled a case in court with 27 film studio companies which accused it of saving no user logs and promoting torrenting of copyrighted material.

TorGuard settled to “use commercially reasonable efforts to block BitTorrent traffic on its servers in the United States using firewall technology.”

Despite the final outcome of the court case, there are three key takeaways which affirm TorGuard’s status as the one of the best VPNs for torrenting.

First, TorGuard did not expose any customer data during the course of the legal battle, which means it stuck to its no-logs policy and protected its users’ data. If a VPN has an intrusive logging policy, it is not safe to use for torrenting.

TorGuard has not been forced to log network usage data. Due to the nature of shared IPs and related hardware technicalities of how TorGuard’s network was built it is impossible for us to do so.

Second, TorGuard is only taking steps to block BitTorrent traffic on its US servers. This means users are free to continue P2P activity on servers in other countries. If you’re in the US, there are nearby servers in Canada or Mexico.

Third, TorGuard is not the only VPN to be sued by major film studios and settle to block traffic on US servers. In January 2022 VPN Unlimited similarly agreed to block BitTorrent and even more torrenting websites, including PirateBay and Popcorn Time.

How Does TorGuard Compare to Other Top VPNs for Torrenting?

This table shows how TorGuard compares to other VPNs for important torrenting features like P2P speed, server count and features.

The TorGuard settings give you an incredible amount of control but aren’t for the faint-hearted.

There’s a lot of advanced settings — though we wonder how many are actually useful on a day-to-day basis. There’s eleven different options for customizing the app’s appearance.

Nevertheless, these additional settings let you add extra layers of security, enable ad blocking, switch to using TorGuard’s proxy servers, or even execute custom scripts.

Also, TorGuard followed ExpressVPN in updating its server infrastructure to purely RAM-based (diskless) servers. This means no data is ever recorded on server disks.

Powerful Encryption

TorGuard uses AES-256-CBC encryption and secure VPN protocols. Alongside OpenVPN, TorGuard fully supports WireGuard on all platforms, and was one of the earlier VPNs to do so.

A strong selling point is that it owns private no-logs DNS servers. This means that it encrypts all your DNS requests (the websites you visit) while using the VPN. Only a few VPN services offer this level of protection, including VyprVPN and StrongVPN.

Complicated Kill Switch

TorGuard includes a VPN kill switch and owns its own DNS servers, ensuring your personal data is protected.

The kill switch stops your internet connection entirely in the unlikely event your VPN connection drops. In doing so, your true IP address is never exposed.

When we tested the Arm killswitches after first successful connection option, we found that it didn’t turn on the kill switch or the app kill feature. Even when we restarted the app, it didn’t come into effect. TorGuard’s customer support team confirmed that this feature was being “phased out.”

And, there are plenty of advanced settings to satisfy even the most security-conscious. The most notable features are:

• App Kill
• Custom proxy servers
• Dedicated IP addresses
• Ad blocking DNS servers

TorGuard Doesn’t Leak Your IP Address or DNS

We ran TorGuard through multiple IP, DNS, and WebRTC leak tests. It passed all the tests and didn’t leak any of our personal information.

We connected to a server and Germany before running the tests. As you can see in the screenshot below, the test didn’t detect our network details in the UK.

Virus & Malware Checks

We ran a malware and virus check on TorGuard’s app installer to make sure it didn’t contain any viruses. TorGuard was completely clean and virus-free.

Single Server Breach

In May 2018, TorGuard suffered a security breach.

TorGuard immediately disclosed in a blog post that the attackers had gained root access to the VPN’s servers. However, the attacker was not able to decrypt user traffic or launch DDoS attacks because the key is kept strictly off the server.

TorGuard issued the following statement:

TorGuard VPN or proxy traffic was not compromised during this isolated breach of a single VPN server and no sensitive information was compromised during this incident.

Despite the minimal impact of the server breach, the handling of the situation was questionable. Following the attack, TorGuard and NordVPN were entangled in a bizarre scandal, where TorGuard filed a lawsuit against NordVPN citing hacking and blackmail.

Copycat Code

In July 2015, VPN.AC released a blog post accusing TorGuard of copying code from its browser extension and putting its users at risk of cyber attacks.

TorGuard was using VPN.ac’s geo-location API server address, which meant its users’ IP addresses could’ve been exposed to VPN.ac.

The browser extension has been since updated to remove the security concern.

TorGuard’s Security Initiatives

TorGuard has taken steps towards preventing security breaches:

• Bug bounty program
• Diskless RAM servers

However, there are a few missing initiatives that would further ensure security:

• Infrastructure security audit
• Vendor security assessment
• Warrant canary

TorGuard can sometimes work in China and bypass the country’s crackdown on VPNs. This is thanks to its proprietary Stealth VPN protocol, Stunnel.

Stunnel wraps traffic in a layer of TLS encryption to make it harder to identify as VPN traffic. You can enable Stunnel by ticking a box in the TorGuard app’s settings.

You can connect to its Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, or US servers for better internet speeds out of China.

Just beware that TorGuard’s website is currently blocked in China, so you’ll need to download the VPN before you travel.

The Stunnel protocol also works in other highly-censored countries like Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

To test out TorGuard’s customer service, we submitted a ticket requesting more information about its servers. We were glad to receive a response in just under an hour. However, the support agent directed us to a different email address. We followed up with the new address and received the answer in also under an hour.

The Support Center has a searchable database of articles, which greatly improves user experience. However, the answers in the FAQ are rather sparse, and we saw a couple out-of-date images.

TorGuard has a very active community forum. Customer support agents typically reply to questions asked there within the same day.

The Support Center links out to TorGuard’s YouTube channel, which has around 18 videos. However, a majority of these were posted six years ago and haven’t been updated since then.