The Best VPNs for Indonesia

ExpressVPN’s internet speeds are some of the fastest we’ve seen, no matter if you’re connecting to a nearby server, or one located thousands of miles away.

For example, while connected to its servers in nearby Malaysia and Singapore, we recorded a speed slowdown of just 2%!

And connecting to locations further away, the impact on our internet speed was only 15%: an excellent result very few VPNs can compete with.

ExpressVPN is also one of the rare VPNs capable of unblocking Indonesian Netflix regularly, as well as other popular services like Disney+ Hotstar, Vidio, Viu, and Genflix.

In addition to Netflix Indonesia, ExpressVPN can access another 17 regions, including the US, the UK, and Canada.

Want to stream BBC iPlayer, Sky Sports, or Kayo Sports? No problem. ExpressVPN works with over 95% of streaming services we tested it with.

And if you’re looking for a VPN to get cheap games on Steam, we recommend using ExpressVPN’s Indian VPN IP addresses, since India has some of the lowest-priced games.

Another strength of ExpressVPN is that it’s arguably the easiest VPN to use, thanks to a very intuitive and consistent app design spanning across many platforms and devices.

This makes it so much smoother to switch from your mobile to your computer to your streaming device, without having to figure out how to connect to a VPN location all over again.

The great thing about ExpressVPN is that this simplicity in design doesn’t come at the detriment of functionality or security.

None of the VPN’s servers monitor or store your internet activity, with connections secured through AES-256 and ChaCha20 encryption.

You also don’t need to enable any VPN obfuscation setting at all to bypass the strictest content filters, since it’s enabled automatically in the background.

That said, ExpressVPN lacks some of the additional tools that NordVPN and Surfshark offer for free, especially multi-hop servers and an Android GPS spoofer.

As we’ll explain in our NordVPN and Surfshark reviews below, these two tools are helpful for additional protection and, in the case of GPS data spoofing, to bypass trickier mobile geo-restrictions.

They’re not essential, and you’ll likely not need them in many instances, but it’s nonetheless a shame that ExpressVPN doesn’t offer them.

NordVPN’s low latency and fast connections speeds are a direct result of its advanced NordLynx (WireGuard) protocol, and its regularly updated and upgraded server infrastructure.

Connecting to servers in adjacent countries, like Malaysia and Singapore, we experienced almost no impact to our internet connection: a mere 4% speed loss and a low ping rate of 8ms.

Other than ExpressVPN, very few other VPNs can match this type of performance, which is also why NordVPN remains one of our favorite VPNs for online gaming.

To guarantee such performances, NordVPN automatically connects you to less-congested servers to avoid connection disruptions and speed fluctuations due to server overloading.

What’s even more appealing to some users is that NordVPN packs in more additional features than ExpressVPN.

Two we’ve spent the most time with are its multi-hop (Double VPN) servers for greater privacy, and Meshnet, for connecting to your home IP address while traveling.

NordVPN’s Double VPN servers add an extra hop (server) on your connection’s journey. This adds an additional layer of encryption.

The choice of multi-hop server locations is limited, though, and we also saw our speeds slow down noticeably when using them from Indonesia.

NordVPN also offers more dedicated IP locations than any other VPN service we’ve tested.

That said, they cost extra and aren’t as private as ExpressVPN’s dedicated IPs.

CyberGhost successfully unblocked popular Indonesian streaming services like Vidio, Disney+ Hotstar, WeTV, GoPlay, and Genflix, at every attempt and without any noticeable impact to stream quality.

However, the VPN did struggle to access Indonesia-only content titles on Netflix. It was nowhere near as reliable as our streaming VPN of choice, ExpressVPN.

On the plus side, we comfortably accessed popular US and UK titles from our hotel room in Bali, including region-locked content on BBC iPlayer, Disney+, HBO Max, and Hulu.

CyberGhost has one of the widest range of servers in Indonesia of all the VPNs we tested.

Not only that, it’s one of the few VPN providers to offer P2P-optimized servers in Indonesia.

That said, we found that CyberGhost was considerably slower than both ExpressVPN and NordVPN, connecting to its Indonesia servers as well as many international locations.

While connected to nearby servers in Malaysia and Singapore, our speeds dropped by 5%. In comparison, NordVPN’s slowed down by just 4%.

On connections further afield, the slowdown worsened to 19%, leading to occasional buffering particularly during very popular live streams.

With online surveillance increasing in recent years, Surfshark is one of those few VPN providers you can trust to enhance your privacy in these environments.

The company’s diskless RAM-only servers ensure nothing is permanently written to disk, and its logging policy has been independently verified by multiple Deloitte audits.

Moreover, the minimal connection data it does collect to prevent device abuse (which we’re still not a fan of) is deleted within 15 minutes of disconnecting.

For travellers and expats handling sensitive internet data, we recommend two features that’ll give you added peace of mind.

The first is ‘Dynamic MultiHop’ which routes your connection through two VPN servers in different countries, adding a second layer of encryption.

You can choose the entry and exit nodes (servers), but remember that your speed will be affected a little more than usual.

The second is the ‘Rotating IP’ feature, which quietly changes your IP address in the background without dropping your connection or changing your online location.

Both settings are available on smartphone and desktop, so whether you’re on the go or working from an internet café or hotel room, you can easily add these extra layers of security.

Surfshark’s speeds are adequate for most tasks in Indonesia, but they aren’t quite on par with the industry leaders.

On nearby servers in Singapore and Malaysia, our download speeds dipped by 4%.

That’s on par with both CyberGhost and NordVPN, and perfectly fine for streaming or browsing, though it does sit slightly behind ExpressVPN’s impressive 2% drop on the same routes.

Where the speed gap widens is on long-distance connections: connecting to servers in Australia, Europe or the US, we recorded slowdowns of 17%, compared to 15% for ExpressVPN and 14% for NordVPN.

While a few percentage points may not sound like much, if you’re in Bali dialing into video calls on spotty villa WiFi, that difference can be noticeable.

Connection times also proved slightly frustrating during our testing. We regularly waited several seconds to lock onto popular servers, especially on mobile.

While that can be a minor irritation at home, we felt it a lot more jumping from one WiFi network to another.

Indonesia’s MR5 law requires ISPs to retain user data and hand it over on request. Proton VPN’s answer to this is the strongest of any free VPN we’ve tested.

It doesn’t collect any activity data that can identify you, operates under Swiss privacy law, and its apps have been fully audited by independent security researchers.

The code is also open-source, meaning anyone can inspect it for vulnerabilities, which is why the company is so confident about its security.

Proton VPN also offers a highly reliable kill switch across both its desktop and mobile apps.

On desktop (Windows, Mac, and Linux), it’s just a quick toggle in the app settings, while Windows and Linux users even get an ‘Advanced Kill Switch’ for extra protection.

Just note that if you’re using an Android device, you’ll need to manually enable the kill switch through your phone’s native system settings, since Android doesn’t allow VPN apps to turn this on by default.

Whether Proton VPN is a good choice for you depends on what you’re trying to do.

That’s because the free app automatically picks the best (often nearest) location to you, which in this case is Singapore.

Singaporean VPN servers are also subject to certain website blocks: depending on what you’re trying to access, you may face disappointment.

Also, Proton VPN doesn’t bypass streaming geo-restrictions and doesn’t allow P2P traffic on its free servers.

In other words, Proton VPN is fine for hiding your IP address and protection your WiFi connections, but otherwise you’re better off using a free trial from our higher-rated picks.