| VPN | PureVPN |
| Based in | Hong Kong |
| Logs | Undetermined |
| Price | $6.49/mo. |
| Support | Chat + Email |
| Refund | 31 days |
| Website | https://www.purevpn.com/ |
I went into this PureVPN review with high hopes. Sure, PureVPN has had a rough few years with faulty apps, mediocre performance, and a scandal involving the FBI and handing over user data — but maybe they’ve turned things around. Maybe?
So I thought.
In this PureVPN review, I ran the service through extensive testing and then analyzed all aspects of the VPN to help you decide if this VPN is worth your money. Unfortunately, the test results weren’t pretty. Speeds were inconsistent and slow, the VPN apps were plagued with bugs and connection errors, and the overall quality seems to have gotten worse since I conducted the PureVPN review last year.
Bottom line up front: consider alternatives
Sure, you can read all 2,700+ words of this review, but if you want to just cut to the chase, I’d recommend you consider other good VPN services and avoid PureVPN. The three top-performing VPNs I’ve tested are below. Click the VPN review to see how the VPN performed, or grab the discount on the website for the best savings. These all come with a 30 day money-back guarantee:
Alright, so you want to keep going with this PureVPN review. So let’s start out with an overview before we get into the weeds.
PureVPN overview
Here is a brief overview of my findings for this PureVPN review.
Pros of PureVPN
- Cheap one week trial
- Live chat support
Cons of PureVPN
- PureVPN connection problems (not connecting)
- Inconsistent and slow speeds
- Expensive prices for full-term subscriptions
- DNS leaks
- Clunky VPN apps
- PureVPN logged user data for the FBI
- Does not work well with Netflix
Additional research findings
- Run by Gaditek in Pakistan (with Ivacy VPN)
- Does PureVPN work well for torrenting?
PureVPN Pros
Here are the Pros of PureVPN.
1. Cheap one week trial
With PureVPN, you can get a cheap one-week trial for only 99 cents. That’s not too bad. The one-week trial is boldly advertised on their homepage, so it seems to be the preferred option to acquire new customers.
I checked the refund policy and if you are not happy with the trial, you can still request a refund.
But there’s a problem. After the trial expires, you are locked in to an expensive subscription at $6.49 per month (we’ll discuss this more below in the Cons section).
So while this is not a to free trial VPN where you don’t pay anything, it is still a discounted trial offer.
2. PureVPN offers live chat support
Another good thing about PureVPN is the live chat support. However, this is common with the top VPN services. Live chat is available 24/7 and accessible through the PureVPN website in the bottom-right corner.
I tested out PureVPN’s chat support and I was quickly connected to a representative every time.
Overall, the chat representatives were pretty responsive and helpful with random questions I had.
Now let’s move on to the cons…
PureVPN Cons
Here are some of the cons I found in testing and researching PureVPN.
1. Connection problems (PureVPN not connecting)
With the latest round of testing for this PureVPN review, I ran into a regular problem. The problem was PureVPN not connecting to the servers. In other words, I clicked the connect button and after a long time the VPN would time out and eventually return an error message.
Above you can see I was getting the message, “Unable to connect to remote server” at the top of the app. This occurred with many servers I tested.
Another connection problem I had with PureVPN is that it would apparently connect, but there would not be any bandwidth (100% packet loss). I’m not certain what was causing these connection problems with PureVPN.
2. PureVPN slow speeds
On the PureVPN website, they boldly claim to be “the fastest VPN service ever!”
I tested these claims with a 500 Mbps internet connection – and the results were not very good.
Here was a PureVPN server in the United States, giving me only 59 Mbps.
Not a good start. This is under 12% of my baseline connection speed.
Next, I tested a PureVPN server in Canada. Once again, the speeds were not very good at only 39 Mbps.
This is about under 8% of my baseline speed. It’s clear that PureVPN is not the best VPN for Canada with performance like this.
In addition to the slow download speeds, you can also see that latency, or ping, was unusually high. Ping should have been lower given my location in the United States. With slow pings, PureVPN would not be a good VPN for gaming.
Next I tested PureVPN servers in the UK, and the results were similar. Here was a PureVPN server in London at only 18 Mbps.
So these speed tests are only getting worse with PureVPN. While servers that are further from my physical location can be slower, they should not be this slow.
Comparison with NordVPN
To show you a quick comparison, let’s take a look at NordVPN. Here is a NordVPN server in the UK with speeds of 295 Mbps:
You can see that NordVPN blows PureVPN out of the water in terms of performance.
Now let’s see how fast NordVPN was with a server in the United States. Here I’m testing a NordVPN server in Seattle and getting 445 Mbps.
It’s clear that PureVPN has a lot of catching up to do. It is nowhere near the speeds you will get with top-performing VPNs, such as NordVPN and ExpressVPN.
Why is PureVPN slow?
Many VPNs invest money in high-end server infrastructure that can deliver the fastest speeds to their users. This may explain why PureVPN is slow: they are not running the best servers with sufficient bandwidth for their user base.
3. Expensive prices and limited payment options
Further up in this PureVPN review we commended the cheap free trial option. We noted, however, that the price jumps up after the trial is over. Notice the fine print in the image below:
As soon as the free trial is over, prices jump up to $6.49 per month. This is certainly not a cheap VPN by any stretch of the imagination. And the prices for the 6-month and 1-month plans are even worse. Of course, there are VPNs that are more expensive, such as ExpressVPN and Perfect Privacy, but they don’t trick you with a cheap free trial.
For a VPN under $4 per month, we would recommend Surfshark or NordVPN.
And speaking of prices, here is another issue I noticed…
Very limited payment options
At the time of this review, PureVPN has very few payment options. As you can see below, you either need to pay with a credit card or with PayPal.
If you want to pay for your VPN using Bitcoin, gift cards, or other cryptocurrency, there are better options available.
PureVPN refund policy
If you want a refund on your PureVPN subscription, you have 31 days to claim it. This 31-day refund window is pretty good. Here are the PureVPN refund terms:
If you aren’t satisfied with PureVPN’s service for any reason whatsoever, then you can claim a refund within 31 days of your order date.
Remember, we will first try to resolve your issue successfully before processing the refund request.
The refund policy also references certain payment methods that are not refundable, such as Google Pay. Proceed with caution.
4. PureVPN and DNS leaks
In previous PureVPN reviews, I found the apps to suffer from data leaks, particularly IPv6 leaks.
So let’s see how PureVPN did in the latest review.
Before running any tests, I ensured that all leak protection settings were activated, as you can see below:
Ok, so we should theoretically not find any leaks with PureVPN at this point with all leak protection settings activated. Next, I ran the PureVPN Windows app through some basic VPN tests.
Here you can see I’m connected to a UK PureVPN server, but I was getting DNS leaks, whereby my DNS requests were getting out of the VPN tunnel and being handled by my ISP. This exposes my browsing history and general location to third parties.
Note: These were active leaks when the connection was stable.
To identify leaks, I ran tests changing up the following variables:
- Connecting to different PureVPN servers, including virtual locations
- Changing the “mode” I was using “Security / Privacy, Stream, Internet Freedom, etc.
- Changing up the protocol
I did not find DNS leaks with every server, protocol, and “mode” that I tested, but there were some clear cases where DNS requests were leaking out. This undermines the effectiveness of the VPN, while also exposing your data to third parties.
5. PureVPN’s clunky VPN apps
VPN apps should not crash, stall out, or require you to start the Task Manager to force quit the program. Unfortunately, with PureVPN, the VPN apps simply do not function well.
For example, server selection can very very tedious:
- First you need to select which “mode” you want to be in. You can choose from Stream, Internet Freedom, Security / Privacy, File-Sharing, and Dedicated IP.
- Servers will then appear in a jumbled order based on Ping times. This can make it frustrating to choose the server you need.
Here I am again having server connection problems, but you can also see the servers are listed by country and not in alphabetical order.
Depending on which “mode” you are using, choosing a server based on the city may not even be possible.
On a positive note, the PureVPN app does have an option to search for a specific server.
6. PureVPN logged user data for the FBI
As we have covered before here on Restore Privacy, PureVPN is an example of a VPN that was caught logging user data and handing this data over to the FBI.
For years, PureVPN has claimed to have a “zero log policy” and not keep any data. However, in 2017, news broke that PureVPN had not only logged user data, they had also provided this data to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) for a criminal case. The records of this were made public.
There was quite a bit of attention on PureVPN after this case came out. PureVPN claimed it was a limited event, however, but there’s no telling if that is true.
It’s also interesting to note that this all transpired despite PureVPN being based in Hong Kong with no legal obligation to comply with US authorities.
PureVPN completes no-logs audit
In an attempt to revive trust, PureVPN has completed a third-party no logs audit. The audit was conducted by Altius IT in June 2019. The auditors’ report confirms that PureVPN now conforms with their no-logs policy and privacy protection procedures.
Will this help to salvage PureVPN’s reputation and the damage caused by the logging case and cooperation with the FBI? Only time will tell.
7. PureVPN does not work well with Netflix
Unfortunately for those wanting to stream their favorite movies, PureVPN does not work well with Netflix.
The key problem I encountered when testing PureVPN with Netflix was buffering. Although I found that PureVPN could access American Netflix (not blocked), I did have buffering problems due to slow speeds.
Below I am in “Stream” mode while connected to one of PureVPN’s US servers. As you can see, Netflix is not blocked, but the speeds were so slow that the stream was buffering (spinning red circle).
The Netflix buffering issue seemed to occur randomly.
For these reasons, I would recommend going with a different VPN for Netflix (not PureVPN).
Additional research findings:
Below are additional findings from my research of PureVPN for this review.
1. PureVPN, Gaditek and Pakistan (with Ivacy VPN)
According to PureVPN’s website, it is officially operated under the business GZ Systems Limited, which is based in Hong Kong. But is PureVPN being operated out of Hong Kong?
If you dig a bit deeper, you will find a company called Gaditek, based in Karachi, Pakistan. PureVPN appears to be owned and operated by Gaditek, which lists PureVPN as one of its brands:
Whether PureVPN is operated in Pakistan or Hong Kong does not really matter from a legal perspective, since the company is legally based in Hong Kong, which is the jurisdiction it falls under.
There are also people who allege that Gaditek (PureVPN) is operating a network of VPN review sites, where PureVPN is consistently ranked as the top recommendation. See this report for further information.
Is Ivacy a rebranded version of PureVPN?
For many years there have been rumors (and lots of evidence) that Ivacy is a rebranded (white label) version of PureVPN. This would not be too surprising since PureVPN offers a white label version of their product, which they advertise on their website.
Finally, in March 2019, Ivacy staff officially admitted that PureVPN has “minor stakes” in Ivacy.
This isn’t too uncommon, however, as there are other VPNs that appear to be independent but are owned by the same entity:
- This article in PCMag describes how j2 Global owns IPVanish, StrongVPN, and Encrypt.me.
- I learned that the parent company of CyberGhost VPN (Kape) also owns ZenMate VPN and Private Internet Access.
Does PureVPN work well for torrenting?
Many people are looking for a safe, reliable, and fast VPN for torrenting. This is because torrenting is often a grey area (depending on what you are torrenting) and this can put you at risk for copyright infringement.
So is PureVPN a good option for torrenting?
I would argue no. PureVPN is not a good VPN for torrenting when you examine the three criteria from above:
- Safe – PureVPN suffers from data leaks, which can expose your activities to your internet provider, and other third parties, such as copyright trolls. It only takes one leaked packet to expose your identity and online activities.
- Reliable – PureVPN is not very reliable and suffers from connection problems.
- Fast – PureVPN is certainly not fast, based on my own test results.
Considering these factors, PureVPN is not a good VPN for torrenting. You may want to consider other options.
PureVPN review conclusion
When I began working on this PureVPN review I wondered it the service was improving over previous years. I must conclude that the answer is no. PureVPN lags behind the other market leaders in performance, security, and reliability.
While there are a few positive aspects of PureVPN, it is not a VPN I can recommend after testing it for this review.
Alternatives to PureVPN
Click the VPN name below to read our full review – or grab the discount for the best savings. All three of these VPNs have a 30 day money-back guarantee.
You can also check out our guide on the Best VPN for other recommendations.
If you have used PureVPN, feel free to share your honest review (good or bad) below.
PureVPN Review
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Review
(1)
correction based in china*
Hello Sven!
I think you made a little mistake with the beginning part.
You said PureVPN does keeps “No logs (audited)”
Thanks. I changed the table to be “undetermined” in the logs section. PureVPN has undergone a no-logs audit, but has also logged user data.
PureVPN is easily the worst performing VPN I have ever used. Also, it’s founder is Uzair Gadit who owns Gaditek, a Pakistan based shell corporation, owned by Disrupt Corporation, that runs PureVPN.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/uzairgadit
https://www.gaditek.com/our-impact/
Did not work at all when playing online gaming. Also I paid the 99 cents free trial period, and they charged me 129.00 subscription. They gave me the round around about the 129.00 charge. Once I told them that I was contacting the bank and FED’s they immediately refunded my money less the 99 cents. As far as I am concerned they are crooks. And they still have my credit card info. Don’t trust these guys.
I purchased 5 years plan. But I cant access to website after connected to purevpn. Even I cant connect to purevpn website. Also there is login issues. I asked for refund but they said tha they are not refunding to customers. They can freeze or they can transfer it to other user which I will suggest. I will never suggest it to anyone.
I cancelled Purevpn services before I installed it on my computer. Tried to get it on but Fedora just lit up with errors when I tried to use their installer so I decided to cancel rather spend hours on their abominably slow chat line with their technicians. I am not fluent in Techtalk which they all speak.
Took me two days and meany e-mails with their customer service rep. to finally get them to agree to cancel but they finally sent me a refund notice. A few days latter I got my credit card bill and the refund was on it, but there was also a $49.95 charge for a second order which I had not made. I took that second order up with their customer service and they claimed I had made a second order which was not covered under the 31 day money back guarantee order. We did an e-mail dance around with that for a few days while I tried to learn from them what was the content of the second order was. They then said they could noyt find the second order in their data base, probably because I had made it using a different e-mail address. I stopped trying to reason with them at that point and contacted my Credit Card company and complained that I thought Purevpn was trying to defraud me and sent the Card company copies of my e-mail exchanges with Purevpn. The card company agreed to start a suspected fraud investigation. When I got my next Credit card bill I determined the credit card company had credited my card account with the amount in question. I strongly suggest that Purevpn is a company is not to be trusted but to avoid.
After using purevpn for 2 years the service suddenly stopped working on win10 and android. Helpful technical help is practically non existent. After weeks of trying to make it work I gave up and requested they refunded my unused subscription of almost 3 years. Initially told I would get a refund then they reneged and said they are unable to. Now I have subscribed to a better working vpn because they said I would get a refund yet they still refuse to refund my money and want me to try a beta version knowing full well I have subscribed to another vpn. Do not waste your time and money.
Very very poor speeds and un reliable. They are crap servers around the world. DONT BUY THEM. I AM STUCK WITH THEM. YOU WONT BE ABLE TO STREAM AND TECH SUPPORT IS USELESS.
Dont believe of their advertisement. They are not trustworthy.
Long time user. Pure used to be decent. Slowed my internet speed down, but still worked. Now it wont allow me to connect at all to the internet. My experience with customer service was horrible. It used to be decent but last week I spent 45 minutes in a chat with a person who knew nothing about how to resolve my issue. Told me they would have someone contact me with a fix, only to get an email telling me to go to a chat.
WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS SERVICE.
I have occasionally used PureVPN on Mac and Windows. Her e is my problem: IF YOU DO NOT RUN PUREVPN YOU CANNOT ACCESS INTERNET!!! Why! How can I get COMPLETELY get rid of PureVPN and use Internet without it?
Typical case of RTFM. That’s an option in the settings…
Avoid avoid avoid – manipuation of YOUR data and willful collusion with third party agencies is a cardinal sin, an unforgivible breach of trust against those putting money into their pockets.
A leopard never changes its spots . PureVPN should be actively avoided. You have been warned!
I signed up and was told my card was declined; however upon a call to the bank, I found the charge went through and I started a chat with a service rep named Olivia, who at first denied receiving my payment to my account, and lied about my bank declining their request to charge. I wasted hours going back and forth between my bank and their customer support.
At last I canceled my credit card, to be on the safe side, and provided my full details of my canceled credit card to their billing department, and they were very vague about giving me a refund. I had to again go to live chat with Olivia to confirm that processing my refund is in order. I decided to ask for a bit compensation to my ordeal they put me through by asking them to activate my account and let me use the service. And all I get is their request not to file for refund for a 6 month extension. I was not really happy with this arrangement and they really don’t care about how badly they’ve treated me.
This might happen to u too!
all transcripts are recorded: https://imgur.com/a/8Ft7oiy
More than a month ago i have purchased PureVPN. I have tested it for less than a day and was not satisfied. The next day i wanted money refund. After many e-mails and support tickets, still no money refund. They don’t even want to answer my tickets. I’m desperate and don’t know what to do any more.
Servers are slow and blacklisted, So I decided to buy Dedicated DDOS thinking it wouldn’t have same issue, WRONG. App on windows and android crash non stop. Don’t buy your wasting your money. :Plus yet again “No Log policy is total lie”.
I have been using PureVPN for two years and have recently bought a three year subscription. I have experienced dropped connections, slow speeds, and cessation of data transmission from time to time, but this is normal for a budget VPN service. I had exactly the same experience with BoxVPN. In both cases the failures of the service were not frequent enough to cause me much inconvenience, and when it does happen I have a choice of six UK servers to fall back on. If you cannot connect to a server in the first place it means that it has been disconnected from the network for servicing, which I imagine is the usual practice for all VPN providers. On one occasion I was rather miffed when all six UK servers had been disabled at the same time, but that must be a rare scenario.
I have just done online DNS leak tests at dnsleaktest.com and ipleaktest.net and they both reported no problems. I did have a problem with my IP address being leaked while using PureVPN, but that was due to the fact that my ISP does not operate it’s own DNS servers , so I had to manually configure my local area connection with the IP addresses of public DNS servers like OpenDNS for instance.
I have always been happy with the data transmission speeds with PureVPN, and have never had a problem with buffering of high definition streaming video. I have just done the speed test offered my Ookla, and the results were impressive using the Maidenhead server while based in London. Without a VPN the download speed is 15.59 Mbps/s and upload speed is 0.88 Mbps. While connecting through PureVPN the download speed is 13.30 Mbps and the upload speed is 0.64 Mbps.
I have never used the PureVPN application because I do not have much confidence in the software offered by VPN providers, and prefer to have everything under my own control. Perhaps if I did I would not have a problem downloading from the BBC iplayer site which is able to detect IP addresses of VPN servers based on the number of times downloads are requested from the same IP address. Perhaps the answer is to obtain a unique static IP address which is available from PureVPN as an addon.
Torrenting through PureVPN has never been a problem, and seems to work even on servers which have not been designated as torrenting servers. Seeding does not work because PureVPN have their own firewall, so you have to buy port forwarding as an addon.
hello everyone!
i want said to all peoples which want VPN don waste time and money for pure vpn. its not VPN but big shit/
1.FOR WINDOWS
do not work correctly
a)if try connecting but server don work then application stop respond and helping only restart of pc
b)many servers in different country are dead
c)after success connection work not more then 1-2 hours/
d)sometime connections maybe is lost but application showing that all OK. because of this need it all time take control on application
e)speed is in 2-4 times slowly then from my internet provider
2. FOR LINUX
not work anywhere( i try it different OS)
3.FOR DEVICES(smart tv,smart boxes)
not work anywhere
4.FOR ROUTERS
work if yours routers support VPN
a)work only HTTP(another protocols not connect)
b)extremely slow speed-no more then 20% of speed from my IPS
c) AND BIG PROBLEMS- many sites dont open via pure vpn and many sites opened with bugs- pages loaded not correctly- without pictures and scripts/
CONCLUSION
pure vpn is big shit and good only for reading e-mails and watching sites without flash and picture
AVOID this vpn!!
AVOID THIS VPN AT ALL COSTS!
This company has terrible support when you have connection issues. They has no respect for your time at all. I swear to god the following experience is true.
I have talked to 4 tech guys in the past week ( each time it took at least an hour to communicate) and none of them fixed my issue. Then I was told to seek help from a guy called Bill who seems a senior tech support. I tried to reach him on Monday and Tuesday but always told he was not available! I finally had a 3 hours remote session with him on Wed but he failed to solve my case. He told me come back during Thursday nite. So I did but I was told he is not available again! I waited him 3 hours until midnite and gave him my email but never heard from him. I tried again on Friday morning and was told he will be available during the nite. When I tried to reach him during nite, someone on the live chat said they cannot provide any further help! If that’s the case, why not tell me earlier but instead kept telling me to come to live chat for his help?
PureVPN deserves 0 star. The servers connected recently are all fake. Connected to a country, it becomes locations in the USA, strange locations or Hongkong.
How can someone rely on them? Avoid at all cost!
The connection speed is <10mbps. Around 6 or 7 or sometimes slower than that. Don't expect to stream anything online with that speed.
Looking for a better VPN service now.
PureVPN software wouldn’t let me disconnect first time. Had to finally kill the process, then I couldn’t get on the web until I restarted my browser. It was really weird.
Members area was a real problem for me. It kept preventing me from getting in, even though I had the correct password. They have a password for each – the members area and the software as well. I had to get a new password at least 3 times the first night. It was going to be a long 5 years at that rate. I understand that it is expected to mistype a password every once in awhile…but this was ridiculous. I had checked and re-checked myself each time. Then they said they needed to help me with my “configuration” for logging into my profile at the Members Area. Grrr. 🙁 I asked for my money back the next day.
By the way, why no extra security protocol when resetting a password? Just a “forgot password” link and email as if it was Facebook? Is this how all the VPNs do it?
Add another thing to your list of cons – PureVPN does not even unblock any blocked websites. They are literally the most useless VPN service in existence. I’ve used quite a few VPN’s, all of which unblocked torrent likes like ettv for example, but with PureVPN those sites remain blocked. Almost as if my ISP still knows what websites I’m visiting despite using a “VPN”. PureVPN is nothing more than a location spoofer, does nothing in terms if privacy or unblocking websites.
An absolute waste of time and money.
Similar experience here. Crappy service and they don’t refund. The best way to get your refund is to post 10 negative reviews on trustpilot – i actually got the reviews to show up on the purevpn homepage because they have a widget. Just make sure to mark the reviews as 4 star but with nagative comments because they filter out reviews with low star ratings
A shocking product all round. Constant disconnections, unreliable, shows connected but nothing happens, customer service nice but like robots. Speeds are terrible a lot of the time. Have to manually disconnect all the time.
Have asked for a refund but they refuse as I got a promo deal for 5 years, which is not a legitimate reason not to refund. A huge regret going with them, shady sales tactics. Stay clear of them truly. It’s a painful experience and your money is gone