How Much DoesTunnelBear VPN Cost?
TunnelBear is one of the few providers we ‘ve reviewed that offers a sincerely spare VPN serve. The detached TunnelBear tier restricts you to only 500MB of data per month, however. You can earn more data by Tweeting about the company, which can raise your specify to a total of 1.5GB for one calendar month. You can repeat this process each month to receive the bonus. That ‘s placid very restrictive. Anyone who has used a postpaid wireless plan will tell you how fast 1.5GB goes. The free version of HotSpot Shield limits you to 500MB per day, while the ProtonVPN free subscription has no datum specify .
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Reading: TunnelBear VPN Review
Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better bribe decisions. ( See how we test. ) If you decide to pay for TunnelBear, it wo n’t break the bank. An inexhaustible plan costs $ 9.99 per month, just three pennies above the $ 9.96 per month average for a VPN we ‘ve tested. Hotspot Shield, by comparison, costs $ 12.99 per month, while Mullvad is a bare $ 5.54 per calendar month. TunnelBear besides has longer terminus subscriptions : an annual plan that costs $ 59.88 and a three-year plan that runs $ 120. Both are significantly less than the average of $ 72.33 per class among VPNs we ‘ve tested. While TunnelBear is an excellent value, we highly recommend starting with the company ‘s complimentary or monthly plans, so you can test out TunnelBear for yourself and make indisputable it will work for you .
You can pay for TunnelBear using major credit cards. Bitcoin is an option, but only for the annual design. early VPN services such as Editors ‘ Choice-winner Mullvad go far by accepting numerous payments, including cash. TunnelBear says it will accept jars of honey, but this method acting of payment may prove to be a challenge in practice. With either a free or a pay account, you can use up to five devices on a single TunnelBear history. That ‘s average for VPNs, but an increasing act of VPNs are abandoning this restrictive exemplar. Avira Phantom VPN, Encrypt.me VPN, Ghostery Midnight, IPVanish VPN, Surfshark VPN, and Windscribe VPN seat no limit on the count of devices you can use simultaneously. ( note that Encrypt.me and IPVanish are both owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag ‘s rear party. )
What Do You Get for Your Money?
TunnelBear ‘s biggest drawback is that it does n’t offer much beyond VPN protection. Editors ‘ Choice winners IVPN, NordVPN and ProtonVPN are among the few VPNs that offer multi-hop connections, which use a second VPN server for extra security. A few grant push-button access to the free Tor anonymization network. TunnelBear has none of these. previously, TunnelBear forbade the use of its services for P2P file sharing or BitTorrenting. Thankfully, those days are gone. You can now use it to torrent over VPN to your affection ‘s subject. It does not, however, include split burrow, which lets you designate what traffic should pass through the VPN or bypass the VPN. Some VPNs have expanded their horizon beyond securing world wide web traffic. Hotspot Shield grants entree to a whole suite of privacy services, while NordVPN nowadays offers subscriptions for a file cabinet and a password director. TunnelBear has stayed focused on VPN security but does offer the RememBear password coach. It ‘s free to use on one device, but if you want the appliance of syncing across all your devices, you must pay $ 36 per year ( or $ 60 every two years ). A subscription to RememBear is bundled with the three-year TunnelBear subscription. VPNs do a bang-up job of keeping your on-line action secret, even from your ISP, but there are many promote ways to track your movements online. We recommend making consumption of the privacy tools built into most mod browsers, and a tracker blocker like the EFF ‘s Privacy Badger or TunnelBear ‘s standalone Blocker. A VPN will besides do cherished little to protect you against phishing and malware. We highly recommend that everyone enable two-factor authentication wherever potential, practice antivirus software, and create unique passwords with a password coach .
What VPN Protocols Does TunnelBear VPN Offer?
TunnelBear secures your connection with the OpenVPN protocol for Android, io, macOS, and Windows. This is our prefer protocol, as it is assailable informant and available to be picked over for any likely vulnerabilities. IKEv2 is besides available for the io and Windows clients. You ca n’t change which protocol TunnelBear uses in its app—it ‘s handled automatically—but that ‘s very well for most users. many of the best VPNs we ‘ve reviewed, including NordVPN and Mullvad, have begun deploying the adjacent generation, open-source WireGuard VPN protocol. A TunnelBear spokesperson tells us that the company is looking to implement WireGuard in a future handout, which is finely considering how new this engineering is, but it ‘s not ideal .
TunnelBear VPN’s Servers and Server Locations
The more waiter locations a service has, the more options you have for spoofing your location. A wide variety show of locations besides means you are more likely to find a waiter nearby when traveling abroad, which will likely be faster and more dependable than a distant server. TunnelBear offers servers in only 27 countries, about half the average among VPNs we ‘ve reviewed. This solicitation covers the essentials, and has expanded to encompass more of South America, but could improve. TunnelBear ‘s offer wholly ignores Africa and the Middle East—an omission that is, deplorably, not unusual for VPN companies. The company besides has no presence in regions with inhibitory internet policies, and has moved its servers out of Hong Kong. ExpressVPN covers 94 countries with a physical presence, the largest among VPNs we ‘ve tested. At survive consider, TunnelBear has about 3,000 servers across the globe. That ‘s a full-bodied put up, and a dramatic expansion over the caller ‘s humble origins. CyberGhost presently leads the pack with over 6,500 servers. Having more servers means it ‘s more likely you ‘ll find one that meets your needs, but it does n’t inevitably correlate with better operation .
not all servers are created equal. virtual servers are software-defined servers, which means several virtual servers can run on a individual physical server. virtual locations are servers configured to appear somewhere other than where they are physically located. Neither is inherently debatable, and both can allow a server to live in a procure localization while providing coverage to a nearby insecure localization. It becomes an issue when companies are n’t diaphanous about where your data is headed. TunnelBear told us that it has dedicated servers in all of its locations and entirely uses virtual servers to handle unexpected demand. The party says that less than 20 % of its servers are virtual. importantly, those virtual servers are located in the nation they claim to be. If you ‘re using TunnelBear, respite assured that your data is precisely where it ‘s supposed to be. many VPN companies are mindful that their products are used to help bypass censoring, and employment to support those efforts. TunnelBear has offered loose bandwidth to users in particular countries and in 2020 it kicked off an increased focus on anti-censorship efforts. TunnelBear says that it has taken steps to limit the price a successful attack on its server infrastructure might cause. The servers themselves contain no identifiable data about users, and the drives are encrypted. Some companies, including NordVPN and Surfshark VPN, nowadays run their servers “ RAM only, ” and TunnelBear should consider doing the same .
Your Privacy With TunnelBear
Beyond its brawny bears, TunnelBear ‘s greatest forte is its position on privacy. It has one of the best privacy policies we have seen, explaining in great detail and with plain linguistic process, precisely what it collects and why. It besides includes discussion sections, where the company explains how it arrived at a particular decision. early VPN companies should take note of this access. TunnelBear says that it will not disclose, sell, or trade personal information with third-party companies. TunnelBear does use one-third parties for requital processing, but this is not strange. additionally, a company spokesperson confirmed to us that TunnelBear ‘s only source of gross is subscriptions—not data mine or ad retargeting. The party says it does not collect information about users ‘ web activity, nor does it store originating IP addresses, timestamps, or DNS queries. The company does trust on an account system, so the data you provide to create an account is stored by TunnelBear. IVPN and Mullvad VPN have an strange system that does not use accounts and requires no drug user information. For free subscribers, TunnelBear does record the overall bandwidth in order to enforce its data cap. This is reset to zero at the end of each calendar month .
The company is based in Toronto, Canada, and incorporated in Delaware. It ‘s owned by the antivirus ship’s company McAfee. Canada and the US do not have mandatary data retention laws. The ship’s company says it has legal teams for responding to requests for information but, “ we have no information that can connect customers to usage, so we ‘re ineffective to provide police enforcement with anything not in our privacy policy. ” We ‘ve been told that the most information the party can provide is whether or not a sealed e-mail address was used to open an account. That ‘s excellent. The company maintains a robust privacy composition, which confirms it has not provided data to jurisprudence enforcement beyond confirming an person had an account with the party. additionally, TunnelBear has the luminary distinction of having completed not merely one, but four freelancer code audits and publicly released the results of those audits. That ‘s bang-up, and I ‘m please to see that TunnelBear is committed to an annual public review process. A caller representative described these audits to us as, “ security audited account of our hale stack, which includes our backend servers, our VPN servers, and VPN clients. ” security is in truth an issue of reliance. evening if a caller does everything right, it does n’t matter a lot if you, the customer, do n’t trust them. We recommend that consumers consider this information and choose a overhaul with which they feel comfortable .
Hands On With TunnelBear For Windows
TunnelBear presently offers clients on Android, io, macOS, and Windows. TunnelBear besides offers browser plug-ins for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, which function as proxies ( which are distinct from VPNs ) to reroute your traffic through a TunnelBear waiter. For this review, we tested the Windows customer on an Intel NUC Kit NUC8i7BEH ( Bean Canyon ) background running the latest version of Windows 10. Years ago, when Max was shopping for his own VPN, he showed his collaborator all of the top-rated services he had reviewed. He explained what he thought made the best the best, and then asked which his partner would actually use on a daily footing. They picked TunnelBear without missing a beat. They have used it ever since. This is barely an anecdote, but it speaks to the alone rate of TunnelBear VPN : it ‘s good in truth friendly and appealing. Decked out in bright colors with bold chicken accents, the app has a charm bantering attitude that it brings to every aspect of its app. It ‘s cute and colorful, without always being overbearing or cloying. For case, whenever you connect to a VPN server, a notification appears bearing a bear with a hat representative of that area. Exquisite. The app is built around a central map of the populace displaying the company ‘s server locations, shown as Mario-esque pipes. Select your craved localization from the menu above or click on the map to switch protection on, and you ‘re treated to a surprisingly fluent liveliness of a hold tunneling away from your current location. All the TunnelBear apps use the same plan, so you ‘ll have a conversant feel no matter where you go with TunnelBear. This has been the know with all TunnelBear apps, but there have been rebuff changes. In our testing, the Windows version looked a little crisp, and was snappier to respond than previous versions. TunnelBear already has a winning design, therefore fine-tune around the edges like this alone aid keep it fresh. TunnelBear does n’t have many locations to choose from, but a placement search box would be an excellent addition, as would a number of servers, with some basic information such as load and ping time. NordVPN and others provide detail data about specific servers, which can be useful when you need a joining in a identical particular placement. The TunnelBear app does include some utilitarian extra features, such as Trusted Networks, which is basically a whitelist of Wi-Fi networks you trust. Another significant tool is VigilantBear, which works as a kill interchange and prevents data from slipping through should you become disconnected from the VPN. The GhostBear choice aims to circumvent VPN blocking by disguising VPN traffic as convention HTTPS dealings. A TunnelBear example told us that the ship’s company advises that users switch on GhostBear only when absolutely necessity, as it can reduce performance. It ‘s an impressive offer, but not alone. many other companies offer similar customs tools designed to circumvent censoring .
When we test VPNs, we check to confirm that our examination IP address changes and the mention of our ISP is hidden, and we use the DNS Leak Test to see if DNS information is, well, leaking. TunnelBear passed all these tests well, but we lone checked one server. It ‘s potential other servers could be misconfigured. We had no worry streaming movies through Netflix while connected to a US-based TunnelBear VPN server. That was true when we tested the service, but your mileage may vary—as is constantly the case when you try to use a VPN with Netflix .
Speed Test
No matter the VPN you choose, you ‘ll probable see a decrease in download and upload speeds and an increase in latency. To get a sense of that affect, we run a series of tests with and without each VPN using the Ookla speedtest tool. We then compare those figures to find a percentage change. We have a solid feature on How We Test VPNs, so do read it for more on our methodology and the limits of our tests. ( Editors ‘ note : Ookla is owned by PCMag ‘s publisher, Ziff Davis. )
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TunnelBear had lackluster results in this turn of testing, possibly in part because competitors have adopted the WireGuard protocol. We found that TunnelBear VPN decreased download and upload travel rapidly screen results by 46.6 % and 57.1 %, respectively. It increased rotational latency by 100 %. In previous years, we ran back-to-back travel rapidly tests between products to get a birds-eye view of the industry. That is no long hardheaded as COVID-19 restrictions have limited our access to the PCMag Labs. This year we have opted for a rolled model, which will bring you fresher results faster. The most late results are in the mesa below .
Speeds are a perennial concern for consumers, but we try and discourage anyone from using rush results alone as a benchmark for choosing a VPN service. Results are extremely dependent upon time and place, and not closely american samoa authoritative as a VPN ‘s features or overall value. Keep in mind, excessively, that the operation you experience will likely differ from ours .
Hands On With TunnelBear for macOS
We tested TunnelBear ‘s macOS VPN client using a MacBook Air ( M1, 2020 ) running Big Sur version 11.2.2. The macOS app is available on the TunnelBear ’ s web site, but not in the Apple App Store. We noticed the app asked to download a assistant instrument for the application to work, which is something the other apps we ‘ve reviewed did not request. TunnelBear ’ s macOS app looks and performs similarly to the Windows interpretation, with an interface is extremely cute and capricious. When you connect to a VPN server, an enliven bear tunnels his way through a colored world map to get to your address .
We tested it with the DNS Leak Test web site using a connection in Finland, and our information was sustain individual. This is just one server of the thousands in TunnelBear ’ sulfur avail, so there could be leaks with unlike servers. As for the speed and performance, TunnelBear ’ s macOS app performed beautifully. Using a server based in Finland, we were able to browse quickly on Google, watch video recording on YouTube without interruptions, and even view streams on Twitch without sacrificing quick load times .
Hands On With TunnelBear for iPhone
We tested TunnelBear iPhone VPN app using an iPhone adam running io 14.4. The io interpretation of the service lone allows you to choose the country, and then TunnelBear will find the server within that state for you. The app ’ sulfur global function is grey and black when you first sign in, and when you connect with their VPN, the world map double comes to life with bright colors and an aggressive animated bear tunneling toward the server ’ randomness location. We like that you can change the picture to reflect BLM, Pride, or TransPride sentiments .
We tested the io TunnelBear app by navigating to DNSLeakTest.com and running an gallop test. We found no leaks during my test period, but we only tested one waiter in Denmark. note that we lone tested one server. With TunnelBear connected, we were able to watch Twitch streams without interruptions, and load and determine YouTube videos without much lag or buffering while connected to our preferable server in Denmark .
Hands on With TunnelBear for Android
Tunnelbear ’ randomness Android app is beautiful, with its bright glad graphics and animated team of bears. The app ’ mho world map features a bear standing in your location when disconnected from the VPN, and when you connect, the bear roars and takes off on the universe map in the direction of your VPN waiter. It ’ randomness cunning, it ’ second fun, and it ’ s a far cry from the stripped two-color layouts of competitors like NordVPN. We tested the app using a Samsung A71 5G running Android interpretation 10. Tunnelbear for Android has a few more features than the iPhone version of the app. It includes Ghostbear for manipulation when internet providers block encrypted traffic, a kill switch called VigilantBear, and SplitBear, which allows you to select apps that will not be tunneled through your VPN server. You can choose your server from a list of countries at the bottom of the riddle .
We tested Tunnelbear by visiting DNSLeakTest.com and running an exsert trial on a waiter based in Milan, Italy. Our DNS datum did not leak through and the app successfully changed our public IP address, but it was fair one test on one server. other servers could be improperly configured. The VPN ’ s accelerate and dependability were both very well in testing. Using a waiter in Italy, we were able to browse on-line without incident, and watch YouTube video and Twitch streams without lagging or delays .
This VPN Is Just Right
There are two plan options for security software : black, green and edgy, or blue and high-tech. TunnelBear VPN, on the other bridge player, succeeds because it dares to be lighthearted, yellow, and cunning. The company has always put a premium on design and user experience, which is painfully needed in all of digital security. But its excellence is not only skin-deep : TunnelBear offers a robust service and strong foil principles. There are other excellent VPNs that have more bells and whistles than TunnelBear, but this genial VPN fits absolutely into your life and remains a PCMag Editors ‘ Choice winner .
TunnelBear VPN
4.0
Editors ‘ choice
Check Price
Pros
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Cons
The Bottom Line
Forget complicated apps and edgy graphics, and let the strong-but-cute bears of TunnelBear VPN defend your network traffic. Easy to use and easily low-cost, it ‘s an Editors ‘ Choice winner .
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