FastestVPN Review

Here you can see a summary of everything FastestVPN logs:

FastestVPN does a very good job of clarifying exactly what user information it collects and stores. The fact it recently commissioned and passed a logging audit from independent firm Altius IT goes a long way to improve trust, too.

Cayman Islands Jurisdiction

FastestVPN is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, which is a safe-haven for privacy.

There are no mandatory data retention laws like in the EU’s Data Retention Directive, and it has no association with anti-privacy intelligence-sharing alliances like the Five Eyes. It has also enacted its own Data Protection Law.

FastestVPN Ownership Is Not Very Transparent

FastestVPN could build trust with us, and other users, by publishing regular transparency reports, detailing any law enforcement requests it has received. This is quite common in the industry.

We’d also like more transparency about the company behind FastestVPN. There is almost no information provided. The website only informs readers that it was founded by “a team of dedicated IT specialists.”

This isn’t surprising from a privacy company, but we also like to know the corporate structure behind VPN services to make sure they’re trustworthy.

When we asked FastestVPN, we were told:

“We would like to tell you that we are located at the Grand Pavilion Commercial Center, West Bay Road, Cayman Islands. Our Marketing and Support teams are located in Dallas, Texas. The brand is owned by Fast Technologies Ltd.”

There is hardly any public information available about Fast Technologies Ltd. All we could find out is that it was founded by Pakistani businessman Azneem Bilwani in 2017. Bilwani was the chairman of the Intermarket Group, a manufacturing firm, until 2021.

Here’s a list of popular streaming services that FastestVPN currently unblocks:

FastestVPN comes with a selection of streaming-optimized servers for a number of countries, including the US, Canada, India, Italy, Japan, and the UK. These are all easily accessed by typing ‘Streaming’ into the server search bar.

FastestVPN has a large selection of working streaming servers.

It doesn’t specify which streaming services these servers unblock, but we tested them and found that, except for Italy, all work with the listed country’s Netflix library, including reliable access to Netflix Japan – and much more.

You can use FastestVPN to sign up for HBO Max from outside the US and also stream Hulu.

FastestVPN also stands out as a streaming VPN for India. It has four India streaming servers that all work to access Netflix India and Hotstar from outside India.

UK streaming sites are easily accessed. FastestVPN streams Channel 4 (All 4) from the US, as well as BBC iPlayer and ITV Player. You can also stream from the Disney+ Star hub from anywhere, which is a UK and Europe exclusive.

FastestVPN unblocks all major UK streaming services.

Overall, FastestVPN is an excellent VPN for streaming. Italy’s streaming server isn’t working, and a Germany streaming server would go far, but all other servers work to unblock the most popular streaming sites across the globe.

Here’s a summary of how FastestVPN performed in our latest torrenting tests:

We don’t recommend FastestVPN for torrenting. Connecting to a local server to test its P2P speeds, we experienced an average bitrate of 0.7MiB/s. These torrent speeds are nowhere near good enough.

We tested FastestVPN on qBittorrent

We expect a good torrenting VPN to be closer to 10.0MiB/s, making P2P file sharing quick and easy.

A torrenting VPN should also offer port forwarding and SOCKS5, which are favorite tools of seasoned torrenters. FastestVPN doesn’t have any of these.

We also have security concerns around FastestVPN’s kill switch and leaks. Our kill switch tests show that it doesn’t always block your real IP address, meaning that an internet disconnection could reveal your true location.

Furthermore, we recorded DNS request leaks and IPv6 leaks using FastestVPN on Windows – which is very serious. Definitely do not use FastestVPN to torrent on Windows devices.

It’s a shame as FastestVPN lets you torrent on all of its servers, and its logging policy is more than private enough.

FastestVPN is more than fast enough for all your internet needs but it’s some way off challenging the fastest VPNs on the market.

We found that our speeds consistently dropped the farther and farther away from our real location the FastestVPN server we connected to was. For example an average download speed on a Canada server of 96Mbps is very impressive, but 80Mbps when connecting to the UK is considerably worse.

All of FastestVPN’s download speeds more than meet our threshold for what we consider a fast VPN, though – it’s FastestVPN’s upload speeds that really disappoint. It consistently produced very poor upload speeds around the world on any server other than the one closest to us.

This might not have a huge impact on your daily usage, but if you game online, make a lot of video calls, or regularly torrent, you may find it affects you.

FastestVPN is secure and comes with the essentials for internet security, but it’s not as advanced as VPNs like NordVPN or Windscribe. There is nothing as sophisticated as double VPN, RAM-only servers, or a GPS spoofer.

At the moment, you can select IKEv2, OpenVPN (TCP & UDP), and WireGuard protocols across FastestVPN apps. We recommend using OpenVPN or WireGuard – the safest (and fastest) protocols.

FastestVPN’s new macOS app showing the newly-added support for WireGuard.

Split tunneling is only available on the Android app, which is frustrating – is used to be a part of the Windows app but seems to have been recently removed.

Does FastestVPN encrypt your traffic?

The first thing we wanted to test was whether FastestVPN actually encrypts your traffic effectively. We ran it through Wireshark, a packet-sniffing tool.

As you can see in the screenshot below, when connected to FastestVPN our internet traffic became indecipherable, meaning it has been successfully encrypted.

FastestVPN encrypts your internet traffic.

FastestVPN uses AES-256 encryption, which is considered to be the very best. We expect nothing less from a quality VPN.

FastestVPN’s kill switch failed our tests

We tested FastestVPN’s kill switch using our unique kill switch test tool. We recorded our test so that you can see how FastestVPN fails to block your real IP being exposed. See it below:

Using FastestVPN on macOS or Windows, your IP address will be exposed whenever you change your VPN server or when reconnecting to the internet after a random disconnection. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.

The kill switch works slightly better on Windows if you also select ‘Automatically Reconnect’ alongside the kill switch option, but it’s still not watertight.

Leaks, virus & malware checks

We put FastestVPN through a series of tests to ensure there are no leaks, malware, or intrusive trackers. We were disappointed with the results.

After testing it with our leak test tool, we can report that FastestVPN does not leak IP, DNS, WebRTC, or Geolocation data on macOS, but it does on Windows.

Specifically, DNS requests leak when using FastestVPN on Windows. DNS leaks are a big deal because it means that your ISP can still see what websites you’re visiting, making the VPN a lot less private. For this reason, we suggest that you don’t use FastestVPN on Windows.

IPv6 leaks on Windows

FastestVPN still does not support IPv6 connections. On macOS, FastestVPN outright blocks connections to ensure there are no data leaks.

FastestVPN blocks IPv6 connections on macOS but not on Windows.

This is a safe approach, but the best approach is to develop support for new IPv6 connections.

However, it’s a completely different story on the Windows app. It doesn’t have the same automatic blocking of IPv6 connections and our leak test tool revealed that FastestVPN does leak IPv6 on Windows. This is a huge security flaw.

FastestVPN has, however, at least recently fixed an issue with its certification that may have caused its app to be incorrectly flagged as malware by some antivirus programs.

Poor Ad & Tracker Blocker

FastestVPN claims to have an ad and tracker blocker automatically enabled on all of its apps.

We put FastestVPN’s ad blocker to the test by using an ad block test. The result was disappointing: only 56% of ads and trackers were blocked, making it one of the worst we’ve tested.

The best VPN ad blockers manage to prevent over 90% of ads and trackers.

We also tested FastestVPN’s tracker blocker ability using a tool provided by the EFF. The result was disappointing. It said that FastestVPN does not effectively block trackers.

FastestVPN was disappointing at blocking both ads and trackers.

Overall, FastestVPN needs to focus on boosting its security offering: fixing DNS leaks and building IPv6 support, as well as a system-wide kill switch that doesn’t leak. That’s before advanced features like multi-hop servers, diskless servers, rotating IP addresses, and much more. FastestVPN has a long way to go.

We tested FastestVPN on our own Shanghai server to see if it can access sites blocked by The Great Firewall. Unfortunately it cannot.

We were unable to login to FastestVPN when connected in China. All of FastestVPN’s apps have been blocked.

However, after we used another VPN that works reliably in China, our login worked and we were able to access blocked sites like Instagram and Facebook using FastestVPN.

The requirement to use another VPN before means that we cannot recommend FastestVPN for censorship.

It might perform better in a country with less robust censorship, like Turkey, but the Western-centric nature of its server network means that FastestVPN can’t help much in regions where the internet is often blocked and censored.

FastestVPN has live chat support via its contact page. When using it, you are quickly connected with a human being (not a bot) and our experience with the support agents has always been positive; they respond quickly and politely.

However, a couple of times they have responded with an answer to a question we never asked. For example, when we simply asked about the number of servers FastestVPN has, it only told us that its Russia servers are under maintenance.

The website resources can be useful for complex manual setups but it’s generally lacking in technical depth. The FAQ page is basic and limited.

For more complex questions, it’s best to use the FastestVPN support email: support@fastestvpn.com.

Response times are fast, but by no means instant; we sent an email at 4:04pm and got a response at 5:39pm – just over 90 mins. Mullvad only took 13 minutes to reply to our email.

Overall, the support is sufficient enough to answer both simple and complex questions.