Hotspot Shield VPN has a handsome app and an array of security services that go far beyond VPN protection. It also boasts a large collection of servers around the globe, giving you many options for spoofing your location, and a generous free plan, too. The core VPN product is expensive, however, and it scored poorly in our testing. While other VPNs have worked to make clear and concise arguments about how they protect their customers and the value-add of their services, Hotspot Shield continues to be a complicated story, with a lot of good points but nearly as many bad ones. Editors’ Choice winners Proton VPN and NordVPN are both excellent VPNs with far fewer caveats.
How a VPN Works
How Much Does Hotspot Shield Cost?Hotspot Shield is one of the few VPN services that offers a free subscription tier. It comes with limitations, however. The free Basic subscription of Hotspot Shield restricts you to only US VPN servers, one simultaneous connection, and 500MB of bandwidth per day. That’s generous compared with TunnelBear’s free version, which limits users to just 2GB per month, only four days of full use on Hotspot’s plan. Editors’ Choice winner Proton VPN, meanwhile, places no limit on the amount of data free users can consume.
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The generosity ends there, though. Hotspot Shield takes the unusual measure of throttling free accounts to just 2Mbps. That’s extremely slow, even for mobile devices. Don’t expect any long-term video streaming on this option, which is likely by design. Hotspot Shield also monetizes its free version on Android. See below for more on the privacy implications of this practice.
(Credit: Hotspot Shield/PCMag)
The Premium subscription offers 10 simultaneous connections, provides full access to Hotspot Shield’s servers, and has no data limit. It costs $12.99 per month and is the tier we used in testing. The highest tier, Premium Family, increases the number of simultaneous connections to 25 across five member accounts and costs $19.99 per month.
At $12.99 per month, Hotspot Shield is significantly more expensive than the $10.29 per month average among VPNs we have tested. A one-year Premium subscription costs $95.99 per year, which is a substantial increase from the average of $57.33 among the services we’ve tested. Other standalone VPNs are significantly less costly than Hotspot Shield. Mullvad, an Editors’ Choice winner, costs €5 per month ($5.39 at the time of writing), and a limited ProtonVPN account costs just $5 per month.
You can pay for a Hotspot Shield subscription by using a major credit card or PayPal. Other services offer more privacy-friendly options. ProtonVPN, Mullvad, and IVPN accept cash mailed to their corporate HQs. Cryptocurrency support is also fairly common among VPNs, but it’s not an option with Hotspot Shield.As with nearly every VPN service we’ve reviewed, Hotspot Shield lets you use P2P file sharing and BitTorrent on its network. It also includes a split-tunneling feature, which lets you designate what traffic flows through the tunnel and what can travel in the clear—handy for streaming video or using a bank that frequently blocks VPN traffic.
(Credit: Hotspot Shield/PCMag)
As noted, a Premium subscription with Hotspot Shield lets you use 10 devices simultaneously, which is above average for the VPNs we’ve tested. That seems to be changing, however. Several competitors now offer more, and some have ditched this limitation altogether. Avira Phantom VPN, Encrypt.me VPN, Ghostery Midnight, Surfshark VPN, and Windscribe VPN all place no limit on the number of simultaneous connections. (Editors’ Note: Encrypt.me is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag’s parent company.)It’s important to know what a VPN can and can’t do. To really disguise yourself online, you should route your traffic through the labyrinthine Tor network. You should also protect your machine with standalone antivirus, protect your accounts by activating two-factor authentication wherever it’s available, and use a password manager to create unique, complex passwords for every site and service.VPN Protocols For years, we considered OpenVPN the best option for creating an encrypted VPN connection. A new player, WireGuard, uses newer encryption technology and seems to offer better speeds. It hasn’t seen widespread adoption yet, and Hotspot Shield supports it only on Linux. That’s alright for now, but WireGuard is poised to become an industry standard.Hotspot Shield created its own protocol called Catapult Hydra. To be clear, the company didn’t create a new encryption protocol. A new encryption protocol would require an enormous amount of scrutiny since any undiscovered flaws could be used to break it. A company representative explained that Catapult Hydra uses the Open SSL library to encrypt the data and that the new protocol is simply “an enhancement of the transport protocol.” The company had also previously told us that Hydra creates multiple channels for data to travel to increase speed and reliability. However, as you’ll find in our testing below, speed is not exactly Hotspot’s forte.
(Credit: Hotspot Shield/PCMag)
IKEv2, a secure and modern option, is available on Windows and iOS installations of Hotspot Shield. OpenVPN, the open-source protocol we prefer, is available only for installation on routers. Notably, Hotspot Shield took the title of fastest VPN in 2020, slipped a bit in our 2021 testing, and dropped all the way to the bottom in 2024 (see below).Servers and Server LocationsHotspot Shield says it provides servers in “80+” countries. That’s a strong selection and not far behind the 94 countries served by ExpressVPN. Having servers in more places gives you more options for spoofing your location, which means there’s more likely a server near your location. Note that users of the VPN’s free tier can only access US servers.Especially notable is the variety of locations served by Hotspot Shield. It has servers in four African countries and servers across South America, two regions frequently ignored by VPN companies. Hotspot Shield also provides servers in regions with repressive internet policies, such as China, Russia, Turkey, and Vietnam.Hotspot Shield has a respectable 1,800-some servers available. Current Hotspot Shield users might notice this is a drop from the 3,200 previously offered by the service. We asked a rep about this and were told: “These infrastructure improvements ensure that our service improves reliability and high-quality, even with fewer servers: 10G High-Performance Servers: We migrated to 10G high-performance servers to enhance connection quality and optimize server usage. This upgrade allows us to better handle peak loads without compromising connection quality and improves speed performance.Improved Load Balancing: We enhanced our automatic load balancing to distribute traffic more efficiently.Shared Infrastructure Adjustment: Previously, Hotspot Shield shared its infrastructure with five other VPN companies: Betternet, Hexatech, TouchVPN, VPN360, and VPN in Touch. Today, it shares infrastructure with only four brands: Betternet, VPN360, Hotspot Shield, and UltraVPN. This reduction by two VPNs has affected the number of servers initially.”CyberGhost has the biggest fleet we’ve seen so far in 2024, with over 6,800. Having more servers doesn’t necessarily mean better service, but it generally means you have more options to find something that works.Your Privacy With Hotspot ShieldHotspot Shield VPN is owned and operated by Pango Inc. dba Aura, which is incorporated in the US state of Delaware. The company says it has a “distributed workforce” in the US and Ukraine. The parent company for Aura is WC SACD Holdings Inc. Some companies tout their offshore HQs as a check against requests for information by governments and law enforcement, but Aura does not.
(Credit: Hotspot Shield/PCMag)
Many VPN companies release third-party audits of their products to establish security and privacy bona fides. Hotspot Shield VPN has yet to release the results of an audit. TunnelBear, on the other hand, has delivered annual audits for several years. The company behind Hotspot Shield (then called AnchorFree) issued a lengthy and detailed transparency report for 2016 through 2018, which indicates it has never released user information despite numerous requests. However, this report is not easy to find—here’s a PDF link to it—and the company should commit to releasing updated reports annually.The company says it does not store any information on users’ browsing activity. The company does gather your IP address to match you to the best VPN server, but that information is encrypted during use and deleted at the end of your VPN session. The company says it does not have the ability to connect activity at a given server with a specific person using that server.Hands On With Hotspot Shield for WindowsHotspot Shield provides apps for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. Android TV and Amazon Fire Stick also support Hotspot Shield apps. There’s also a command line app for Linux, and the company provides instructions on how to configure your router to use Hotspot Shield. In our testing, we used an Intel NUC 13 Extreme Kit (Raptor Canyon) desktop running the latest version of Windows 10.The Hotspot Shield client looks much more at home on Windows 10 than other VPN apps. It’s a simple, dark blue window with snazzy cyan highlights. It looks and feels solid and modern. Opening the app for the first time, we were greeted by a large button labeled Connect to VPN. A menu in the lower right corner displays which server would be used. We really like this approach, since it gives you an obvious action to take and makes clear what will happen.
(Credit: Hotspot Shield/PCMag)
Once you connect your device to a server, the main page shows upload and download speeds, latency, the load on the server you’re using, and your apparent IP address. A map in the upper left shows a stylized view of the world. You can select a new location from the menu above. There are also panels showing your daily data usage and what network connection is active. Easy to miss is a Stop button at the very bottom of the app. This disconnects your device from the VPN server.When you go to select a new location, you see a grid of available server locations with the flag of that region. A search bar at the top makes short work of the numerous server locations. If there is more than one location within a region, you can choose where you’d like to connect—usually nothing more fine-grained than a city. This is pretty good, but we prefer services that let you choose specific servers and display information on the usage load of a server or region.
(Credit: Hotspot Shield/PCMag)
The Settings section is fairly light but has useful tools. You can choose your preferred VPN protocol from the Protocols section or let the default setting make that choice for you. There’s a kill switch, which cuts off all internet traffic should your VPN become disconnected. Perhaps the most powerful tool is the Smart VPN (aka split tunneling), which lets you designate which apps or URL domains must use a VPN connection or bypass the VPN. If you have an app or service that’s frequently blocked when using a VPN, this could help. The problem is that the app confusingly uses Bypass and Pause as the possible actions for apps and URLs instead of something more descriptive.Hotspot Shield VPN on Other PlatformsHotspot Shield boasts a fleet of intuitive apps for Android, ChromeOS, iOS, and macOS. We appreciate the sleek blue, white, and black interfaces across all the platforms. Android and Chromebook users can even change the theme from dark to light. We were particularly impressed by the pithy and easy-to-understand feature descriptions in the Settings menu.Hotspot Shield’s feature list includes always-on VPN mode, a kill switch, and split tunneling for Android, iOS, and ChromeOS users. Mac users are limited to Hydra-protocol-dependent website-level split tunneling. Android and Chromebook users get additional features such as the Hotspot Shield in-app browser and access to settings in the Connection Center menu. Within the Connection Center, users can connect to the VPN when the device starts or when the app launches. They can also disconnect from the VPN when the Android device enters Sleep mode. The Connection Center is also where users can toggle on and off settings for different types of connections (cellular networks, secured and unsecured Wi-Fi).
(Credit: Hotspot Shield/PCMag)
We visited DNSleaktest.com while using each platform’s apps. Hotspot Shield hid our true DNS details while connected to VPN servers in Barcelona, Milan, Montreal, and San José. We also watched live streaming video content on Twitch.tv and YouTube while connected to servers in London, Paris, Seoul, and Toronto; the broadcasts were free of interruptions or noticeable lagging.Hotspot Shield Free is unusable unless you agree to watch an ad or play a game. We were unable to connect to a VPN server in Singapore without first watching a 30-second ad for DuckDuckGo’s private browser. After viewing the ad, we received 15 minutes of connection time. The timer and our connection commenced as soon as we closed the ad. Disconnecting from the VPN stopped the timer. You can bank more connection time by watching additional ads. We watched two more ads to gain thirty more minutes.Can You Use Hotspot Shield With Netflix?Netflix and other streaming platforms offer specific content to specific parts of the world. With a VPN, you can jump those invisible borders to see how the other half lives or to continue watching your shows while traveling. Netflix is wise to this scheme, however, and actively works to block users who connect via VPN.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that Netflix loaded content while connected to a Hotspot Shield VPN server in the US, as well as the other four regions we tested, including Australia, Canada, Japan, and the UK.Using a VPN often prevents you from accessing Netflix, even if you’re connected to a VPN server within the US. Unfortunately, when we tried streaming video from Netflix while connected to a US-based server, we were only able to access Netflix Originals content. This might not always be the case. Services that work one day are frequently blocked the next, so keep that in mind when looking to purchase a VPN.
(Credit: Hotspot Shield/PCMag)
Speed and PerformanceVPNs usually have a negative effect on your internet speeds. To get a feel for the impact of using a VPN, we perform a series of tests using the Ookla SpeedTest website and find a percent change between test results with and without the VPN. You can read more about our testing, including its limitations, in how we test VPNs. (Note that Ookla is owned by PCMag’s publisher, Ziff Davis.)In 2020, we determined that Hotspot Shield was the fastest VPN available. That’s no longer the case, as it now occupies our slot for the slowest. We ran multiple tests across both the Catapult Hydra and WireGuard protocols, and in the best case, Hotspot Shield VPN reduced download and upload speed test results by 74.89% and 76.33%. It also increased latency by 94.1%. While we’ve seen worse impacts on latency, this now makes Hotspot the slowest provider we’ve tested to date in terms of the effect it has on your download and upload speeds. Anyone wanting reliable, quick, low-latency connections will want to look to services like NordVPN or Surfshark VPN.
Our tests are just a snapshot, though, and your experience could differ. Verdict: A Decent Shield for Your PrivacyAll products have trade-offs, but Hotspot Shield has more than average. It has a generous but frustrating free tier of service, for example, but its paid version is quite expensive. It has an excellent collection of servers, but you can’t select individual servers. Other companies offer VPN protection without all those caveats. Hotspot Shield is still a compelling product, but its competitors are simply able to make clearer arguments for their value and security. For excellent protection with far fewer trade-offs, we recommend Editors’ Choice winners Proton VPN and NordVPN.
Pros
Numerous server locations
Slick, approachable client
Open Netflix access in all tested regions
Hefty services bundle
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The Bottom Line
Hotspot Shield VPN looks great and has a large number of servers, but its free plan monetization model and slow speeds hold it back.
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