Windscribe Review

As you can see, Windscribe does log some data, which it claims is necessary for maintenance purposes. This isn’t ideal as other true no-log VPN services, like Private Internet Access, function without retaining anything. We wish Windscribe would do the same.

The important takeaway is that none of the information collected can be used to link you to your online activity. This has been verified many times by real-world events — most recently in February 2026 when Dutch police seized a Windscribe server but found no user data.

Windscribe also maintains a page documenting the 100+ law enforcement data requests it’s received since 2018. In every case, the VPN service hasn’t shared any sensitive user data as it doesn’t have access to it.

All of this is made possible by Windscribe’s diskless server network. By running entirely on RAM — volatile memory that erases itself every reboot — the VPN’s server network can’t permanently store any data.

For additional privacy, Windscribe allows you to sign up using cryptocurrency if you don’t want to provide a name or address. We love this feature and think more VPNs should follow suit.

We used Windscribe Pro with Netflix to access more libraries than any other VPN.

In our most recent tests, it unblocked 32 international Netflix libraries — including the US, UK, and Japan — which is easily the best result we’ve recorded and three times as many libraries as some of the biggest names in the industry (e.g. Proton VPN).

Windscribe is in a league of its own for accessing Netflix.

We can’t heap the same praise on its user experience, though, as we noticed some slight buffering at times and occasional drops in streaming quality. We suspect this happens because Windscribe has fewer VPN servers in many international locations.

The free version can’t stream US Netflix, but it remains an excellent for choice for other regions. Most recently, it unblocked 5 Netflix regions, including the UK, France, and Germany.

Windscribe’s free tier works with UK Netflix.

Aside from Netflix, Windscribe is one of the best VPNs for accessing US streaming services from abroad. The Pro and Free versions of the VPN always work with popular content platforms, like Hulu and HBO Max, whenever we test them. Unlike with international Netflix libraries, we didn’t experience any buffering as the VPN offers 45 server locations in the US.

In a similar fashion, Windscribe almost always streams BBC iPlayer — a notoriously difficult platform to unblock — on any of its five UK server locations, though we suggest using the London – Custard server for the best quality due to its 10Gbps bandwidth.

Unsurprisingly, Windscribe’s free plan is the only free VPN that always works with BBC iPlayer. The other free VPNs we test, like PrivadoVPN and Hotspot Shield, are either unreliable or don’t work at all.

All of Windscribe’s free UK servers worked with BBC iPlayer.

Both versions of the VPN worked with all other UK streaming services we test, including being able to bypass Sky Go’s strict VPN blocks and geo-restrictions.

We saw download speeds decrease from 100Mbps to 97Mbps connecting to a same-city server. This is a drop of only 3%, which is very fast and among the best results of any VPN we’ve tested. Speeds were very consistent from one test to the next. We didn’t experience any connection drops while connected to Windscribe servers, either.

But, as you can see, Windscribe’s international speeds are slower than its short-distance ones. Despite being ranked as the joint third-fastest VPN for local connections, it falls to the sixteenth position when it comes to international speeds.

We recorded a download speed loss of 20% connecting to South Africa and 16% connecting to Australia.

To put this in context, you can compare Windscribe’s international speeds to other top VPNs in the chart below.

That said, these speeds have improved a lot recently thanks to Windscribe’s addition of the WireGuard protocol. Previously, using OpenVPN, we recorded a 4x slower download speed on the Australia and Japan servers. We hope Windscribe can continue to optimize its app to deliver faster speeds.

Fast Speeds with the Free Tier

Though impressive for a free VPN, it falls short when compared to the top-performing free VPNs such as Hotspot Shield and Proton VPN. Both VPNs are over 8% faster on local connections. More notably, Hotspot Shield exceeds Windscribe’s international connection speeds by an average of 12%.

Both the free and paid versions of Windscribe allow you to choose between AES-256 encryption (via the OpenVPN protocol) or ChaCha20 (via WireGuard). Either method is secure and industry-backed, but we prefer WireGuard as it offers superior connection speeds.

Using Wireshark, a packet analyzer, we verified that Windscribe securely encrypts web traffic. It concealed our incoming and outgoing data packets:

Windscribe securely encrypts network traffic.

Alongside this, the VPN uses SHA512 for authentication during the handshake. We’re pleased to see this, as it offers a higher level of data integrity than the SHA-256 standard used by many other VPNs.

Another standout feature is the “Firewall” setting, exclusive to Windscribe’s desktop apps. Unlike a standard kill switch, which only blocks your internet once it detects a VPN connection drop, the Firewall blocks all connectivity outside of the VPN tunnel. Put simply, your real IP address can never leak, as the Firewall renders it impossible.

The VPN’s apps themselves include two excellent security features on desktop and mobile: open-sourced software, and post-quantum encryption. The former lets anyone inspect the source code behind Windscribe’s apps so any vulnerabilities can be flagged and patched, whereas the latter offers blanket protection from future quantum cyberattacks.

In plain English, Windscribe’s apps are extremely well protected and will remain so in the future.

Unencrypted Ukrainian Servers

Although we rate Windscribe as a highly secure VPN, its security rating is hampered due to a historic server breach.

In June 2021, two of Windscribe’s servers were seized by the Ukrainian government. These servers were unencrypted as Windscribe incorrectly didn’t consider Ukraine a “high sensitivity region.”

However, despite the claims of many other VPN review websites, there is no evidence that Windscribe user traffic was monitored.

For traffic monitoring to be possible, a user had to be connected to Ukraine through a manual configuration file while using OpenVPN and a legacy DNS resolver. It is very unlikely that all of these conditions were met.

As you can see, most of Windscribe Pro’s servers are concentrated in Europe. Instead of offering joke locations, like ‘Troll Antarctica’, we’d like to see it add servers in popular locations elsewhere, like Egypt and Pakistan.

That said, the VPN provides city-level choice in 14 different countries — a total surpassed only by ExpressVPN. This allows you to select an IP address in a specific part of the country, rather than being limited to one location or assigned an IP randomly. In particular, we were impressed that Windscribe lets you connect to different cities in Bosnia and Cyprus.

Windscribe’s free service offers IP addresses from far more countries than other highly-rated free VPNs. This is because it has free servers in 10 countries, while rivals like Hide.me and ZoogVPN only cover 7 and 3 respectively.

Windscribe has two free UK servers.

Many of these locations, like the UK, are usually behind a paywall. We’re also glad that Windscribe offers free servers in Hong Kong, to give non-paying users a fast choice when connecting from China.

Disappointingly, even after contacting it, Windscribe refused to reveal the total number of individual VPN servers it maintains. It also wouldn’t say how many of its servers are rented, which could mean that Windscribe is entrusting your data to third parties.

The Windscribe website features an excellent page with real-time updates of server status and capacity. This is great when you’re trying to find a quick server or want to troubleshoot a slow connection, but it’d be good to see this added to the Windscribe app instead.

Windscribe’s apps use a consistent design across platforms, which made switching between desktop, mobile, and TV apps straightforward.

Given its price and excellent performance in other areas, we wish Windscribe was more pleasurable to use from day-to-day.

The app’s attempt at humor through notifications — like references to “Rebecca Black’s Friday” or “Unhinged Updates from Jordan Peterson” — are unfunny, and felt extremely out of place for a paid product.

Plus, when using it as our daily VPN, we were routinely frustrated by the free version’s data cap. Regularly having to open the VPN app to disconnect detracts from the seamless experience many competitors provide.

Even with the paid version, the app feels more like a networking tool rather than an app you want to engage with.

Using Windscribe’s clunky apps every day ended up feeling like a chore.

Using Windscribe on streaming devices or iOS is particularly underwhelming. The apps feel clunky, and some of the design choices seem baffling, adding to the frustration.

In short, unless you really want a specific feature that Windscribe provides, Windscribe is likely to leave you frustrated.

You can trust Windscribe to hide your torrenting activity from your ISP. It doesn’t collect any personally identifiable logs and it encrypts network traffic using AES-256. There’s no way for a third party to see the torrent files you’re downloading.

Both versions of the VPN work well for torrenting.

We’re pleased that Windscribe has improved its support for torrenting over time, too, by allowing users to use any server location for P2P file-sharing.

In the past, the VPN restricted torrenting traffic on servers in specific locations, including India and Lithuania. However, these limitations have been lifted.

Although Windscribe Pro supports port forwarding, we found that its torrenting speeds are slower than other top VPNs.

It’s also complicated to set up port forwarding using Windscribe. You’ll have to configure it using its website, which took us more than 10 minutes from start to finish. With other VPNs, like Proton VPN, it took just a few seconds by ticking a checkbox in the app.

Here’s how long it took to download a 20GB torrent file with the free and paid versions of Windscribe compared to other VPNs:

Though the apps are similarly easy to use on each platform, not every feature is available on each app. Here’s a summary of the key differences between Windscribe applications:

Windscribe does offer a separate DNS service called Control D. Though it’s discounted for Windscribe subscribers, it still requires a separate subscription.

We’d like to see it included for free. This would vastly increase the number of devices that Windscribe could work with.

Alternatively, you can use Windscribe’s ‘Secure Hotspot’ feature if you have a Windows computer. This allows you to create a virtual router within the app to share your VPN connection with other devices.

Many VPNs for China, including Windscribe, counter web censorship by employing obfuscation technologies that make it harder for censors to identify VPN traffic.

Windscribe uses a “Stealth protocol” to avoid detection by the censors. This protocol uses the open-source Stunnel algorithm to route your OpenVPN traffic through an additional TLS tunnel. In short, this conceals the fact you are using a VPN.

For the best possible results, first enable the Stealth protocol and then toggle on “Circumvent Censorship” in the app settings.

It takes seconds to activate the anti-censorship mode.

We’ve seen it working first-hand in China, using our test server in Shanghai. Windscribe bypassed China’s firewall 85% of the time over the past year. Even many top VPNs, like NordVPN, can’t match that uptime.

Moreover, Windscribe’s free software also worked in China by connecting to the Hong Kong > Victoria server.

With Windscribe, you can get a static IP address from 13 different locations. A static IP connects you to the same IP address every time you connect. This comes with a few benefits like reducing the chance of websites blacklisting your IP.

Windscribe is one of only a few VPNs that offer a residential IP address. Although this costs an extra $96.00 per year, the US residential IP we purchased has always worked for streaming over years of testing.

“ROBERT” is Windscribe’s ad and malware blocker. It’s a DNS-level malware and ad blocker integrated into the VPN apps.

ROBERT performed exceptionally well in our tests. According to our data, it blocked 80% of ads and 100% of analytic trackers. Using it, we bypassed ads on many popular websites, including YouTube and Google.

The only other VPNs that blocked more ads were IVPN and TunnelBear, but these are far inferior to Windscribe overall.

Though great, we’d like to see Windscribe include its ad and malware blocker on its free app as well. As it stands, you have to download a separate browser extension, which makes it less user-friendly and incompatible with mobile devices.

Available on desktop and Android, Windscribe’s split tunneling feature lets you customize which apps and IP addresses enter the VPN tunnel.

To reduce ping, we used split tunneling to bypass the VPN for Steam.

It’s so simple to do, you just need to activate it in your in-app settings and select if you want to include or exclude the targeted app. We suggest using the “Exclusive” mode as it ensures everything is kept protected aside from whatever you specify as not needing encryption.

The VPN includes a GPS spoofing feature to bypass geo-blocks that detect your location based on your device’s GPS. This worked well to stream out-of-market NFL games and for bypassing NBA blackouts, but is only available on the Android app and desktop browser extensions.

You need to activate developer mode to use the GPS tool on Android.

Apart from Surfshark, Windscribe is the only VPN to support this useful workaround.