Windscribe is a privately owned VPN company founded in 2016. It has servers in over 60 countries, support for a wide range of different devices, unlimited simultaneous connections, a free tier, and an option to build a custom plan where you can choose which countries' servers you'd like access to. It also has a variety of additional features like obfuscated protocols, a configurable domain and IP blocking tool called R.O.B.E.R.T., port forwarding, split tunneling, and more.
Our Verdict
Windscribe is very good for torrenting. It allows you to download P2P files and doesn't have a data limit. Its security is acceptable, as it keeps your IP address and DNS queries within its tunnel while you use it. While a password is necessary to register, you can opt to create an account without an email address, and you can also pay with cryptocurrencies. This is beneficial if the provider experiences a data leak, as there's less personally identifiable information for bad actors to see.
Doesn't leak your IP address or DNS queries.
Proper TLS implementation protects you from man-in-the-middle attacks.
Can register without an email address.
Kill switch works properly.
Windscribe is a very good VPN for private browsing. It has excellent security that keeps your IP address and DNS requests hidden while you're connected. It also has very good policies and business practices overall. Its privacy and no-logs policies are clear, comprehensive, and specify that the company retains minimal information about you. The VPN is also transparent about its ownership, is active in the community, and publishes independent, third-party security and infrastructure audits. Its biggest shortcoming is that it hasn't published a third-party audit of its privacy policies to verify its no-logs claims.
Doesn't leak your IP address or DNS queries.
Proper TLS implementation protects you from man-in-the-middle attacks.
Can register without an email address.
Kill switch works properly.
Very good, transparent business practices.
Clear privacy and no-logs policies that retain minimal user information.
No published privacy policy or no-logs audit.
Windscribe has very good policies and business practices. The privacy and no-logs policies are easy to understand and explicitly state that no data is retained, a fact that has been proven by their inability to produce user traffic in court in the past. The company is transparent about its ownership, and the staff maintains an active presence in the community. That said, while publishing third-party audits of their security infrastructure, they've never published an audit of their privacy or no-logs policies.
Very good, transparent business practices.
Clear privacy and no-logs policies that retain minimal user information.
No published privacy policy or no-logs audit.
Windscribe has excellent security. It keeps your IP address and DNS queries encrypted while you're connected to it. It also offers protection against man-in-the-middle attacks as it has proper TLS implementation. Also, its kill switch works as intended, blocking unencrypted data leaking from your system in case of a reboot or reconnecting after a loss of internet.
Doesn't leak your IP address or DNS queries.
Proper TLS implementation protects you from man-in-the-middle attacks.
Kill switch works properly.
We're testing this VPN's speed on an ongoing basis and will update this verdict when we have more data. See the Performance section of the review to look at the data we've collected so far.
Performance Usages
Changelog
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Updated Jan 23, 2026:
We've updated the text throughout the review to reflect the changes from Test Bench 0.10.1.
- Updated Jan 23, 2026: We've updated this review to Test Bench 0.10.1! This is a minor update to how we conduct our speed tests. Read the changelog for more info.
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Updated Dec 16, 2025:
We've added text throughout the review to correspond with the new privacy tests in Test Bench 0.10.
- Updated Dec 16, 2025: We've updated our review to Test Bench 0.10! This update focuses on privacy and evaluates the trustworthiness of a VPN in keeping your personal information private. Read the changelog for more details.
Check Price
Differences Between Sizes And Variants
Windscribe has a free tier and a paid Pro tier, which we bought and tested in this review. We tested the free tier separately. You can also build your own plan with servers only in countries that you specify.
| Plan | Country Selection | Data Limit | Pro-Only Servers | R.O.B.E.R.T.* | Port Forwarding |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pro | 65 | Unlimited | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Free | 10 | 2GB - 10GB*** | No | Malware, Ads, Tracker blocking only | No |
| Build A Plan | 1-5** | 12GB per country, unlimited optionally available | Yes | Optional | Optional |
*R.O.B.E.R.T. is Windscribe's customizable server-side domain and IP blocking tool that offers premade block lists and the ability to create your own custom lists.
**Windscribe doesn't let you select more than five countries, as it's cheaper to subscribe to the Pro plan.
***If you register without an email address, the data limit is 2GB. If you register with one, it's 10GB.
Popular VPN Comparisons
Windscribe has broadly comparable performance to most other services but has an impressive list of additional features. From the fairly common realm of supporting a wide range of devices, unlimited simultaneous connections, and split tunneling to the niche, like the ability to create custom IP block lists and precise control of packet sizes. Features like these make it a compelling option if you're a power user who likes tweaking details. Also, the 'Build A Plan' tier is a unique option in the market that's compelling if you only need access to servers in a specific country.
Windscribe has very good policies and business practices overall, making it one of the more trustworthy VPNs on the market. It has a clear no-logs policy and a straightforward privacy policy that makes sense and claims to handle the minimal user data it needs to operate responsibly. As a company, Windscribe has generally good business practices and communicates issues to its users clearly and transparently.
To see which services we recommend, check out our article on the best VPNs or the best VPNs for Windows PCs.
Test Results
Windscribe has multiple kill switch settings called 'Firewall Modes', including an 'Always On' and 'Always On+'. Both modes effectively block potentially de-anonymizing data in case your device restarts or the client crashes. The Always On+ mode is much more restrictive, completely blocking all traffic other than the connection between your device and Windscribe's servers.
Windscribe doesn't secure its internet routing (BGP) properly. This means that even if your ISP protects against attacks like route hijacking, your traffic could still be misdirected once it enters Windscribe's network. This is only a concern for highly targeted and resource-intensive attacks that are feasible only for governments or large corporations to orchestrate.
Windscribe's privacy and no-logs policies are clear and use specific language that claims none of your traffic or personal information is retained unnecessarily. Unfortunately, however, they've never published any independent, third-party audits of their privacy or no-logs policies to validate their claims. That said, there was a past incident where user traffic was requested in court, but Windscribe wasn't able to produce any.
Windscribe has remarkable business practices. The company is wholly owned by public-facing individuals. They maintain an active blog and are transparent about security incidents. Windscribe commissions independent infrastructure and security audits with positive results with any issues being fixed swiftly. Their applications are also open-source with publicly reviewable code.
The terms of service contain statements that give Windscribe the power to ban accounts at its discretion, and aren't specific about the types of misuse that may warrant a ban.
In addition to accepting credit cards and PayPal, you can also pay with FasterPay, Alipay, Mint, and a wide variety of cryptocurrencies using CoinPayments.
We're testing this VPN's performance on an ongoing basis, and will update the text for the download speed, upload speed, and latency tests when we have more data.
This VPN has native apps for Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, and openSUSE Linux distributions, in addition to manual configuration options.
There are apps available for iOS and Android, Fire TV, Android TV, and Apple TV. Windscribe also has browser extensions, and you can even install it on your router, so all your network traffic goes through the VPN.
Stealth and WStunnel are protocols with obfuscation that work by encapsulating an OpenVPN connection in a TLS tunnel or a WebSocket, respectively. These can be useful if you're contending with internet censors that don't allow access to a site through a VPN.
You can only use the WireGuard protocol with up to five devices at the same time.
You can only ping local addresses on different subnets if you input the address directly into the app's split tunneling section.
