Most VPN reviews are written by people who installed the app for an afternoon, ran a speed test, and called it a review. This one is written by someone who actually used Surfshark as a daily VPN for a good while before moving to something else.
I’ll tell you what it did well, where it annoyed me, why I personally moved on, and the more useful question: who Surfshark is genuinely the right choice for. Because for a lot of people, it is.
The short version
Surfshark is a solid mid-market VPN with one standout feature: unlimited simultaneous devices on a single subscription. If you have a household full of phones, laptops, tablets, and a TV, that alone can make it the most economical option on the table. It’s not the most privacy-purist choice available, and the renewal pricing plays the usual industry games, but as a practical tool that does what most people want a VPN to do, it holds up.
I no longer use it, but that’s because my own priorities shifted toward a more privacy-focused setup, not because Surfshark failed me. Those are different things, and an honest review should keep them separate.
Why I chose it in the first place
Value. That’s the honest answer. When I was choosing, Surfshark consistently came up as the option that gave you the most for the least, and the unlimited-devices policy sealed it. Most VPNs cap you at five or six devices and then quietly expect you to either buy a second subscription or constantly log things in and out. Surfshark just doesn’t do that. One account, every device you own, no counting.
If you’ve ever hit the “too many devices” wall on another VPN at the exact moment you needed it, you’ll understand why that single policy is more compelling than most of the feature lists VPNs advertise.
What Surfshark genuinely does well
Unlimited devices is the real selling point
This is the thing I’d actually recommend it for. A typical household easily has more than five connected devices once you count everyone’s phones, a couple of laptops, a tablet or two, and a smart TV. With most VPNs that means juggling logins or paying twice. With Surfshark you install it everywhere and forget about it. For families or anyone with a lot of hardware, this quietly makes Surfshark one of the best-value options available, sometimes the best.
The apps are easy to live with
The software is approachable. Connecting is one tap, the server list is sensible, and the defaults are reasonable for someone who doesn’t want to think about it. It doesn’t demand that you understand protocols or settings to get protected. For a non-technical household member, that matters more than any spec sheet.
Streaming generally works
Unlike privacy-purist VPNs that don’t bother optimizing for it, Surfshark actively works to keep streaming functional. In my experience it handled the common streaming use cases more reliably than VPNs that treat streaming as an afterthought. If watching content while travelling or on a different region’s catalogue is a real reason you want a VPN, this is a point in Surfshark’s favour, not against it.
Speeds were fine
I never felt like the VPN was the bottleneck during normal use. Browsing, video, calls. It was unremarkable in the way you want infrastructure to be unremarkable. I’m not going to publish lab benchmarks here because real-world speed depends heavily on your own connection and location, and anyone quoting precise numbers as universal truth is overselling it.
Where Surfshark annoyed me
An honest review has to include the friction. None of this made it unusable. It’s the stuff worth knowing before you commit.
The renewal pricing is the usual industry trick
The headline price you see advertised is the long-multi-year-plan price. It looks fantastic. Then the plan renews at a substantially higher rate, and the cheap number was really a customer-acquisition tactic, not the actual cost of the product. Surfshark is far from alone in this. Almost the entire industry does it. But it’s still worth going in with eyes open: the price that locked you in is usually not the price you keep paying. Set a calendar reminder before any renewal and reassess rather than auto-renewing on autopilot.
It nudges you toward add-ons
There’s a steady gentle pressure toward the bigger bundles and extra products. It’s not aggressive enough to ruin the experience, but if you came for a VPN you’ll be reminded that there’s an “everything” tier. Decide what you actually need before you’re in the upgrade funnel, not during it.
It’s a feature-rich VPN, not a privacy-minimalist one
This isn’t a flaw so much as a personality. Surfshark adds features. Antivirus, alternative ID tools, data-breach alerts, and so on. Some people genuinely want the all-in-one bundle. But more features means more surface area and more company between you and the internet. If your mental model of a VPN is “the smallest possible trusted intermediary,” a feature-maximising product is philosophically the opposite direction. Neither approach is wrong. They’re built for different buyers.
Why I personally moved on
Not because anything broke. Surfshark did what I asked it to do the whole time I used it.
My reason was a shift in what I wanted from a VPN. I moved toward a more privacy-focused setup, the kind where the entire design goal is that the provider knows as little about you as technically possible. That’s a specific priority, and it’s the subject of my Mullvad review. It isn’t a verdict that Surfshark is bad. It’s that Surfshark and a privacy-minimalist VPN are answers to different questions. I changed which question mattered most to me.
If your question is “how do I cover every device in my house affordably and still stream things,” Surfshark may well be a better answer for you than the VPN I personally switched to. I try to be honest about that rather than pretend the thing I use now is the right thing for everyone.
Who Surfshark is genuinely right for
- Households with lots of devices, where unlimited connections turns it into the best-value option available
- People who want streaming to mostly just work without fiddling
- Non-technical users who want one-tap protection and sensible defaults
- Anyone who wants a competent all-rounder and isn’t optimising for privacy-purism
- People on a budget, provided they stay aware of the renewal price jump
Who should look elsewhere
- Privacy purists who want the provider to know as close to nothing about them as possible (a different category of VPN suits you better)
- People who hate renewal-price games enough to want flat, honest pricing instead
- Anyone who specifically wants a minimal, single-purpose tool rather than a feature bundle
- Users who want anonymous signup and payment with no account identity at all
The honest bottom line
Surfshark is good at what it’s good at. The unlimited-device policy is a genuinely strong reason to pick it, especially for a household, and the everyday experience is smooth enough that non-technical people in your life can use it without help. Its weaknesses are the renewal pricing and a feature-maximising philosophy that runs opposite to privacy-minimalism. Whether those are dealbreakers depends entirely on what you want a VPN for.
I moved to a more privacy-focused option because my priorities changed, not because Surfshark let me down. If your priorities line up with what Surfshark is built for, it’s a reasonable, practical, good-value choice, and I’d rather tell you that honestly than pretend the VPN I personally use is the only correct answer for everyone.
If you want to see the other end of the spectrum (a VPN built around the provider knowing as little as possible), read my Mullvad review next. Comparing the two is the fastest way to figure out which type actually fits you.
If you decide Surfshark fits your situation, you can find it at https://surfshark.com.
I have no current affiliate relationship reflected in this review’s conclusions; recommendations here are based on personal use. See my Affiliate Disclosure for how this site earns money, and my methodology for how I evaluate VPNs.