The Best VPNs to Watch JioHotstar Outside India

Like with all secure and trustworthy VPNs, ExpressVPN’s Indian servers aren’t physically located in the country, but that hasn’t affected the quality or dependability of its Indian IP addresses.

Its 150 servers (labeled ‘India (via Singapore)’ and ‘India (via UK)’ in the app) worked flawlessly in our tests, with reassuring stability and excellent video quality.

ExpressVPN’s Indian server list on its desktop app.

Weirdly, the servers aren’t marked with city-specific locations. Our tests reveal that the India (via UK) server assigns a New Delhi IP address and the India (via Singapore) server a Chennai IP.

ExpressVPN is renowned for its fast long-distance connections, and it’s no different connecting into India from far-away countries like the United States or Canada.

While we were connected to its India servers, our internet speed slowed down by only 15% compared to Surfshark’s 17% and cyberghost’s 19%.

As our top-ranked VPN for streaming, you can’t go wrong choosing ExpressVPN for watching JioHotstar.

You’ll probably think we’re just talking about desktop and mobile access, but ExpressVPN offers much more than that.

ExpressVPN has developed the most eye-pleasing and beginner-friendly apps for every major device and platform: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux, Apple TV, Android TV, Fire TV, and even routers.

The apps are beautifully designed, in our opinion, with vibrant colors, few and clear buttons, and little distractions that get in the way of changing your IP address quickly.

The end result is that we had instant success streaming Hotstar Specials like Criminal Justice and Aarya on all our devices, including our Firestick and our Apple TV.

Moreover, ExpressVPN’s apps are the quickest to connect to servers, and by some margin. While some VPNs took five or more seconds to change your IP address, ExpressVPN did it in under three.

While it’s true that ExpressVPN’s multi-year plans are considerably more expensive than Surfshark’s and CyberGhost’s, they are worth the extra cost, given what you get for it.

That being said, we totally understand if you find Surfshark’s or CyberGhost’s pricing points a lot more appealing.

Keep in mind that, if you only need a VPN short-term, ExpressVPN runs a 7-day free trial via mobile, plus a 30-day refund guarantee on any subscription plan.

Adding the two together gives you 37 days of risk-free use of the best VPN there is on the market.

Surfshark’s Indian server network has always been very reliable throughout the years. Its IP addresses have very rarely been detected by Indian web services.

While it has significantly fewer virtual servers covering the country than ExpressVPN, this has had no bearing on the VPN’s performance.

You can also decide which city you want to appear in, whether its New Delhi or Mumbai, which is something you can’t do that easily with ExpressVPN.

It’s worth pointing out that New Delhi’s servers access Hotstar more consistently than Mumbai’s, which every so often stop working with the streaming service.

There are some drawbacks to using Surfshark, though, which may or may not put you off the VPN service.

As we mentioned earlier, its international internet speeds aren’t as fast as ExpressVPN’s.

While the VPN is by no means slow, every now and again we’ve noticed the impact of slower speeds connecting to certain countries. Very occasionally, our speed briefly fluctuated and our streaming quality worsened.

Also, Surfshark’s desktop app is way too cluttered for our liking. The interface feels rather busy, with too many tabs and settings that get in the way of the core purpose: changing IP address.

On the other hand, the service’s mobile apps are much more streamlined and enjoyable to use.

Surfshark’s India Servers on its Android app.

Finally, the VPN’s servers are rather slow to connect compared to ExpressVPN. We’re not talking minutes, obviously, but several additional seconds can be frustrating when you want to quickly change online location.

There are no completely free (and secure) VPNs that bypass Hotstar’s geo-restrictions. CyberGhosts’ free trials are therefore the best next option available.

The VPN’s 24-hour free trial on PC and Mac is fantastic if all you want to do is stream a live cricket match or a movie. You don’t even have to submit payment information.

On smartphones and tablets, you can test drive the VPN for three days on Android and seven on iOS.

CyberGhost’s free trial options on mobile.

You can easily cancel both trials from your app store’s subscriptions settings, but make sure you do so before the end of the trial period to avoid being charged.

There are two challenges with using CyberGhost with Hotstar: disappointing speeds and server instability.

Out of all top-tier VPNs, CyberGhost is one of the slowest connecting cross-country, with an international speed loss of 19%.

It’s a respectable speed performance compared to run-of-the-mill VPNs, but we expect more from a service with CyberGhost’s strong reputation.

These speed constraints resulted in videos taking a little longer to load. At times, the quality of the stream suffered, too, with brief blurriness or pixelation creeping in.

Another issue concerns the Mumbai server’s occasional instability, with our connection sometimes freezing and blocking our device’s overall connectivity.

While it only happened a handful of times, it’s enough for us to warn you about it, especially as we didn’t encounter such a thing with ExpressVPN or Surfshark.