You’re about to choose between Surfshark and NordVPN. Don’t decide until you see our Surfshark vs NordVPN comparison. Continue reading, and we’ll help you get the VPN that fits you best.
Surfshark vs NordVPN
NordVPN leads the VPN industry in technology, global coverage, and customer base.
Surfshark VPN, a growing industry figure, has competitive offerings and now gains ground on NordVPN based on having a lower price and similar features.
Although an underdog, Surfshark offers many amenities that the top brands fail to offer.
For instance, Surfshark provides a warrant canary that lets the world know when the company receives a warrant to seize their data.
Unlimited simultaneous connections gives Surfshark VPN another advantage over their competitors.
Other positive attributes of Surfshark include:
- Based outside Five Eyes jurisdiction.
- Lower price than NordVPN.
Are you ready? Get an excellent price on Surfshark using our link. You’ll check out directly with Surfshark, sharing no personal or payment information with us.
NordVPN, of course, has plenty to offer. Perhaps that’s why so many companies immitate their services.
BOTTOM LINE: You can’t go wrong with either Surfshark VPN or NordVPN. If you have a bunch of devices to connect and want to save some money, Surfshark will not disappoint you.
Now, let’s compare these two products.
Surfshark vs NordVPN
Price
Surfshark
Surshark makes no secret: It’s service costs less than NordVPN.
In fact, Surfshark ranks as one of the lowest cost of the top five VPN services. Only PrivateInternetAccess sells at a lower price, but, according to Surfshark, PIA does not offer 24/7 support. Also, PIA supports only 10 simultaneous connections per account.
You can get 12 months of Surfshark for $59.76. That comes out to $2.49 per month.
But, we’re talking about NordVPN.
NordVPN
Right now, you can get NordVPN at an excellent price: Two years for $89.00. You pay it all up front, but it comes out to a monthly rate of $3.71 per month.
Commitment
Sufshark VPN
You can get Surfshark’s best price for a 12-month commitment.
NordVPN
NordVPN requires you to keep their service for 24 months to get their best price.
NOTE: NordVPN’s final 2-year sale is about to end. Now’s the best time to get NordVPN.
Connections
By “connections,” we’re talking about how many devices you can connect to the service at one time with the same account.
Surfshark
Surfshark offere unlimited simultaneous connections. At first, you might think that the extra load on the system would slow Surfshark’s VPN speed: It doesn’t.
Surfshark never oversells its service and maintains scalable infrastructure to always have ample capacity.
NordVPN
NordVPN limits the number of simultaneous connections to its servers using the same account.
Before you judge NordVPN, you must realize that hackers target NordVPN, giving some people illegal and illicit access to their system. Capping the number of simultaneous connections limits the damage someone may do with a NordVPN cracked copy.
VPN support
Both Surfshark and NordVPN offer 24/7 support. Your I Want My VPN! team has accessed technical support with both brands and rate them equally outstanding in terms of:
- Short wait times.
- Friendly agents.
- Competent agents.
- Issue resolution on first contact.
You can’t go wrong with either service.
Adblocker
Surfshark
Open the “Features” tab of the Surfshark VPN app and you’ll find an option called “CleanWeb.” With this feature enabled, you’ll block ads and trackers and improve your VPN speed.
NordVPN
In the NordVPN, you can enable NordVPN’s CyberSec feature in the “General” section of the “Preferences” pane. This will reduce the number of ads you see as you use the internet. CyberSec will also reduce your vulnerability to malware.
Jurisdiction
The laws that govern your VPN operator directly affect the degree of security and privacy you enjoy.
An alliance exists between some of the world’s leading powers that enable them to share intelligence information, skirting laws intended to curb such behavior.
The Five Eyes alliance is one of the worst privacy-rights offenders. Signatory nations include:
- USA.
- Australia.
- Canada.
- New Zealand.
- The United Kingdom.
NOTE: Despite recent rumors to the contrary, New Zealand remains an active participant in Five Eyes. Read about it at ABC News.
A broader, 14-Eyes alliance also exists. its signatory nations are:
- United States.
- The United Kingdom.
- Australia.
- The Netherlands.
- Norway.
- Germany.
- Italy.
- Belgium.
- New Zealand.
- Canada.
- Denmark.
- France.
- Sweden.
- Spain.
These governments have hostile data protection policies that allow their intelligence agencies to seize data from businesses (such as VPNs) without notice.
While some U.S. based VPN companies, such as TorGuard, claim that jurisdiction doesn’t matter since their servers do not keep logs. In fact, many of the top VPNs now operate diskless servers, so governments can’t glean user data via digital forensics.
In our opinion, jurisdiction matters, especially in the USA. The FBI and CIA repeatedly involve themselves in illegal activities that violate American’s privacy rights.
Without notice, U.S. regulators may require U.S. based VPNs to give intelligence agencies “back door” access to their servers.
Current. political upheaval in the USA jeopardizes online anonymity.
Surfshark Jurisdiction
Surfshark VPN operates under the jurisdiction of the British Virgin Islands, a nation that most people regard as “privacy friendly.” Also, The British Virgin Islands have no data retention laws.
NordVPN Jurisdiction
NordVPN operates in Panama, a jurisdiction that has no data retention laws.
Netflix
Many people buy a VPN for the sole purpose of unblocking Netflix. Our real-world experience with accessing foreign Netflix catalogs is “iffy” at best. Many people, however, seem able to do the job using a VPN.
Surfshark
According to Surfshark, you can unblock 30 Netflix libraries with their service.
Here’s what Surfshark told us:
With Surfshark you can stream these Netflix libraries: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, India, Italy, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, Turkey, Argentina, Singapore, Japan, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Taiwan, Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium, Hong Kong, Portugal, Greece, Thailand, Israel, Chile, Colombia, Finland, Russia. Our developers are working on unlocking new libraries every day, so even more libraries will be available in the future!
– Henry, Surfshark Customer Support
Learn more about unblocking Netflix at Surfshark.com.
NordVPN
According to Surfshark, NordVPN can unblock seven Netflix libraries.
If you read this NordVPN support article, you’ll see that service claims to give access to 16 Netflix catalogs:
- U.S.
- Canada.
- Germany.
- UK.
- France.
- Italy.
- Japan.
- Australia.
- Netherlands.
- Spain.
- India.
- Brazil.
- South Korea.
- Finland.
- Poland.
- Turkey.
If you get NordVPN and have difficulty connecting to Netflix, contact NordVPN support.
VPN Protocols
Protocols can affect everything, including speed, security, and access.
Surfshark
In the Surfshark App, you can click the “Settings” sprocket and then “Protocol” under the “Advanced” section to choose your protocol.
For us, the app chooses IKEv2 by default. You’ll also have options for:
- OpenVPN (UDP and TCP).
- WireGuard.
Surfshark does not provide user-selectable encryption algorithms.
Learn more about protocols from this article by Surfshark.
NordVPN
NordVPN’s app also automatically selects your VPN protocol, unless you specify otherwise. You’ll notice that they have similar options as Surfshark:
NordLynx is NordVPN’s customized implementation of WireGuard.
NordVPN has an article that can help you understand VPN protocols.
Encryption
Surfshark and NordVPN both use AES-256-GCM military grade encryption. Neither of them allows you to change encryption algorithms. If you want that functionality, you’ll have to get TorGuard.
Payment Methods
You can pay for Surfshark using most popular credit cards, PayPal, Amazon Pay, or one of several crypto currencies. Available payment options may vary based on your location.
NordVPN accepts most credit cards, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, ACH bank transfer, UnionPay, and several popular crypto currencies.
Speed
Your VPN tunnel consumes bandwidth and overhead, slowing your data connection.
As a service to our readers, we’ve run speed tests on a 100 mbps connection on the same device without VPN, with Surfshark, and with NordVPN. We’ve used the default settings for both VPNs.
We discovered that NordVPN has a speed advantage over Surfshark, if you focus only on download speed.
Surfshark had good upload and download speed.
Our tests help to illustrate the capacity cost of VPN use.
Your test results may vary.
No VPN
Surfshark
NordVPN
Our Recommendation
You can’t go wrong with either NordVPN or Surfshark.
Right now, Surfshark offers a fast, reliable VPN that provides similar options and features as those offered by NordVPN.
If you’re ready to save some money on a premium no logs VPN, we recommend that you get Surfshark.
What is VPN?
After reading all this, perhaps you’re unsure about What is VPN?
Also, read more VPN articles, reviews, and How To’s right here at IwantMyVPN.com
