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As online security becomes increasingly important, more and more internet users choose to use virtual private networks (VPNs). VPNs hide our personal information and online activities from third parties by creating an encrypted connection, or tunnel, between your device and the provider’s server. Your traffic is routed through this heavily encrypted, protective tunnel, preventing anyone from accessing your data.
Founded in 2011, Romania-based CyberGhost has more than 38 million subscribers around the globe and, according to its website, is a major supporter and promoter of civil rights, a free society and an uncensored internet culture. With more than 9,000 RAM-only servers spread throughout 91 countries – many of them owned and managed by the company – it offers users high levels of security.
Along with an independently verified no-logs policy, competitive prices, and a product range beyond just VPNs, CyberGhost has much to offer.
Rating: ★★★★
If you’re looking for a user-friendly VPN with a robust, independently verified privacy policy, CyberGhost is one to consider. While it doesn’t have the same feature-packed app that its competitors offer, it delivers a capable VPN service with a powerful Windows client, decent unblocking abilities, and a fast, helpful live chat facility. The service provides a range of subscription bands, with the two-year option making it one of the best cheap VPNs, along with an almost unparalleled 45-day money-back guarantee.
It does have a few issues, particularly around its parent company, kill switch efficiency, and lack of security-focused servers, but overall, CyberGhost has a lot to offer users.
Our reviewers are dedicated to bringing you the most accurate and up-to-date information so you can make an informed decision when buying a VPN. We will only recommend a VPN after hours of testing, extensive head-to-head feature comparisons, and after considering verified customer feedback and reviews, and the opinions of industry experts.
Our review scores are determined by the following categories:
We research and test a total of 25 elements within these categories, including:
All of our VPN articles are verified by our in-house team of fact-checkers, so you can be assured our content is as accurate and up to date as possible. Read our article to find out more about how we review VPNs.
CyberGhost is one of the cheapest VPNs we’ve found at its lowest price band, offering monthly, six-monthly or two-yearly subscriptions. To jump from six months to a two-year subscription could be seen as a significant commitment by some users, and one which ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Surfshark avoid by providing a one-year option alongside the monthly and two-yearly subscriptions.
The company has the largest server fleet of all the providers we’ve reviewed and, like the others, offers specialist servers, including streaming and gaming-optimised options.
It should be noted, however, that some, such as its NoSpy servers, are not included in its basic subscriptions and cost extra to access.
Although Surkshark allows unlimited devices to connect simultaneously, CyberGhost’s seven-connection allowance is more than enough for most users.
Keeping up with its competitors, the provider uses RAM-only servers, meaning that nothing is stored on the hard drive, and all data is wiped with every reboot. Like NordVPN, most of its servers are colocated. Colocated servers are owned and managed by the VPN provider, but are stored at a host’s data centre, providing users with added security.
Alongside their subscriptions, for an additional cost, both NordVPN and CyberGhost offer an exclusive, dedicated IP address belonging to a single user. Often called a static IP, it remains the same across all the user’s devices while the user’s real IP is hidden. As well as increasing online privacy, a dedicated IP prevents account blocking by secure sites, such as banks and online shops. Alerts are often raised if customers frequently change IP addresses; a dedicated IP avoids this issue.
Another shared advantage between most of the providers we’ve reviewed is Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit encryption. All of the top-level providers employ AES-256 – one of the most secure encryption methods used by governments, the military and financial institutions. Utilising virtually impenetrable symmetric encryption algorithms, AES-256 scrambles your data into indecipherable text, ensuring your online privacy and security.
| VPN provider | Price | Free version? | Number of servers | Maximum number of devices | Netflix | BBC iPlayer | Disney+ | Amazon | HBO Max | Audit? |
| CyberGhost | From £1.85/m | No | 9,000+ | 7 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Yes |
| ExpressVPN | From £5.36/m | No | 3,000+ | 5 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Yes |
| NordVPN | From £2.79/m | No | 5,500+ | 6 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Yes |
| Surfshark | From £1.80/m | No | 3,200+ | Unlimited | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Yes |
| VPNSecure | From $2.99 (£2.33)/m | No | 75+ | 5 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | No |
With monthly, six-monthly and two-early subscriptions, CyberGhost provides a range of payment plans. Most providers offer the addition of a yearly plan, so this could be considered confusing by some less observant users. The other issue that is easily overlooked concerns its two-year subscription – it becomes an annual subscription for the same price upon its automatic renewal.
However, where the company is particularly generous regards its money-back guarantee. ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Surfshark all have 30-day money-back offers – CyberGhost’s offer is 45 days. This is accessed through customer services, but if you subscribed through the App Store or iTunes, you must contact the Apple Support Team for any refunds subject to Apple’s refund policies.
| Subscription term | Price |
| Monthly | £10.89 ($13.93) / month |
| 6 months | £6.19 ($7.92) / month (£37.14/$46.50 up front) |
| 24 months (+3 months free) | £1.85 ($2.37) / month (£49.95/$63.89 up front) |
CyberGhost provides several payment options, including:
CyberGhost offers a range of features to enhance your online security.
Using public wifi is widely considered a high-risk activity, potentially allowing hackers and cybercriminals access to your data. Using a VPN on public wifi ensures that your online privacy is protected, minimising the risk of data theft.
CyberGhost’s automatic wifi protection ensures you never forget to establish a VPN connection when using an unsecured public network. It creates a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet whenever you connect to a new wifi network.
CyberGhost’s ID Guard feature automatically alerts you if your email address is revealed in a data breach, allowing you to change your password quickly. You can add a maximum of two email accounts and select which one should be your primary address to get reports immediately.
The Smart Rules feature helps to automate CyberGhost. Once configured, the app will do some tasks itself, saving you clicking time. It allows you to select which programmes automatically start when the VPN initiates a connection, and it can be configured to trigger your setup on unsafe wifi networks. Plus, options allow access to specific websites through the VPN while other traffic flows outside the encrypted tunnel – essentially automating the split tunnel feature.
CyberGhost has more than 9,000 RAM-only servers located across 91 countries. Most are owned and managed by the provider, a security advantage rival NordVPN is currently rolling out.
The company provides a choice of specialised servers depending on your reasons for being online. These include servers offering optimum speed and security for downloading, ideal for torrent sites (in fact, our researchers have named CyberGhost the best VPN for torrenting), and optimised streaming servers (which makes it a great streaming VPN for iPhone). It also provides NoSpy servers, which are included in the six-monthly or two-yearly subscription but carry a fee for monthly subscribers.
The provider’s NoSpy servers are based in its Romanian headquarters, meaning that it controls who can and can’t access the server facility. They are programmed to wipe your session history as soon as you log off.
CyberGhost says it is committed to protecting users’ privacy. As part of its transparency reporting, the company claims to receive around 50 log requests annually from various police departments and law enforcement agencies. It goes on to say there is nothing to hand over, as no records are kept. Deloitte has recently independently verified the service’s strict no-log policy.
The company is based in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and operates under Romanian law. According to its website, in 2011, the Romanian Senate unanimously rejected the European Union’s Data Retention Directive, enabling the provider to strictly enforce its no-log policy.
However, in 2016, new discussions were underway across Europe regarding this directive. Romania had three primary laws under preparation, which allowed for data retention and surrender. The president of Romania organised consultations with representatives of the parliamentary parties on these law proposals. Our researchers could find no updated reports of these consultations in the public domain.
A VPN kill switch prevents your device sending and receiving data as soon as an interruption in your connection is detected, protecting your personal information from unexpected exposure.
CyberGhost has kill switches for Windows, macOS, and iOS applications. They constantly monitor your internet connection, and, if a disruption is detected, block all traffic for 120 seconds until the VPN re-establishes a secure connection.
You should receive an instant alert when the kill switch is actioned, allowing you to either connect to a different server or disable the kill switch; however, the alert only happened when we were actually using the app during our research.
Without a VPN, your network traffic is visible, including your personal data and IP address, enabling anyone to access it. Using a VPN enhances your privacy and security by sending your data through a secure, highly encrypted tunnel, meaning that it can’t be seen by a third party.
Split tunnelling lets you route some of your traffic through the encrypted VPN tunnel, while other applications or devices have direct access to the internet. This allows you to benefit from services that perform best when your location is known, while also enjoying secure access to potentially sensitive communications and data.
CyberGhost allows split tunnelling with Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices and applications.
Encryption is key to ensuring online privacy. It works by scrambling data with the help of a mathematical algorithm, encrypting information into code. There are different encryption systems, but most VPNs use AES, which is available in three key sizes –128, 192, and 256 bits.
AES-256 is widely considered to offer the strongest level of encryption currently available. To put it in perspective, a hacker must try out 2,256 combinations, each with 78 digits, to break through the encryption. This virtually impenetrable encryption is why AES-256 is used by financial institutions, the US government and National Security Agency, and even messaging apps, including WhatsApp.
CyberGhost uses AE-256 to ensure its users’ privacy. NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark also employ AES-256 encryption.
Another key security feature is VPN protocols. These rules dictate how the connection between the user and server happens, and CyberGhost has three main ones to select based on your requirements. NordVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark also offer these protocols.
While CyberGhost offers several features to ensure online privacy and security, it has fewer features than most other providers we have reviewed.
As a paid-for add-on, Security Suite offers some valuable services for your Windows devices. It’s compatible with Windows 7, 8.1, 10, and 11 and includes:
The best way to find out how a VPN affects a user’s internet speed is to test it.
There are three main components to consider when testing internet speed, with or without a VPN: download speed, upload speed and latency (ping).
Our researchers thoroughly tested CyberGhost to establish how using the service affected internet download and upload speeds. First, we tested the speeds without the VPN to obtain a baseline with which to calculate the degradation between the speeds with and without the service activated. Then we moved on to test speeds from the UK to servers on other continents. Our researcher used the Ookla Speedtest for this review.
| Download speed (Mbps) | Upload speed (Mbps) | Latency (ping) | Percentage of base download speed | Percentage of base upload speed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No VPN | 37.49 | 9.36 | 8 | ||
| UK to UK | 35.66 | 8.07 | 23 | 95% | 86% |
| UK to US | 35.05 | 8.76 | 87 | 93% | 93% |
| UK to Aus | 25.32 | 8.24 | 267 | 67% | 88% |
When looking at the changes using a VPN makes to your internet connection, download speed and latency are the main concerns. Generally, a download speed above 25Mbps (megabits per second) is necessary for a good internet experience, although gamers look for a speed closer to 50Mbps.
Latency refers to the number of milliseconds a package of data takes to travel to a destination and back and is a significant indicator of network performance quality. A high latency, considered to be more than 150ms, generates a noticeable lag, often resulting in streamed content buffering and online real-time communications becoming impossible. A latency of below 50ms should be the goal to produce the best performance.
When using a UK to UK connection, CyberGhost performed in line with the other providers we tested. The degradation from the baseline was a perfectly acceptable 5 per cent, and with a latency of 23ms, our researchers found their online activities were unaffected.
Testing the UK to US VPN connection, CyberGhost again matched NordVPN, with the 7 per cent download speed degradation making an almost undetectable difference from the baseline. The latency, however, at 87ms, began to negatively affect device performance, with YouTube content buffering and video conference calls freezing. These are the same issues our researchers experienced with NordVPN and Surfshark.
What did surprise us, though, were the speeds and latency for the UK to Australia connections. With a 33 per cent degradation, the download speed was a disappointingly slow 25.32Mbps. Compared to NordVPN’s 31.92Mbps and Surfshark’s 30.47Mbps, CyberGhost’s servers, for our tests at least, didn’t live up to the company’s hype.
Latency was also an issue, but at 267ms, gave a performance in line with the other providers tested. Our researchers expected to struggle with videos, communication and other online activities, which was the case.
The post-test conclusion was that, in terms of download speed loss and latency degradation, CyberGhost generally displayed an average performance, with the exception of the UK to Australia download tests. The slow speeds made websites time out, long-term video buffering and real-time communication impossible. That being said, CyberGhost did provide the best speeds in our search for the best VPN for Android, so customers might see better performance on different devices.
Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) technology enables web applications and sites to capture and stream audio or video media. It also allows browsers to communicate without requiring an intermediary server. WebRTC’s uses include video conferencing, remote security monitoring, and online education, and – being open-source – it is constantly being updated and improved.
It has many advantages for the user, including super-fast sharing capabilities, no third-party components or plugins required, and compatibility with most major web browsers. However, the technology requires devices to know each others’ IP address, which could be a threat to your privacy. A VPN can protect you by hiding your real IP address and only showing the one used by the server you’re connected to.
Performing a quick and easy WebRTC leak test is the best way to confirm robust leak prevention measures are in place.
Our researchers conducted a series of WebRTC leak tests, both with and without CyberGhost. As expected, without a VPN connection, our researchers’ real IP addresses were clearly visible, but with the service enabled, no leaks were evident. This leads us to conclude that the company employs effective WebRTC leak prevention measures.
Reassuringly, independent audits of providers’ privacy policies and security measures are becoming the norm. Auditing firm Deloitte has recently verified CyberGhost’s no-logs policy. The terms of the audit mean the entire document is only by submitting a request to Deloitte. However, to date, our researchers’ requests for a copy have gone unanswered.
CyberGhost, along with ExpressVPN, is owned by Kape Technologies, formerly UK-based Crossrider, and this fact is presenting users with some concerns.
According to CNET, Crossrider developed software which enabled third parties to hijack users’ browsers via malware injections, redirecting traffic to advertisers and collecting private data. Known as traffic manipulation, Crossrider was so successful that Google released a report in 2015 mentioning the company by name.
A 2018 name change was an attempt by Kape Technologies to disassociate itself from its past activities, accompanied by a move away from malicious adware into cybersecurity. However, just a few months later, Kape was still operating Reimage. This scareware programme positions itself as a device performance enhancer, but it has been known to signal false positives on security threats to push its pricey premium service.
More concerning, however, is that CyberGhost’s current terms and conditions make no mention of being owned by Kape Technologies, while its privacy policy states that it can share data with its unnamed parent company.
In a further twist, according to Restore Privacy, in 2021 Kape Technologies purchased a number of VPN review websites and allegedly manipulated the rankings to favour its own expanding stable of VPN providers. Whether it did influence the rankings or not, owning both VPNs and corresponding review websites could be seen as a conflict of interest.
CyberGhost offers broad compatibility across various operating systems and devices.
Desktop and mobile apps:
Browser apps:
TV apps:
Console apps:
Once installed, CyberGhost opens with a clean, lightweight console design, which includes a connection status, a list of locations and a connect button. The location picker helpfully lists each destination’s distance from you, and the list can be filtered by continent or server optimisation – gaming, streaming, or torrents. From the server list, you can also see the load on specific servers and the number of connected users. A favourites system allows you to construct a customised list of servers.
The Smart Rules panel allows further customisation by setting particular behaviour, including the option to connect immediately at startup or what the app should do when a new wifi network is detected. The split tunnel selections can be enabled in the Smart Rules Exceptions tab, designating which URLs should be encrypted and which can route outside the VPN connection.
OpenVPN appears to be the default protocol, but whichever you select, there are no notifications to tell you when it connects or disconnects. The result is you’re never entirely sure whether you’re protected unless actually in the app. Our researchers found this issue concerning when considering online privacy and security. Using WireGuard protocol went one step further by not noticing immediately that our connections had dropped. It soon caught up, but we still didn’t receive a notification alerting us to the disconnect.
The app lacks the distinctiveness and features of NordVPN, and we do have concerns about the kill switch issue.
Installing CyberGhost’s mobile app is quick and straightforward, with both iPhone and Android sharing the same look and feel. There are some noticeable differences between desktop and mobile apps. The location list doesn’t include the distance to each server, for example, but does include the server load figure. The server optimisation choices differ, too, with only downloading or streaming servers listed.
Users should note that the Android mobile app has no kill switch feature.
A wireless VPN router allows you to protect your online security and privacy automatically, whatever device you’re using, eliminating the need to switch it on manually. It also provides the ability to extend VPN protection to all your devices, bypassing CyberGhost’s seven-device installation limit.
Routers that support OpenVPN protocols can be used; however, the following routers have the service pre-installed:
CyberGhost offers a comprehensive help section on its website, with answers to the most commonly asked questions. However, it also has options for getting in touch with customer support.
If your question isn’t urgent, there’s an email contact form. After filling out the question-heavy form and submitting our request, a reply was received in around six hours.
The website’s live chat service is available 24/7. Although our researchers found it took around half an hour to move through the queuing system outside of office hours, generally it delivered a fast, helpful service. It was refreshing to connect with a customer support agent from the start and not have to deal with a chatbot before being passed on to an agent.
Trustpilot awards CyberGhost 4.4 out of five, with 94 per cent of reviewers giving it four or five stars. Many customers mention the service’s affordability, smooth-running apps, and privacy features.
At the other end of the scale, the negative reviews mainly focus on a failure to receive refunds when requested, poor customer service, and problems with blocked networks that cannot be circumnavigated.
These comments and the reasons behind them, both negative and positive, are echoed in App Store and Google Play reviews.
“Overall, [I find it] easy to use and set up new devices. I like that it doesn’t just block all navigation stuff, as it happened with other VPNs, and so it makes the experience much harder. [The] price is also fair.”
“They won’t refund [my money]. They send the same email saying yes we’ll refund but try this first. In other words they ignore you. I have asked for a refund about seven times and they [haven’t fulfilled]].”
“For the last two days it very intermittently works, just hardly at all. But sometimes it works completely flawlessly. I have used CyberGhost for years. It’s secure, and the price is good. I would have to say the majority of the time, I’m thinking really deep here, it’s probably about 50/50 on whether or not it works. Today it doesn’t work on my phone, but it works on my computer. It does work on my girlfriend’s phone, but it doesn’t work on the FireStick. Hit and miss, always a 50/50.”
“I have to say this first – their customer service is top notch. I was doing a monthly subscription until I paid for a whole year subscription. Somehow there was an oversight I was still getting billed for my monthly subscription. It was between a month or two before I noticed. They resolved it and added to my yearly subscription. That was awesome!!! It wasn’t so much about getting reimbursed, but [the] timely manner [in which they] handled my problem.”
CyberGhost has a lot to offer, but equally there are some concerns around performance and transparency regarding its parent company.
While it doesn’t provide as many features as NordVPN, Surfshark or ExpressVPN, the ones it does offer are smooth and effective. We particularly like ID Guard and the subscription add-on Security Suite, and feel that it gives good value for money.
In our speed tests, the service produced satisfactory results comparable with the other provider tests carried out.
The lack of speciality servers, namely double VPN, obfuscated, and Tor servers, may cause serious users to look to more privacy-conscious providers. It does offer torrent- and gaming-optimised servers, focusing on targeting this audience. However, this could cause them to miss out in the future as more users prioritise online security and privacy.
CyberGhost offers the largest server network, powered by the latest VPN technology, but it doesn’t incorporate as many privacy features as its competitors.
Overall score: ★★★★
| Reputation | ★★★★½ |
| Privacy | ★★★★ |
| Performance and features | ★★★★ |
| Plans and pricing value | ★★★½ |
| Customer experience | ★★½ |
The data in this review is reported from a neutral stance and should be used for informational purposes only. We review VPN services from the perspective of:
Independent Advisor does not endorse the streaming of content from regions other than where the subscription is held, nor does it endorse the downloading or consumption of illegally pirated content.
