Hide.me VPN review: A feature-packed service with solid privacy credentials

Best Prices Today: Hide.me

Hide.me from Malaysia-based eVenture Ltd. continues to hang with today’s most popular services, even if it doesn’t have the same name recognition.

Since my last review of its service, Hide.me has passed a new independent security audit and updated its interface to be more user-friendly. It has also added a few additional features such as a new protocol and server sorting options. So with these new advances let’s take another look and see where it stands in the current VPN market.

Hide.me VPN in brief:

• P2P allowed: Yes
• Simultaneous device connections: 10 
• Business location: Malaysia
• Number of servers: 2,000+
• Number of country locations: 91
• Cost: $11.95 per month, $53.88 for 1-year, or $61.83 for 27 months

What are Hide.me’s features and services?

Since my last review of Hide.me, it hasn’t significantly changed up its interface. That’s to be expected, however, as it went through a serious facelift a few years ago. 

When you open up the application you’re confronted with a dashboard that shows some relevant information such as a Quick connect button that will connect to the last used server, information on your IP address, account information, a list of streaming optimized servers, and a list of your Favorite Locations. 

Furthermore, all of these widgets are movable and interchangeable as well, meaning you can customize the look to only display the info you need.

On the left sidebar you have additional tabs for Locations, Map, Features, Socials, and Settings, as well as Your Account, and Support. The Locations tab displays a searchable list of all available Hide.me server locations, with especially fast 10G servers tagged with an icon next to the server name. Along the top you can filter through all servers, those optimized for streaming, or multihop servers as well. The latest addition is an option to let you filter by physical distance from your home IP address location. 

For those who are spatially inclined, the Map tab displays the physical location of all of these servers on a world map instead.

With a generous feature set, support for a vast array of protocols, and the option to use custom DNS, Hide.me is a power user’s dream.

The Features tab is where Hide.me really shines—there’s a lot here. There are the usual options to launch on system startup, connect automatically, and so on. It also introduced a feature called Bolt “Fast Proxy,” which optimizes internet speed performance over an OpenVPN TCP connection. Theoretically, this can lead to speed increases, particularly in Windows.

There is also an option to set up split tunneling and its own complementary proprietary firewall feature called “Stealth Guard.” This can be used to limit either your entire internet or just certain apps unless a Hide.me VPN connection is present–thus eliminating IP address leaks should your connection ever falter. 

Here you’ll also find a port-forwarding feature as well as an ad- and tracker-blocker called “SmartGuard.” Port forwarding allows incoming data on your connection to get around your local firewall, potentially speeding up your connection. It can also expose you to extra security risks too, so be careful when using it. 

There is also a separate kill switch feature available under the settings menu. Like I said, this service has a lot of features. Add to that the vast array of protocols available and the option to use custom DNS and it quickly becomes apparent that Hide.me is a power user’s dream.

With all of that being said, due to the sheer amount of available features and the maze of menus you need to work through to tweak all of them, this service probably isn’t for beginners—or the faint of heart. 

In the beginning, I personally found navigating the app a bit disorienting. Some things are listed under “Features” that should be settings and some are under “Settings” that should be features. It’s a minor gripe though, and figuring out the menu system is only a matter of spending some time in the application itself.

Hide.me is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS, as well as some consoles and smart TVs. There are also browser add-ons for Chrome and Firefox that come with support for the SOCKS proxy. 

How much does Hide.me cost?

Hide.me offers a total of three different plan options for its premium service; a monthly plan, a 1-year plan, and a 2-year plan. The monthly plan costs $11.95 per month, which is a bit steep. Sure, the VPN gives you a lot of configurable options, but similarly priced services such as NordVPN or Surfshark offer all of the same things plus additional security features.

The 1-year plan is a better deal at $53.88, or $4.49 per month, but it still remains a bit pricier than competitors. The 2-year plan is where Hide.me really becomes affordable. For a total of $61.83, or $2.29 per month, you’ll get access to the premium service for 24 months plus an additional three free months. That ends up becoming cheaper than most other VPNs for the same time period.

Finally, it’s worth noting that Hide.me has a handy free version that provides all of the great security features of its premium counterpart for absolutely no cost. The only downside is that you’re limited to 10GB per month and it only provides access to eight of its servers. Due to these limitations, I don’t recommend using the free version to stream, but it is a great way to browse securely or just to try out the service to see how you like it.

When signing up for Hide.me you do have to provide personal billing information and it accepts payments via credit card, PayPal, Google Pay, and various cryptocurrencies.

How is Hide.me’s performance?

In order to test Hide.me’s speeds I rated connection speeds across its servers in six different countries all around the world for multiple days and then compared them to my baseline internet speeds. Across all locations tested, the speeds averaged just over 45 percent of the base download speed and 68 percent of the base upload speed. That’s okay, but short of our list of the fastest VPNs. It is an improvement over the last time I tested its speeds, though.

Within these aggregates were some truly incredible speeds. I just found they weren’t consistent. It was quite common for each location to show some great relative speeds one day and then fall off completely the following day. I also found that the drop in speed was quite significant the further the Hide.me server was from my physical location. This is, of course, not uncommon as distance tends to affect latency, but it was so drastic in some instances it caught me a bit by surprise.

Hide.me does indicate which servers have faster, 10Gbps connection speeds next to the locations on the server list. However, I frankly didn’t notice a major difference in my testing while using these servers. 

Also, testing with different protocols didn’t show one to be much faster than the others–however, I did find that WireGuard had a slight edge over the others, as is to be expected.

Please note, however, that online speeds can vary wildly in pure Mbps tests from day to day and even hour to hour. It’s best to take any and all speed tests with a grain of salt. Your experience with Hide.me may differ from those in the tests for this review.

Despite all of this, however, I never really ran into a problem due to connection speeds. Therefore, I’m confident that Hide.me has enough speed to take care of just about anything you need to do over a VPN connection.

In regards to streaming, Hide.me performed admirably. Under the server list there is a tab for streaming-optimized servers. Every optimized streaming server I connected to was able to access streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime without any problems. I was even able to access streaming sites with some non-optimized servers as well. Given these results, Hide.me should serve you well for streaming and getting around region blocks.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Hide.me free version. Of all the eight servers offered with the free VPN, I found that every single one was blocked by Netflix. Given that the free plan only gives you 10GB of data per month—or about three hours of HD video—I can’t recommend Hide.me’s free version for those looking to stream. Something like Proton VPN would be a better free VPN choice for streaming.

How is Hide.me’s security and privacy?

The VPN comes with industry standard AES 256-bit encryption. It also offers a whole range of protocols including IKEv2, OpenVPN, SoftEtherVPN, WireGuard, and SSTP—that’s more than most other services. Furthermore, it even offers advanced configuration options for many of these protocols to add to the customization. And in my testing I found that there were no IP address leaks when using Hide.me across any of its servers and protocols. 

Hide.me is owned by eVenture Ltd., an IT security company based out of Malaysia. Privacy conscious users will be glad to know that Malaysia has no data retention laws and is not a member country of any surveillance alliances such as Five, Nine, or 14 Eyes.

Hide.me has a very thorough privacy policy on its website. It states that it does not track your activity when you’re connected to the VPN. It doesn’t keep connection logs or store IP addresses. 

The company does, however, keep troubleshooting logs that include a randomly generated username and an internally assigned IP address for each user. The troubleshooting logs are erased every few hours, according to the privacy policy. Additionally, it logs monthly data traffic amounts for quality assurance purposes.

The company did originally pass an independent security audit of its “no-log” policy by Defense Code Ltd., in 2015. In my last review I criticized the service for not undergoing a new audit since that time. Hide.me was obviously paying attention, though, as it completed not one, but two new audits in the last year. The first was a MASA, or Mobile Application Security Assessment, in December of 2023 and then another full “no-log” audit of its service by Securitum in June of this year.

The fact that it was one of the first VPN services to undergo an independent audit back in the day gave it old-school privacy cred. Now, with the latest audit, the company continues to prove that it takes user privacy seriously.

Hide.me also publishes annual Transparency reports detailing data requests the company has received in a given year.

Is Hide.me worth it?

Hide.me is a really intriguing VPN service. On the one hand, it offers a fantastic tool set for power users to tweak and configure to their heart’s content. On the other, it can’t quite nail down some basic things you want from a VPN such as consistent speeds across servers and a user-friendly interface.

It has a great privacy track record though, and the service was able to unblock all streaming sites that I tested. Overall, it’s a well-rounded service that ticks almost every box you could want from a top VPN. I can easily recommend it for experienced power users, but beginners might want to try the free version first before committing to the premium service.

Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.

Best Prices Today: Hide.me