Times have changed. Or to be a bit more accurate: Times are changing, and the rate they’re changing is only getting faster. This truth is what brings us to this Surfshark vs NordVPN comparison article. See, just a few decades ago the internet wasn’t even an idea. The internet’s not necessarily a bad thing though, it’s brought with it tons of good. It’s also brought everyone in the world closer together, we’re all more connected than we’ve ever been.

But that’s just it:  We’re more connected than we’ve ever been. There’s more information about us on the web than most of us would like to believe. Things like your IP, location, and your history. For most of us it’s all out there, and not all too hard for someone to access. While it might seem like sci-fi, hackers are a very real threat to anyone using the internet. With more and more people starting to use the internet, hacking is only becoming more lucrative to those willing to get their hands dirty.

It’s common to see a cyber-attack on some big company over the news every once in a while, but most people think it’d never happen to them. But it certainly could.
Cyber-attacks aren’t just limited to big corporations, even individuals can have their info stolen online.
Speaking of your information, thee’s another big concern when it comes to internet privacy for most:

Your ISP…

While a cyber-attack specifically towards you might not be the most likely event, you can bet on one thing at the very least:

If you use the internet without protection, your ISP can see everything you’re doing on it.

Since your ISP is the one you have to route your traffic through to use the internet, they get access to all of the information you send out.

What they do with the information? Almost whatever they want.

ISPs will often sell off user information to the highest bidder, which usually happens to be advertisers.

For some people, this isn’t a big deal. But for many others, there’s an understandable concern with having your information sold off. Luckily though, there’s still hope for those wanting a bit more control over their privacy. This hope comes in the form of virtual private networks, or VPNs for short.

 

 

VPNS: How They Work

 VPNs are becoming more and more popular by the day, but there are plenty of people who aren’t aware of what they are, how they work, or even what they do.

So here are some of the basics.

A VPN is just a middleman between you and your ISP and the rest of the internet, in a basic sense at least.

When you use a VPN service, you’re effectively putting your information through a tunnel, or an encryption tunnel to be a bit more accurate.

The tunnel makes your data virtually unreadable to anyone peering in as it goes on its merry way.

This means that your information is protected from anyone trying to snoop on your connection, the only person who gets access to your data are the ones you want to have access to it.

This has a few uses to it.

For one, it protects you from the aforementioned problem of your ISP and hackers potentially stealing your data.

This also makes VPNs really useful in countries with less-than-ideal censorship laws.

Since your data is hidden when using an IP, no one can really tell the location your using the internet from. In fact, many VPNs allow you to choose where you’re connection appears to be based.

That means you can use a US-based server to get access to websites that anyone in the US would have access to.

A common use for this is accessing geo-blocked services, like Netflix from a different country.

Sounds great right? Access to geo-blocked content, protection of your data, piece of mind.

What’s not to love?

Well you’d be right, VPNs are great. But there’s a problem still.

There are tons of VPNs on the market right now.

And not all VPNs are created equal.

Some of them are less reputable, some of them provide subpar speeds, and some of them are absolutely fantastic.

So how are you supposed to know which one to get?

Today we’re going to make your job a bit easier, by comparing two popular VPNs available right now:

So with further ado, let’s get right into it.

 

 

About NordVPN:

NordVPN is one of the biggest fish on the market right now, and they’ve been around for a while too.

The service was originally released in 2012 by Tefincom S.A, a Panama based company(Which is great for privacy laws! More on that later..)

 

 

About Surfshark

Surfshark, on the other hand, is a bit of an underdog in this match. While Surfshark’s becoming increasingly popular, it’s on the younger side as far as VPNs go.

As for the country of jurisdiction, Surfshark runs out of the British Virgin Islands, another great country for privacy laws.

 

 

VPN Servers & Performance

When choosing a VPN, there are a few very important factors to consider.

One of those factors being speed and server performance.

With any VPN, you’re going to take a performance hit on your connection speed, since the VPN is effectively rerouting your traffic and taking it on a detour, there’s no way around this.

That’s not to say you should settle for abysmal speeds though, as the best VPNs on the market do their best to deal with this by providing extensive server networks.

The better the server spread in a VPN’s network, the more likely you are to have a nearby server, which is one of the bigger factors for the speeds you’ll get.

So how do these two services stack up when it comes to performance?

 

 NordVPN servers

When it comes to server networks for VPN services, NordVPN has one of the most extensive infrastructures out there.

Nord boasts 5,218 servers across 59 countries at the time of this review. This means that almost anywhere you are in the world, you’ll have a host of servers nearby to choose from on Nord’s network.

As for speeds, Nord isn’t lacking in this department either. NordVPN consistently provides stellar connection speeds through its servers.

 

Surfshark servers 

Surfshark comes with a less extensive network, though surprisingly, they have servers in more countries than Nord. Surfshark has over 1040 servers across 61 countries (at the time of writing this review)

So while they’re drastically outnumbered in terms of servers by Nord, the spread of their servers is slightly wider.

As for speeds?

Surfshark’s servers are reliably faster than average. There shouldn’t be any problem streaming your favorite services using the VPN.

 

Servers & Performance  — The Winner: NordVPN 

While both VPNs performed admirably in this department, we’re going to have to give it to Nord on this one.

Nord’s server network is much larger than Surfshark’s. So while Nord has slightly fewer countries covered by their network, the difference in server count more than makes up for that.

 

 

VPN Pricing comparison 

Pricing, another big deciding factor for many people when choosing a VPN.

While privacy and security are definitely worth an investment, you don’t to go broke for a VPN.

Luckily, there are tons of great options for VPNs that are both safe and offer a great value.

 

 

NordVPN pricing 

When you choose Nord as a VPN, you’ll have 4 options to go with for pricing plans.

First is their monthly, which costs $11.95 per month.

Your next option is to pay on a yearly basis for $6.95 per month. This comes out to $83.99 per billing cycle, which almost cuts the cost in half.

Then there’s the 2-year plan with a price of $4.99 per month, which comes out to $119 every two years.

 

Nord’s best plan by far though is their 3-year plan. The 3-year plan only costs $3.49 per month, for a total of $125.64 per billing cycle.

 

The 3-year plan is one of the best values you can get for a VPN service out there, as long as you’re willing to make the commitment.

 

 

Surfshark pricing

Surfshark offers 3 plans for their service, monthly, yearly, and a 2-year plan.

The monthly plan comes at $11.95 per month, which is the same as Nord.

The 12-month plan is where it gets interesting though, because they manage to beat even Nord’s great prices at only $5.99 per month. This comes out to $71.88 billed annually.

For the 2-year plan, you’ll only be paying $3.49 per month, which comes out to $83.76 every two years.

 

Pricing — The Winner: Surfshark

While NordVPN’s prices are great, Surfshark actually manages to top them.

Surfshark beats Nord out on the 1-year plan, and when it comes to their best plans, you get the same price for Surfshark even with a year less of commitment.

 

 

VPN Features 

NordVPN features

• 6 Simultaneous Connections – NordVPN lets you to connect up to 6 of your devices to the network at the same time, allowing you to protect most of your devices all on one account.
• Netflix Access – Streaming over VPNs to get access to geo-blocked content is a common practice, and NordVPN is well-known for unblocking a wide variety of Netflix libraries across the world.
• Onion Over VPN – NordVPN allows users to connect to the Onion Network over VPN for those interested in accessing the deep web.
• Ad Blocking – Ad-blocking software allows NordVPN users to surf the web free of advertisements and trackers.

 

 

Surfshark features

• Unlimited Simultaneous Connections – Surfshark takes it a step up by allowing unlimited devices on your network at once.
• Netflix Access – Surfshark also does a great job of allowing users to access Netflix libraries from around the world.
• CleanWeb™ – CleanWeb is Surfshark’s proprietary ad-blocking software. This keeps users safe from trackers, phishing  attempts, and ads
• Whitelister™ – This lets certain apps of your choice bypass the VPN service instead of having to go right through it
• MultiHop™ – MultiHop™ lets you connect to multiple countries at once so your online footprint is even harder to track

 

Features — The Winner: Surfshark

While NordVPN certainly brings a lot to the table, Surfshark is just loaded with useful features that help improve the user experience and boost online safety.

 

 

Ease of Use

Being easy to navigate and use is a huge plus for VPN software. After all, if you can’t figure out how to make use of the app there’s not much sense in having it.

So how do these two stack up when it comes to accessibility?

 

NordVPN

NordVPN is one of the most accessible VPNs you can find right now. Everything from installation to finding the right server is a breeze with Nord’s simple-yet-elegant UI.

 

Surfshark

Surfshark’s user interface is actually super well-designed too. Again, there shouldn’t be much problem making use of all Surfshark has to offer, even for the less tech-savvy of us.

 

 

Ease of Use — The Winner: Tie

Both these services come in easy-to-use packages of their own.

While the apps aren’t identical by any means, your preference is going to be largely down to personal taste.

 

 

Security & Privacy

Here’s where it gets good, because security is arguably the most important factor to consider when choosing a VPN.

The main draw of most VPN services is the added security over your data.

There are a few key things to consider when determining how secure a VPN service, so let’s look at them now.

 

NordVPN security

The first thing to note about NordVPN is that it’s run out of Panama. As we mentioned before, this is really good for privacy, because Panama has no data retention laws.

This allows Nord to uphold their “no data logging” policy in good faith. This means that even if a government demands user information, Nord won’t have any to give them.

On the backend, Nord is just as strong. It uses the industry-standard AES-246 encryption method, which is near-unbreakable.

If that weren’t enough, Nord has a double-encryption feature and the ability to activate an internet kill switch in case the service stops. This ensures there aren’t any data leaks if Nord shuts down unexpectedly.

 

Surfshark security

Surfshark is actually on very similar grounds as Nord.

It’s run out of the British Virgin Islands, which don’t have any data retention laws either. It doesn’t store user logs, and there’s a kill switch to prevent data leaks.

The only thing that Surfshark is missing is the double-encryption feature that Nord comes with.

 

Security & Privacy — The Winner: NordVPN

While these services are extremely close when it comes to security, NordVPN does come with the option to enable double encryption.

Ad while double encryption isn’t always necessary, as one level of encryption is usually enough, it’s certainly nice to have.

 

 

Refund Policies

 

NordVPN refund policy

NordVPN offers a 30-day, money-back guarantee for all pricing plans. This should be more than enough time to test the waters.

 

Surfshark refund policy

Surfshark also offers a 30-day guarantee, but there’s a bit of a caveat

For your first 15 days, you can get your money back with a simple message to support.

For the next 15 days, you’ll be able to get a full or partial refund if support isn’t able to solve a technical issue you’re having.

This is far from the worst of refund policies, but it’s important to note it’s not a straight 30-day, no-questions-asked guarantee that other services offer.

 

Refund Policies — The Winner: NordVPN

NordVPN wins here just because their guarantee is no-questions-asked all the way through.

Even if you aren’t happy on the 29th day you’re still eligible for your refund, whereas ion some cases, the same might not be true for Surfshark.

 

 

Customer Support 

NordVPN customer support

NordVPN is nearly as good as they get when it comes to customer support.

For quick & common issues, they have loads of FAQs and help pages on their knowledge hub.

For those needing more in-depth help, they offer both 24/7 live chat and email support.

 

Surfshark customer support

Surfshark also offers great customer support.

They offer a 24/7 live chat and email support, as well as a knowledge hub on their site for quick fixes.

 

Customer Support — The Winner: Tie

The only big difference between NordVPN’s and Surfshark’s customer support is that Surfshark’s live chat in outsourced to ZenDesk.

Though that doesn’t make a huge difference on the customer end of things since they’re still super helpful in solving issues that arise.

 

 

Bottom Line

Now that we’ve gone over all the details, it’s time to decide a winner.

Our top pick for today’s best VPN is….

Surfshark 

That’s right, in this match, the underdog came out on top.

Surfshark performs surprisingly well considering how new they are on the market. They offer fast speeds, a great list of features, and prices that even beat NordVPN’s.

That’s not to say NordVPN isn’t a great service, they are one of the most popular VPNs for good reason.

Want to give either of them a try yourself?

Try out Surfshark today at: https://surfshark.com/

Or feel free to give NordVPN a spin: https://nordvpn.com/