How to Get a Surfshark Free Trial

To access Surfshark’s free trial directly from your Windows PC, all you need to do is sign up to it via the official Surfshark website.

Follow the steps below to see how easy it is. Once you’ve created your free Surfshark account, you can then use it with all other apps.

1. Go to the Surfshark website: Click Start a free trial, choose either the 12-month or 24-month plan, and enter your email address and payment details.



2. Use a credit card or PayPal for payment: The free trial isn’t available with other payment methods.



3. Download and install the Surfshark app: Once the installation finishes, click Open to launch Surfshark.
4. Create your account in the app: Enter the same email address you used to sign up and set a strong password. Then click Create account to continue.



5. Enjoy Surfshark free for 7 days on Windows PC: You’ll get full access to all premium features, including unlimited bandwidth and servers in 100 countries.



6. Cancel the free trial right away to avoid being charged after seven days. You’ll still have full access to Surfshark during the trial. To cancel, go to your account area on the Surfshark website and select Subscriptions > Payments > Cancel Free Trial. For step-by-step details, see later in this guide.

You have two options on Mac: sign up to the trial through the website (as we’ve shown above) or via the Mac App Store, which we broken down below:

1. Open the Mac App Store and search for ‘Surfshark’: Click Get to download and install the app.



2. Once installation is complete, click ‘Open’ to launch Surfshark.
3. Create your account in the app: Enter a valid email address and set a strong password. Then click Create account to continue.



4. Subscribe and confirm your trial: When prompted, click Subscribe then Continue to confirm. Unlike iOS and Android, you don’t need to manually select the 12-month plan — it’s the only option available.



5. Use Surfshark for free for 7 days.



6. Cancel the free trial straight away to avoid accidental charges at the end of the trial period. Go to App Store > Apple Account > Subscriptions, find Surfshark, and click Cancel Free Trial. For detailed steps, see elsewhere in this article.

1. Get the Surfshark app from the App Store.
2. Sign up with your email and a password: You’ll need these credentials to use your free trial on other devices too.



3. Subscribe to the 12-month plan: This is the only pricing option that includes the free trial.



4. Start using Surfshark for free on your iOS device.



5. Cancel the free trial immediately: To avoid being charged, cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends. Since you keep full access for the full 7 days even after canceling, it’s best to do it straight away.

1. Get Surfshark’s Android app from Google Play: Tap Install.



2. Once installed, tap Open.
3. Tap Create Account and enter your email and password. You’ll only see the free trial option on the next screen if you’re a genuine first-time user. If you’re logged into Google Play with an email address you’ve used before to sign up, you won’t get the free trial option, no matter which email you enter at this step.



4. Hit ‘Start 7-Day Free Trial’: Only the 12-month plan includes the trial.



5. Select your payment method and subscribe. You’ll then be taken to the Surfshark app, where your free trial will start automatically.

   

6. Use Surfshark for free for 7 days.



7. Cancel the free trial right away to ensure Surfshark doesn’t charge your Google Play account once the seven days are up. Like on iOS, turn off auto-renewal at least 24 hours before the trial ends to avoid being billed.

To cancel your Surfshark free trial on PC, you’ll need to complete the process on Surfshark’s website.

In fact, whatever your device, if you signed up for the free trial on the website, that’s where you’ll need to cancel it.

1. Go to the Surfshark website and click My Account in the top right corner.
2. Open your subscriptions: In your account dashboard, select Subscriptions > Payments.



3. Select Cancel Free Trial under Subscription details, then confirm your cancellation.

   

4. Check for confirmation: You’ll see a message confirming that your cancellation was successful. You’ll retain full access until the trial end date shown.

If you signed up to the free trial via the website, you’ll need to cancel it from your web account. However, if you enrolled into the trial through the Mac App Store, follow the instructions below:

1. Open the Mac App Store and click your name in the bottom-left corner.



2. Click ‘Account Settings’ in the top-right corner: Enter your Apple ID password if prompted.



3. Scroll down to the ‘Subscriptions’ section and click Manage.



4. Select ‘Surfshark VPN’ from your list of active subscriptions.



5. Click ‘Cancel Free Trial’ and confirm your choice.



6. Verify the cancellation: Look for red text reading “You have cancelled your subscription” on the App Store subscriptions page.

1. Open your iOS Settings.
2. Go to your subscriptions: Tap your Apple Account name > Subscriptions.



3. Select your Surfshark free trial: Tap Surfshark VPN from your list of subscriptions, then select Cancel Free Trial.



4. Confirm cancellation: Tap again to confirm. You’ll keep full access until the trial period ends, this just prevents automatic billing.

1. Open your Google Play account: Tap your profile icon in the top right corner of the Play Store.
2. Go to subscriptions: Tap Payments and subscriptions > Subscriptions.



3. Select your Surfshark subscription from the list of active subscriptions.



4. Cancel your Surfshark free trial: Tap Cancel subscription at the bottom of the screen.



5. Select a reason for cancellation: Choose any option, it won’t affect your ability to cancel successfully.

Your Surfshark subscription will now appear as Cancelled. You’ll still be able to use Surfshark for the remainder of your free trial without being charged.

Since you’ll have to pay for the subscription upfront, sign up to the ‘Surfshark Starter’ one-month plan.

Once you’ve gone through the payment process and purchased your subscription, you’ll be able to use all of Surfshark’s apps and features, including its Fire TV and Apple TV software.

Crucially, you must request a refund before the end of the money-back guarantee window. You can do this by navigating to the refund request form in your web browser.

From the form, select a reason for your refund and type a short explanation. Don’t worry, you can type anything you want and still receive your refund. Click ‘Submit and continue’ and then ‘Request refund’.

As we mentioned earlier, you can actually get a full refund twice as long as “the period between both cancellations for which you claim refund is not less than 6 months.”

Therefore, you can use Surfshark risk-free for over 60 days, although not continuously.

Surfshark offers one of the most generous free trial policies available right now. Unlike many competitors that limit trials to only mobile devices, Surfshark’s 7-day free trial is available on PC, Mac, iOS and Android.

And while most VPN services allow only one refund per customer (once you’ve subscribed to the service), Surfshark lets you claim a second refund after a 6-month waiting period from the first one.

The one downside we noticed is that Surfshark tracks refunds by payment method, not email address. This means you cannot receive multiple refunds using the same payment details, even if you create a new account with a different email address.

The table below compares Surfshark’s trial and refund terms with other popular VPNs:

We’ve always found Surfshark’s apps easy to use thanks to a good design, helpful explainers, and user-friendly toggles.

As the design is relatively consistent across its suite of apps, you can expect a similar user experience regardless of the device you’re using.

The design of the desktop apps feels slightly cluttered given the many extra settings that Surfshark offers to its users, including multi-hop servers, shared static IPs, an Android GPS spoofer, and an ad blocker.

Moreover, its unlimited device policy lets you use Surfshark on as many devices as you want, which is ideal if you have a large household.

We didn’t fully appreciate how good this is until we switched to testing Mullvad and had to immediately log out of multiple devices when we exceeded its device limit.

The VPN’s unlimited device policy makes it very easy to unblock geo-restricted streaming platforms on many devices at once.

In fact, Surfshark is very effective at bypassing content geo-blocks around the world including most American, British, Canadian and Australian restrictions.

We particularly enjoyed using Surfshark with Netflix and in our opinion it’s the best Disney+ VPN we’ve tested. It’s also a good VPN for HBO Max and BBC iPlayer.

Watching BBC iPlayer abroad with Surfshark.

On the rare occasion Surfshark didn’t work with a streaming service, we found that connecting to a different server fixed it.

The only area where Surfshark performs slightly worse than its competitors is speed.

Connecting to other countries, our speeds slowed down by an average of 17%, compared to ExpressVPN’s 15% and NordVPN’s 14%.

While this slowdown didn’t affect streaming quality for the most part, we did encounter one or two instances of pixelation and buffering. This happened very rarely, though.