Hide.me Review

hide.me offers a kill switch on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS apps. The kill switch shuts down your internet connection when the VPN connection drops to prevent accidental traffic leaks that could expose your identity or real IP address. 

In addition, hide.me offers app-based split tunneling on Windows, Mac and Android devices. The feature enables you to set up some apps to leverage VPN security while letting others directly access the internet. 

Auto connect is an always-on protection feature that lets you configure hide.me to launch or disconnect when it detects a Wi-Fi or ethernet network. The feature is available to free and paid users on Windows, Mac, Android and iOS. 

Bolt mitigates slowdowns and internet service provider (ISP) throttling associated with Windows user datagram protocol (UDP). The way it works is simple. When you activate Bolt, it channels your traffic through the transmission control protocol (TCP), sidestepping any UDP issues. 

When we last reviewed hide.me, Bolt was still in the beta testing phase. The provider has since rolled out the feature to paid users on Windows. When we tested Bolt, it showed significantly improved download and upload speeds and slightly lower latency for our three test locations. Based on these results, it’s fair to say Bolt works as intended. 

Port forwarding allows incoming web traffic to bypass the network address translation (NAT) firewall and other security measures. This speeds up your connections for faster torrent downloads, uninterrupted online gaming and lag-free voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calling.

Unfortunately, by bypassing security measures, port forwarding leaves you vulnerable to cyberattacks and online threats, which is why we don’t usually recommend it. hide.me supports dynamic port forwarding, meaning the ports your device connects to open dynamically instead of remaining static. 

SmartGuard is a paid feature available on all platforms. The feature is packed with options to protect your privacy. Besides blocking ads, trackers and malicious websites, it enables parents to block websites and apps they don’t want their children to access. Unfortunately, SmartGuard doesn’t work with multi-hop or streaming servers. 

StealthGuard takes the typical VPN kill switch to the next level with two options. First, the ‘bind internet to VPN’ option blocks all network activity when the VPN is disconnected. This option remains active even when hide.me isn’t running. 

Second, the ‘limit apps to VPN’ feature makes it impossible to access specific apps when hide.me is disconnected. It also limits background data usage and saves mobile data, which can be expensive — especially when traveling abroad. 

Custom DNS is an interesting option for seasoned users looking to use their own DNS servers. With this option, hide.me allows you to configure the primary and secondary DNS servers the VPN should use to redirect your requests. 

Once you install the hide.me app, you don’t have to change a thing to make it work. The key features are activated by default, but if you need more control over the VPN connection you can adjust some of the advanced configuration options. Here’s how to set up hide.me:

1. Set the App Launch Option

   By default, hide.me launches on system startup. If you want to turn off this option, click “settings,” go to “general” and click “launch on system startup” to deactivate it.

   

2. Configure Auto Connect

   To enable auto connect, open the settings menu and click “auto connect.” Click the “enable auto connect” option and set the default actions for secure WiFi, unsecured WiFi and ethernet networks. Be sure to add a list of secured WiFi networks.

   

3. Turn on Bolt

   Click “Bolt ‘fast proxy‘” in the menu and toggle the “enable hide.me Bolt” button.

   

4. Set SmartGuard Options

   Open the SmartGuard menu and click “enable SmartGuard” to see the options for this feature. Turn on all the relevant tools, such as the ad blocker, malware protection and parental filter.

   

5. Configure Split Tunneling

   Click “split tunneling” and decide which apps you want to use with the VPN tunnel. Then, click “add” to add apps.

   

6. Configure StealthGuard

   Open StealthGuard and peruse the relevant options. If you choose “limit apps to VPN,” click “add” to select the designated apps.

   

7. Select a VPN protocol

   By default, hide.me uses an automatic protocol, which means it chooses a random protocol based on your network. To avoid using weak protocols, we recommend setting your protocol manually. To do so, open “VPN protocol” and select your preferred protocol.

   

For this guide, we experimented with the Windows apps, but most of the info applies to the macOS app as well. The Windows app is the epitome of simplicity. The main page displays only the key features and need-to-know details, such as the connection button, the currently selected location, the connection status and a menu at the bottom.

Changing the VPN location is as easy as clicking “location” in the menu or the currently selected location. This takes you to the “locations” page, with three server categories: standard, streaming and multi-hop. You can switch between these categories and scroll to find your preferred server, or use the search function to find a location by country or city name.

The servers are listed in alphabetical order by default, but there’s an option to sort them by latency. You can also add specific servers to a “favorites” list, which appears on top of the standard server list for ease of access. 

When you open the “settings” page, you’ll see all the features listed in the left-hand menu. Having all the setting options in one place makes it easier to find the feature you need to configure. Every feature comes with a short explanation of what it does, which makes the VPN less intimidating for newbies.

If you’ve used the desktop app, you’ll be at home with the mobile app and vice versa, as the interfaces and menus are nearly identical. The mobile app’s main page has a connection button, a selected server location and an expandable section with the connection status and the menu at the bottom.

The “settings” options are all on one page, but there are fewer options to tinker with — advanced features like StealthGuard, port forwarding and Bolt aren’t available on mobile. One cool addition on hide.me’s mobile app is dark mode, which is helpful for users looking to minimize eye strain and fatigue.

hide.me offers native apps for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and Linux. It also works flawlessly on Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV. Plus, if you don’t want to download the app on your devices, you can install browser extensions for Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

The only issue is that hide.me doesn’t offer a smart DNS feature, so you can’t install it on devices that don’t natively support VPN apps, like old smart TVs. However, you can install hide.me on DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato and AsusWRT-Merlin routers to protect such devices.

hide.me offers a generous 10 simultaneous connections, which is ideal for device-heavy households. However, in an era where providers like Surfshark and Private Internet Access (PIA) are offering unlimited simultaneous connections, hide.me’s allowance is abysmal in comparison. Free users get one simultaneous connection.

hide.me offers three pricing tiers: monthly, one-year and two-year plans. The monthly plan costs $9.95, which is on the higher end of the VPN pricing spectrum. Extended plans offer significant discounts — for example, the one-year plan works out to $3.75 per month.

The two-year plan will set you back $2.69 per month, making it hide.me’s best deal. hide.me used to offer 2TB of encrypted cloud storage from Internxt, but a support agent informed us that this perk has been removed. Check out our guide if you’re looking for a VPN with cloud storage.

hide.me is best known for its free plan, which offers access to servers in eight countries and one simultaneous connection. The free version used to offer 10GB of free data every month, but the provider has removed the data cap. It now offers unlimited data on the free plan, making it ideal for data-intensive activities.

In addition, each paid plan has a 30-day money-back guarantee, which gives you ample time to test the paid features risk-free.

hide.me supports several payment methods, including credit card, PayPal, Google Pay, Amazon Pay and Bitcoin. 

Nearest Server Speed Performance

Location	Download	Upload	Latency
Thika, Kenya	9.8	9.97	18
South Africa	9.8	9.91	142

hide.me’s near-distance speed is excellent. It matched our unprotected download speeds and lost less than 1% of our upload speeds. The ping rate increased seven-fold, which isn’t the worst latency increase we’ve seen.

Distant Servers Speed Performance

Location	Download	Upload	Latency
🇿🇦 South Africa	9.8	9.91	142
🇬🇧 UK	8.87	8.82	373
🇺🇸 USA	9.17	7.9	577
🇸🇬 Singapore	9.34	9.77	357
🇧🇷 Brazil	9.5	7.72	715
🇦🇺 Australia	8.94	8.54	540
Global Average	9.27	8.78	451

On long-distance connections, hide.me delivered excellent performance. Distance didn’t impact download or upload speeds. There were even instances of the farthest servers delivering faster speeds than those close to us. 

For example, the Brazilian server delivered the best download speed (reaching over 96% of our unprotected speeds) despite being the second-farthest location. The fast speeds make hide.me one of the best free VPNs for Brazil. On the other hand, the U.K. server delivered the worst download speeds, even though it was our second-closest location.

All in all, hide.me delivers fast local and long-distance connections. The VPN is ideal for any speed-intensive activity, but since download speed is its forte, users looking to stream videos or download large files will benefit the most.

Since hide.me isn’t part of our automated speed test, we ran the tests manually. We selected six server locations on different continents and tested their speeds on a 10 Mbps connection. We first tested our unprotected internet speeds and then tested the six locations, starting with the geographically closest one and moving farther away from our test location in Kenya.

For the tests, we used the WireGuard protocol, which is faster than hide.me’s other options. We also had Bolt activated to experience its performance-improving capabilities. 

Notes From the Lab: Encryption & VPN Protocols

Protocol:	Encryption	Platform
WireGuard	ChaCha20
OpenVPN	AES-256
IKEv2	AES-256, AES-128
SSTP	SSL/TLS, AES-256
SoftEther	RC4-SHA, RC4-MD5, DES-CBC-SHA, DES-CBC3-SHA, AES-128, AES-256

Besides the five protocol options, hide.me offers a fallback configuration feature on its desktop apps. With this option, you set a primary protocol and a fallback protocol. The app mostly relies on the primary protocol, but if that fails, it automatically switches to the fallback option.

The OpenVPN, WireGuard and IKEv2 protocols hid our IP address and DNS requests in every server location we connected to. However, the VPN failed to establish a connection when using SoftEther and SSTP. These issues prevented us from testing these two protocols’ DNS protection capabilities.

hide.me’s OpenVPN, WireGuard and IKEv2 protocols passed our WebRTC leaks. As was the case during our DNS leak test, the SoftEther and SSTP protocols couldn’t connect, which prevented us from testing their WebRTC protection capabilities.

hide.me is generally secure, but two aspects of its VPN protocol choices worry us. First, its support of weak protocols leaves room for security lapses. 

This is especially worrying when using hide.me’s automatic protocol option. In this mode, the VPN picks the best protocol based on your network. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. In fact, in most cases, the VPN tends to pick a protocol primed for optimal performance. 

However, in some cases, hide.me might pick a weak protocol such as SSTP when it detects firewalls. SSTP’s SSL/TLS layers add overhead and latency to the connection and could lead to slowdowns. Worse still, the protocol has vulnerabilities that could leave you exposed.

Second, hide.me supports the SoftEther protocol, which the provider claims is one of the most powerful options. Since hide.me is vague about what makes the protocol fast and secure, we had to look for details on the softether.org website. The protocol uses six different encryption ciphers:

• RC4-SHA
• RC4-MD5
• DES-CBC-SHA
• DES-CBC3-SHA
• AES-128
• AES-256

Aside from AES-128 and AES-265, these encryption standards are based on broken algorithms and can be hacked. We don’t recommend using the SoftEther protocol because you don’t have control over which encryption standard it chooses.

No, hide.me doesn’t collect, store or share connection logs, browsing history, connection timestamps, websites you visit or any activity related to your VPN session. According to the privacy policy, the only information the provider gathers is your email address, which is stored in encrypted form. 

The provider states that it complies with any court orders from a recognized legal authority, which isn’t uncommon. Remember that companies are required to abide by the governing laws in their jurisdiction. Thankfully, hide.me emphasizes that despite complying with court orders, it doesn’t have any information to share.

hide.me publishes a transparency report detailing the number of legal requests the provider has received since 2013. Though hide.me responded to most of the requests, it has never handed over user information because it doesn’t store any.

Defense Code Ltd. audited hide.me in 2015 and certified it as a no-logs VPN. However, this was the first and last time hide.me’s logging activity was independently audited. Given that there have been changes to the VPN’s infrastructure and privacy policy, it’s difficult to tell whether the results of the 2015 audit still hold.

In addition, the provider has received various certifications for its security and privacy. In 2023, hide.me received the VPN Trust Initiative (VTI) Trust Seal for its adherence to security and privacy best practices. It also passed the Mobile Application Security Assessment (MASA) independent audit, meaning its mobile apps are safe.

hide.me is based in Malaysia, which is a favorable country in which to incorporate a VPN because it doesn’t have mandatory laws requiring VPN providers to log user data. Another plus is that Malaysia doesn’t belong to the Five Eyes, Nine Eyes or 14 Eyes alliances.

No, hide.me doesn’t unblock Netflix, as we discovered during our testing. Both the U.S. standard server and the streaming server returned a “wrong password” error, which is common on VPN services that can’t unblock Netflix.

During our testing, we unblocked Max and Amazon Prime Video with the U.S. standard server and the streaming-optimized server. Though the U.S. streaming server got us into the Hulu library, the standard server couldn’t find a way around Hulu’s geoblocks.

The story was the same with BBC iPlayer; though the U.K. streaming server managed to circumvent iPlayer’s restrictions, the standard server couldn’t. In addition, Disney Plus geoblocks proved too tough to crack for both the U.S. standard server and the streaming server. 

When we found our way into a streaming library, we watched movies and TV without lag or buffering thanks to hide.me’s excellent speeds. Some videos took longer than expected to load, but apart from that minor issue, the streaming experience was seamless.

Streaming App:	Status

Region:	Countries	Locations
North America	3	21
South America	4	4
Europe	30	35
Asia	11	11
Africa	3	3
Oceania	2	6
Middle East	2	2
Total	55	82

Beyond the standard servers, hide.me offers other server categories:

• Streaming servers: There are streaming-optimized servers in 20 countries. These servers are optimized to unblock streaming services in their respective countries. 
• Multi-hop (double VPN) servers: These route your traffic through two locations for an extra layer of protection. hide.me doesn’t offer preset multi-hop servers. Instead, the provider lets you pick the entry and exit servers in your preferred countries to create custom multi-hop configurations. 
• Fixed IP servers: hide.me offers fixed IP addresses in 31 countries. When you connect to a fixed IP server, you’ll always get the same IP address. However, the fixed IP can be shared among other users. If you want an IP address that’s exclusively yours, get a VPN with dedicated IP servers. 

hide.me’s infrastructure is made up of all physical servers. This means that each server is physically located in the indicated country. Learn more in our full virtual servers vs physical servers guide.