FastestVPN Review – Is This VPN Really the Fastest?

FastestVPN is an up-and-coming virtual private network (VPN) service in the security industry. The Cayman Islands-based company has served VPN users for almost five years, starting its operations in 2016.

But is this VPN provider worth your time, money and trust?

The following FastestVPN review will address this question and more, judging the quality of its VPN servers, security capabilities, privacy features, customer support, pricing and subscription packages.

Aside from covering the Windows app in-depth, we’ll see if FastestVPN can offer a reliable VPN experience with minimal VPN connection drops. We’ll also review the VPN protocols it supports and whether or not the servers FastestVPN offers are fast enough for streaming services that offer HD content.

FastestVPN Price

There are three subscription packages, which is what most VPN services offer in the VPN market.

1-Month Plan

This subscription plan costs $10 per month and offers all the basic features. The official website mentions that all new users get 2TB of cloud storage for a full year without any extra charges.

1-Year Plan

The one-year subscription package brings the price down to just $2.49 per month. Before you take out your credit card to sign up, you should bear in mind that you’ll have to pay for the full year upfront. That comes out to around $29.95.

3-Year Plan

The three-year subscription plan costs $39.95 upfront, bringing the monthly cost down to $1.11.

Compared to the top VPN providers on the market, FastestVPN is not cheap if you sign up for the monthly package. But when you bump the duration period to three years, FastestVPN becomes one of the most affordable services in the market today at just $1.11 per month.

The low price—especially if you’re ready to commit to the three-year plan—is one of the reasons why some recommend FastestVPN over other VPN providers.

Of course, many other factors make a VPN provider great. Read on to find out more about what FastestVPN has to offer.

Is There a Money-Back Guarantee for the Fastest VPN Service?

All subscription packages come with a 15-day money-back guarantee. This amount of time is usually enough for a new VPN user to test out the VPN connections on offer by connecting to different VPN servers through their app.

Simultaneous VPN Connection Options

Each FastestVPN subscription package allows users to connect a maximum of 10 devices simultaneously per account. You can use the service’s desktop and mobile apps to make sure all your devices have the protection of this VPN service.

FastestVPN Features

NAT Firewall

Not many services offer a NAT Firewall feature, but FastestVPN does. This feature adds an extra layer of protection to each device you decide to protect with FastestVPN.

You don’t need to concern yourself with the inner workings of the NAT Firewall to use the feature. Although, it may help you to know that NAT Firewall can manage incoming data packets fairly competently by making sure you only receive the packets you requested. Any packet that you did not request cannot pass through the firewall.

VPN services are built from the ground up to provide you with privacy. Hence, it is better if you mainly use them for that purpose.

Ad Blocker

Ideally, any internet user should have an antivirus app on their system, along with their trusted VPN and a malware scanner to periodically check for malware samples that might have sneaked into their system. FastestVPN tries to offer users everything they need to enhance their internet security and protect their internet traffic, which is why it bundles all three of these security tools in one.

This VPN supports an ad blocker to complement its built-in anti-malware feature. Both the malware component and the ad blocker are lightweight. You will barely notice their presence as they don’t push out notification after notification at the slightest hint of a malware sample.

You might think that a VPN service offering so many components would have a bloated app. In some cases, especially if you have dedicated apps for virus protection and spyware removal, FastestVPN may feel overwhelming. However, once you use it, you’ll realize it doesn’t hurt to have that extra bit of protection, especially when it doesn’t charge you an extra fee.

Smart Tunneling

Once you use the FastestVPN app, you might notice two extra features missing from most VPNs. They are smart tunneling and smart connect/quick connect.

You can use the smart tunneling feature to pick apps that do not require VPN protection. Sometimes you’ll see this feature advertised as split tunneling, in which the internet data from some apps travels through the VPN tunnel while a portion of your device’s internet data doesn’t. They both do the same thing.

Split tunneling was a luxury feature in the past, but like the VPN kill switch (which we’ll cover below), it has become essential. It can reduce the amount of internet traffic your VPN app has to process, and that can free up VPN bandwidth for other tasks, such as streaming Netflix.

Most VPN providers offer a split tunneling feature because they know users will have incompatible apps on their computers. Those apps will need access to the internet without any VPN interference. And the smart tunneling features allow that to happen without you needing to open and close your VPN app every time you want to switch between other apps.

Depending on how you go about completing your daily tasks, you may need to use both the split tunnel feature and the quick connect feature.

The quick connect or smart connect feature allows the VPN app to form a connection with any server that’s close to your real location and has a low load. It also takes into account the latency rates. As you can probably tell, FastestVPN servers located in your own country will provide you with the best results on various speed tests. And that is where the app will always connect you, whether you are using the desktop app or the Android app or browser extensions.

Do Fastest VPN Servers Unblock Netflix?

Yes, FastestVPN does unblock Netflix, but it can only reliably unblock the U.S. version of the streaming service. For the remaining Netflix versions, you will have to try different server locations, connect to them several times and see what sticks on a given day. If you contact the live chat support team, they may be able to help you connect to the right server.

VPN services often add new servers just for streaming sites. You can get in touch with FastestVPN’s customer support team to know which servers they have marked specifically for streaming Netflix or other sites.

Does FastestVPN Work With/Support BBC iPlayer?

No, at least not reliably. The only streaming service that FastestVPN unblocks reliably is Netflix.

If you want a good VPN service that unblocks sites like Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video and other sites, you might want to try a different VPN.

Is FastestVPN Good for P2P File Transfers and Torrenting?

FastestVPN is one of the better VPNs on the market that supports torrenting. Most of its servers have torrenting automatically enabled.

Unlike some other lesser-known VPNs, you don’t have to manually configure anything to start torrenting with FastestVPN. All you have to do is launch the official VPN app, download the file you want to torrent, connect to one of your favorite servers and start torrenting. Your internet service provider will never know anything about your browsing history or what you downloaded through your torrent client.

With that said, there are a few things you need to watch out for. For example, it’s better to stay away from servers located in Australia, South Korea, India, Hong Kong and Singapore. Based on your location, these are likely to be the slowest of the bunch. Most VPN providers have their fastest servers located in the U.S. So, a Miami server with your preferred VPN protocol will probably offer the best VPN speeds.

But for increased download speed, you will have to contend with the fact that the U.S. has some of the most advanced surveillance programs in the world, along with mandatory data retention laws. That can potentially cause trouble for heavy torrenters.

Security

These are the protocols that you can use for your connection:

• PPTP
• OpenVPN over UDP (User Datagram Protocol)
• OpenVPN over TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)
• L2TP/IPSec
• IKEv2/IPSec

These protocols are considered the best in the VPN industry. You can go with any of them, but for the best balance between connection speed and security, you should always go with OpenVPN over UDP.

Encryption

FastestVPN uses AES 256-bit encryption for its connections, which is pretty much on par with the best in the business. FastestVPN covers all the basic security features to make sure you get to roam cyberspace safely and privately.

With that said, FastestVPN is certainly not the flashiest VPN around. You will get the standard set of features, but nothing more.

In the previous section, we mentioned the list of protocols you can use with FastestVPN’s apps. But not all FastestVPN app versions offer the same protocols. For example, the Windows app only offers the IKEv2 and OpenVPN protocols, while the Android app only offers OpenVPN. Similarly, the macOS and iOS apps only offer L2TP and IKEv2 protocols.

Does FastestVPN Offer a VPN Kill Switch?

FastestVPN’s kill switch feature is present in the iOS, macOS and Windows apps. For the uninitiated, a kill switch disconnects your device from the internet if your VPN connection drops for any reason.

Unfortunately, the Android application doesn’t offer the kill switch feature. But savvy VPN users can do a bit of manual configuration and implement the kill switch feature from within the Android settings instead of the VPN settings.

Does FastestVPN Have DNS Leak Protection?

Yes, FastestVPN does protect against IP or DNS leaks. In addition to that, the company offers its own DNS servers to better handle user DNS requests and protect against WebRTC leaks.

FastestVPN Speed

So what about FastestVPN speed? Is it really the fastest virtual private network in the world?

Despite what some FastestVPN reviews will tell you, it is not the fastest in the world. However, it isn’t particularly slow either. Depending on your internet usage habits, FastestVPN can be quick for some tasks and slower for others.

For example, FastestVPN is quick because it does not drop significant download speeds when you connect to a server located in your original country (where you reside and/or are connecting from). However, when it comes to connecting to servers located further away from your location, FastestVPN falls short.

We checked FastestVPN speed through a series of speed test trials. Here are our results:

U.S. Servers

Our speed test result shows that generally, you should expect a speed drop of about 10% to 20% for U.S. servers. That is as far as your download speed is concerned.

For upload speeds, expect a drop of about 70% to 80%, according to our FastestVPN speed test findings.

Germany Servers

For central Europe, you should expect around a 30% to 40% drop in download speeds. For upload speeds, expect that decrease to be around 80% to 90%.

As you can probably tell, that is a huge problem for people who want to upload videos to YouTube while connected to FastestVPN.

Australia Servers

In servers located in Australia, our speed test results show that you can expect the download speed to drop by 70% to 80%. For upload speed, you will have to contend with a 90% to 95% drop.

Apart from that, you should also expect the official app to take its time when connecting you to different servers. It is not the fastest at establishing connections.

As always, when we tested FastestVPN, we did it through our internet connection, specific location, specific time and day, and through our chosen server. Your results can vary since your internet connection conditions will be different.

Servers

FastestVPN offers servers located in 40 countries and 52 cities. The total number of IP addresses that you can rely on is in excess of 250. These are the official numbers, but some users have reported having access to fewer countries and cities from the list of server locations.

The server network is somewhat limited compared to the best in the business. The service does not do a good job of covering areas such as South America and Africa. However, if you are only interested in the North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions, you’ll get by.

The actual number of servers in any given country usually changes every month for VPN providers. In any case, expect to have access to around eight server locations in the U.S. Depending on the number of customers FastestVPN has to handle, this may not be enough if they want users to have a smooth experience streaming content from HD websites.

Privacy

FastestVPN is based in the Cayman Islands. However, if you go to the company’s LinkedIn page, you’ll see Los Angeles as its headquarters city. The service carries out its everyday VPN operations in the Cayman Islands, which essentially protects it from strict U.S. data retention laws.

The Cayman Islands is an autonomous region and has its own constitution, which dates back to 2009. Even though a British Monarch is the head of state, the region is not a member of the Five Eyes Alliance, as the U.K. is.

The Five Eyes Alliance is a collaborative project between intelligence agencies belonging to five member countries: The U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These countries have implemented extensive surveillance programs in the regions they rule, allowing them to listen in on the online communications that people living in their territories generate daily.

The Five Eyes Alliance is not a new project, though. By some measures, it came into existence back in the 1940s. Today, it has grown into another alliance with 14 members, dubbed the 14 Eyes Alliance. But just because a country is not a member officially doesn’t mean it does not cooperate with the alliance. South Korea, Japan and Israel are among the countries some suspect are working with the alliance and sharing intelligence data with the 14-member group.

So, why is this important for FastestVPN’s privacy policy and you, the user? Well, the fact that the Cayman Islands is not a part of any international alliance means that government surveillance units and law enforcement agencies cannot use a subpoena to force VPN providers to give up their customer data to benefit their investigations.

It’s also worth noting that FastestVPN does have servers in Hong Kong, so China can potentially compromise the data that passes through the company’s equipment located there. That’s something you should consider when connecting to a Hong Kong server.

In FastestVPN’s privacy policy, the company mentions it doesn’t keep any logs that might compromise the identity of the user. It doesn’t even store payment information, meaning the government or other third parties can never get a hold of any of its customers’ personal information. The company only keeps a record of the email addresses subscribers use to sign up so it can track bills and payments and perform maintenance tasks.

Apps

With some major updates, FastestVPN’s apps are in good shape overall. Don’t expect a top-of-the-line smooth interface, though. The desktop application now offers a scroll bar, which makes accessing server locations easier. But it’s also not clear which FastestVPN servers are currently available.

As mentioned earlier in this FastestVPN review, the app will take its time connecting you to a given server. And even though it will indicate you’ve been connected, you would have no internet access. In that case, you will have to connect to the server again to, hopefully, get internet access back.

Some users may be overwhelmed by the number of tabs on the interface. But apart from that, the apps themselves are easy to use and intuitive. Beginner VPN users should have no trouble understanding where the features are and which button performs what function.

What About Browser Extensions?

FastestVPN’s browser extensions are available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. To install them, search for the app on the Google Chrome Web Store or the Firefox Add-on Store. Both are very easy to install and use.

Once you install them, you will have to use your FastestVPN login credentials to sign in and start using them. After that, it is all a matter of picking the desired server and clicking the button that says “connect.”

Compatibility

FastestVPN offers apps for all major platforms, including:

• Windows
• Mac
• iOS
• Android
• Linux
• Some routers

If you’re looking to use only dedicated apps, you have these options:

• Windows
• macOS
• iOS
• Android

Linux

To use FastestVPN on Linux, you will have to go through the configuration process on your own. If you’re a beginner, you might want to use a different platform or operating system.

Other Platforms

Apart from the platforms listed above, here are the devices that have FastestVPN support:

• AppleTV
• Amazon Fire TV
• Nintendo
• Chromecast
• PlayStation
• Roku
• Xbox

Customer Support

FastestVPN allows customers to request assistance through a live chat feature, which is available 24/7. FastestVPN offers the complete live chat experience, where you can share files with the customer support representative, send emojis and request a copy of the whole communication session for future use.

If you can get a hold of someone in real-time or you want a written response to better understand the solution to your problem, you can reach FastestVPN’s customer support team through email.

You can also go to the FastestVPN website and follow the tutorials available there. FastestVPN provides installation guides for almost all platforms and shows you the steps you need to take for manual configuration to work where it is needed. There is also a blog available, which keeps you updated on all the latest happenings with FastestVPN.

Finally, you can use the website’s FAQ page to get answers to common questions asked by customers in the past.

FastestVPN Review Conclusion: Should You Sign Up for VPN Services Like FastestVPN?

The final verdict? FastestVPN is hard to recommend to anyone living in a world where plenty of other services are available, such as NordVPN, SurfShark VPN and ExpressVPN.

FastestVPN does not work for many streaming sites apart from the U.S. version of Netflix. It’s also unclear which features are available on which platforms or operating systems.

Moreover, this service simply has not been in the business long enough for us to know if it is reliable to use in a country like China, where the government has implemented complex censorship systems to limit access to online news and information.

Other VPNs of comparable prices offer more extensive networks, different features, smoother apps and higher pedigree when compared to FastestVPN. However, FastestVPN has many benefits as well. It has decent server speed results (via our speed tests), offers live chat support and allows 10 simultaneous connections per account—outperforming other VPNs on the market.

If you want to try out FastestVPN to unblock U.S. Netflix, go ahead. But if you want a VPN service with a proven track record of keeping you safe and sound in any situation, then you might want to go with one of the more established VPN services.

Bottom Line: FastestVPN Is a Decent Contender

FastestVPN offers decent server speeds, a good customer support team and a generous limit on simultaneous connections. But it skimps on some VPN protocols and has a small server network. This makes it hard to recommend FastestVPN as a top contender on the market.