hide.me - The Fastest VPN that I've used!

Tried them all basically.

NordVPN = Doesn't work for me in Dubai

Private Internet Access = used to be good, now it rarely works and if it works, I get very bad speeds.

EpressVPN = Used to work perfectly for 2 years then it stopped working for me here in Dubai, it would keep disconnecting after a few minutes and the speeds were below average.

VPN.AC = Same story, used to work great but stopped working for me at least.

hide.me = I get not only good speeds but the exact same speed that I get from my ISP! That is unheard of! usually you always get slightly lower speed than what your ISP gives but with hide.me it's the same!

They have a 0 logging policy. They are based in Malaysia.

With 1 subscription, you are able to connect 10 devices simultaneously or easily configure it in your router if your router has a VPN client.

Their customer services is superb and usually responds within 1 day.

They do offer a free plan limited to 10 GB of data per month and only 5 locations

when they get DMCA requests:

hide.me

Their speeds improved big time after they introduced the WireShark Protocol

My Internet speed from my ISP is 600 MBPS Down/200 MBPS up but it sometimes reaches 670 MBPS down/220 MBPS up.

When connected to the hide.me VPN, here is my speed test while connected to the UAE server:

 

Glad to hear you found a VPN that works well in your region and with your ISP.
I used hotspot shield for many many years and would have stayed with it if they hadn't messed with my plan.
I now use Nord VPN and it works very well for me in central Texas.
I purchased a 3 year deal for $103 last year.
When it expires and I'm still breathing air in a non radical socialist country I give Hide Me a shot if the reviews are still good.
Some sites now including Google Search and AndroidPolice have a Captcha popup in order to access the site or service while using the Nord VPN.
Those Captcha pictures are really tough on these old eyes.

 

I still use VPN.ac because I trust them. Speed doesn't really matter for me, to be honest - mostly care about privacy and security.

 

Buster: Captcha Solver for Humans for Chrome

Buster: Captcha Solver for Humans for Firefox

It will solve the most Captchas except the new ones made by hCaptcha. Just hit the orange icon when you'at at a Captcha screen and it will solve it for you

 

IN Nord VPN there's a search box where I've typed in server numbers between #3000 and #6999 to find as many active as I could and kept the results in a text file.
There were many in the #3000 to #5000 range that I used but are no longer active.
Some don't produce the Captcha popup while another in the same area will.
Examples:
#5539 = Dallas
#5532 = Dallas
#6437 = Dallas
#5565 = LA
#6236 = Austin
#5520 = Providence UT
#5522 = New York

 

I hope you have tested for VPN Leak testing https://nordvpn.com/blog/check-vpn-working/
Malaysia/Singapore will give best possible speeds since most CDN/DNS server are present with Sub 0 ms latency and website/file you are searching seems to be in their cache and so you get super fast speeds.
I never had any luck with VPN almost every free trial versions leaked my IP.
Then again, most video streams are IP locked and VPN are no-go for apps such as Amazon Prime, Disney+Hotstar Premium etc.....

 

I tried Hide.me and while fast, its browser extension was too limited. Previously, I had been using TorGuard, and while it was great initially, speeds and reliability fell off a cliff. Nord and ExpressVPN killed my connection speeds.

Right now I'm using Surfshark and have not seen any decrease in connection speeds. Neither the client software nor browser extension are as feature rich as some of the other providers, but they more than do the job that I need. I took advantage of the 80% off prepaid discount from a YT influencer, plus an additional $10 cash back from Rakuten, so in total, I got two years of service for less than $40.

 

Typical VPNs get a bad rap for slow speeds.

The advent of WIREGUARD though has made a tremendous improvement. Since implementing Nord's NordLynx protocol I went ahead and implemented it household wide through my server/router and with a 1gbps pipe from Comcast I can get up to 970mbps depending on which server it connects to. Comparatively through the ipsec version would max out around 100mbps no matter the server it would connect to.

There are a few other options out there for WG servers / providers but, since I already had 3 years of Nord for ~$80 it made sense to just use the proxy option which worked well for some tasks / apps in the meantime at sufficient speeds. The nordlynx though gives the option to encrypt everything and not sacrifice speeds due to overhead.

nordvpn c us5412 (~970mbps) 107.158.96.122 (PHX)

Here's a list of servers I've connected to and run speed testing on:
(a couple of them obviously aren't quite right as they exceed the line speed)

Server Speed IP Location
cr20 134 179.48.249.134 Costa Rica
us5221 885 206.214.78.2 Dallas
us5223 500 170.130.2.226 Dallas
us5391 751 107.158.235.91 Las Vegas
us5397 262 107.158.96.2 Las Vegas
us5401 374 107.158.96.194 Las Vegas
us5412 970 107.158.96.122 Las Vegas
us5484 1092 212.102.40.40 Dallas
us5536 942 104.200.142.210 Dallas
**us5785 1836 107.181.165.195 Dallas
us5790 569 107.181.165.210 Dallas
us5793 672 107.181.165.219 Dallas
us5880 651 45.149.206.251 Los Angeles
us6094 496 184.170.247.166 Phoenix
us6150 534 198.147.23.219 Dallas
us6195 188 184.170.240.108 Phoenix
us6196 437 184.170.240.111 Phoenix
us6243 841 107.158.15.66 Dallas
us6244 871 107.158.15.74 Las Vegas
us6334 500 198.147.23.204 Dallas
us6335 729 198.147.23.207 Dallas
us6336 573 208.84.155.227 Dallas
us6341 643 209.58.148.155 Dallas
us6431 641 208.84.155.236 Dallas
us6436 695 208.84.155.217 Dallas
us6579 535 89.187.175.109 Dallas
us6587 763 89.187.175.47 Dallas
us6588 935 89.187.175.42 Dallas
us6887 452 173.232.241.227 Dallas
us6888 592 173.232.241.251 Las Vegas
us6889 830 173.232.242.3 Dallas
**us6891 1882 173.232.242.19 Dallas
us6894 817 170.130.0.106 Las Vegas
us6896 339 206.214.78.34 Dallas
us6896 946 206.214.78.34 Dallas
us6897 699 206.214.78.202 Dallas
us6962 1314 170.130.1.66 Dallas
us8106 591 185.247.70.91 Dallas
us8128 842 194.110.112.139 Dallas
us8129 147 194.110.112.147 Dallas
us8132 752 194.110.112.171 Dallas

I keep a list of them for higher speeds when it random connects to a saturated server.

Here's the API list for the servers as well comparing functions / location.
https://api.nordvpn.com/server

When they released NordLynx they disabled proxy on the servers that converted thus resulting in filed connections on the proxy side. There's 3 servers left w/ proxy enabled last time I checked.

 

Scratch Surfshark off the list. While it is still the fastest service I've personally used, it's becoming increasingly unreliable. When connecting to specific servers, I am experiencing an extreme amount of lag when browsing or streaming. Pages and videos are taking an inordinately long time to load. However, when performing speed and download tests, there is no apparent issue. Several back and forths with their support have not yielded any results.

I got a 30-day free trial to ExpressVPN as a "winback" because I previously used and subsequently canceled that service, but it's still way too slow. Ivacy VPN was only marginally faster than Express, and the "no questions asked" refund policy was anything but. No joke, I had to ask them three times to refund my money. Cyberghost looked interesting, but their client software was borderline malware, constantly pushing you to upgrade to their "security suite" package, which reviews have shown is completely garbage. A service called IVPN showed promise. Their speeds were very good, and they appear to operate in a very transparent manner. However, they have far fewer servers, and they neither have nor plan to offer a browser extension.

Which brings me back to the service that's the subject of this thread. While not as outright fast as Surfshark, Hide.me is still quite quick, and more importantly, consistent. The limited browser extension is remains a pain point, though. In order to access the full list of servers, you need to have the client application installed. I can't do that on my work laptop, but fortunately, the one North American server that is available for free is fast enough for my needs on that particular computer. So we'll see how it goes over the next 30 days. Hopefully I won't be requesting a refund on this one.

 

still loving it and using it on all my devices, and it's also setup as a connection in my ASUS router. It just keeps getting better, check out its new BOLT feature. I tried the Multi hop feature but didn't see any difference, interesting concept though

 

I'm still using nordlynx (wireguard) and more consistently hitting gig+ speeds over VPN. They've been sorting out some of their servers and are more stable with speeds these days. I've noticed with passing time they ween people off of servers and then upgrade them to higher capacity / performance. One in particular lately has been giving tor speeds around 500mbps which normally isn't the case as they tend to hover between 100-150mbps. Other than tor transfers surfing / speed tests are snappy / consistent.

 

I guess it's a good idea to add that on average nordlynx provides 500mbps as a baseline for most connections. The only time I run into something slower is if the app connects to a foreign server for some reason. Just tell it to reconnect and it picks something more local and speeds pick up.

What would be interesting to test out is if you can find the bottleneck for the connection whether they're using 10GE pipes to their servers or something like an aggregate higher than that. Based on the user count and the ideal 50% watermark for resources by design theory. Also, depends on how efficient their diskless servers are built / configured.

 

I'm going to cancel hide.me as the service is continuously throwing up DNS resolution errors when I try to go to sites that work perfectly fine without the VPN or using another provider. I set my DNS to Cloudflare modem-side, and it's always been reliable. Switching to Google or my ISP's servers didn't help.

On a lark I gave Nord another try, and wow, has the service improved by leaps and bounds since the last time I used it. It's super fast now. The client is lightweight and streamlined, and the browser extension is full-featured, which is really great. If all continues to go well, I'll pony up for a full subscription.

 

Every once in awhile I'll have a DNS issue even though I'm using Pihole w/ different DNS set than Nord. I think it's more likely that the DNS problem is what they use to ween users to another server in order to upgrade it. There's so many servers though that a couple with a DNS problem isn't really an issue.

The app's though are nice when traveling or on your phone when away from home. The browser extension I haven't played with much but, have it installed for testing eventually. The main improvement with the apps/extension is using wireguard instead of OVPN as the transport. It's not sluggish because of the way it works and the slimmer code footprint causes less issues.

 

As I may have indicated before, I continue to be happy with NORD, though I like CLoudflare's DNS better. Nordlynx is clearly faster.

 

I wouldn't know that since this is your first post to the thread.

 

I'm back to square one right now. Nord's split tunneling doesn't work. I leave Steam off the VPN so I can maximize my download speeds, but I can't even connect to the service with this feature enabled. Apparently this has been broken for several months now. One other thing about ExpressVPN is that its browser extension doesn't work without the client software installed, so if I needed any further confirmation of that particular service not being for me, there it is.

 

@ saturnotaku

Why do you need split tunneling for a download? The purpose of it is to protect all of your traffic.

You should be able to download titles through the connection just fine. If you use the nordlynx option you won't have much latency either since it performs better than the legacy protocol.

 

Because when off the VPN, Steam downloads at around 80 MB/s. Connected, that slows to less than 30 - this is common among all VPN services I've used. When downloading games that are 60+ GB, the time adds up. Latency is not a consideration as I don't play online, and even then, Nord was no better or worse than other providers in this regard.

 

If you use the nordlynx option you should be able to max out your DL BW. I hit those speeds when downloading from major sources like NVIDIA for drivers or MSFT for updates that are large enough to sustain the connection to get those speeds.

Finding fastest server... 100 Servers online
............
Server: Georgetown, TX speedtest05.suddenlink.net:8080 by Suddenlink Communications LLC (251.07 km from you): 17 ms
Ping: 17 ms.
Jitter: 4 ms.
Determine line type (2) ........................
Fiber / Lan line type detected: profile selected fiber
Testing download speed (32) ...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Download: 1170.90 Mbit/s

 

You are right - I posted that on a different thread. Sorry if I irritated you.

 

I just didn't get why you quoted me

 

I was agreeing with you - and, I think your point about Steam is well taken. I find the desktop NORD software, with Nordlynx very fast - reaches the limit of my ISP (~340 M), so no need for Steam to be outside VPN. BTW, I run most of my household (phones, IPADS, etc) on NORD embedded in a Flashrouter (DD-WRT). That provides protection and coverage for the whole house at a 60M. I think the limitation there is the processing power of the router (and inability to use Nordlynx with the router software).

 

Yeah, the router implementations can be iffy depending on the CPU they're using. I built my own router inside of a PC using a 8700K so, HP isn't an issue for VPN processing. DD-WRT is doing basically the same thing I am with different approach. You could do a whole house w/ PI though if you add dongles for the IN/OUT interfaces to a switch for more ports or just connect your WIFI to it directly.

Using iptables for FW / packet processing is low CPU cycles / memory use though.


I've had routers in the past that had gig ports but only pushed 25% of the bandwidth for some reason as if they divided it between the LAN ports instead of balancing it based on BW. These are the sort of things you don't notice until you're able to push beyond low BW ISP packages. It seemed to work fine on the 50mbps package but, when testing higher packages it's deficiency was quite evident. If you test it doing a transfer between devices internally you should be able to hit decent speeds and if not then the issue is the router causing the bottleneck.

On my "router" I can hit 1.3gbps internally between the server / laptop which is more of a limitation of the WIFI as with the 5GE dongle I have for bigger transfers will hit full speed over a wired connection @ 400MB/s (which is more of a limitation of my Raid10/SATA drives...with an SSD it would fully saturate)

 

Agree. My router is an ASUS 5300 AC. There are faster ones out there, but not with a lot of processing horsepower. As you note, a computer implementation would be faster - my son suggested a current generation Raspberry Pi. However, the router delivers enough speed, and consistently, to most of our devices, and I use the desktop software for my laptop and desktop. I have AT&T fiber - delivers 1 GB to the ONT, but I only get 350-400 at the gateway. They would upgrade the connection between ONT and gateway, but we're moving in a few months and it's not worth the bother. Hoping to get 1G fiber in the new place.

 

1G takes the guesswork out of speed issues. ONT/GW should be an easy cable swap unless it's the Jack itself that is faulty but, that would normally cause more issues than restricted speed. Depending on how long you have had the GW though there might be something in it that needs to be addressed to increase the speed. Normally though they're just a passthrough device that tag your traffic with the VLAN they use for customer traffic which can be done with your own switch that has VLAN control. I don't remember but it's something like VL201 that gets configured and there's a different VL for the management traffic so they can talk to the GW.

I have Gig Fiber around me within a couple of blocks but they won't extend it because they charge $75/mo for DSL. I suppose if residents in the building would switch to Comcast for faster speeds at a cheaper rate they might reconsider extending the fiber. ATT is a joke to deal with though even though their HQ is here. I'll gladly give CC $100/mo for gig speeds vs having to deal with ATT. I deal with all of these providers for work so there's a pecking order for personal use.

PI or similar though would give more control over the packets and monitoring tools can be installed to see what's going where and how fast. I use a couple of different things to manage my connection from webmin to just give a system overview to ntopng for packets to pihole for filtering out the tracking stuff and nord to keep CC from seeing what's going on. Overall it's cut down on a lot of spam and speeds are consistently good unless nord has the hiccups on a particular node.

 

Our fiber is ATT (it's all we could get). GW is relatively new. New cable would need to be run under the house - would do it if we were not moving. Google fiber is in our town, but not quite yet available at our new place. We'll probably get ATT until we can get Google. Our daughter has Google fiber, and it's excellent.

 

Fiber is Fiber though and needing to run new strands under the house is a bogus excuse for limited speeds. Fiber either works or doesn't. Usually the fault lies in the termination / transceiver when it comes to speeds. If things aren't lined up properly or the transceiver is going bad / loose connection in the GW then there's speed issues due to needing to retransmit the data but, it's usually a quick fix. The other thing is the GW being provisioned properly.

Google is the way to go and it's a shame they aren't expanding to new cities after the initial handful of cities they laid fiber in. If you look at broadband maps for your area you might be able to find a smaller provider that does have fiber in the area at about the same price or less. There's a smaller fiber provider near me that's only 2 blocks away but to extend it they want 10 people interested in it to cover the cost of boring and threading it to the building. Another small provider is only a mile or so from reaching the building. Of course the ATT/VZ's of the world have the capital to do it for less subscribers but, they drag their feet on doing so. Options like Spectrum / Comcast have plans for Fiber but, they're 3X the phone version for 2GE which is double the speed.