CyberGhost VPN Review 2024: A Buggy App and Iffy Privacy Take

[tarekma7]

Cost: Buggy apps and limited features drag down CyberGhost’s overall value

$13 per month, $42 every six months, $57 for the first two years (then $57 annually)
Money-back guarantee: 14 days on the monthly plan and 45 days on two-year and biannual plans
Payment options: Credit card, PayPal, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, Bitcoin
Apps available for Windows, MacOS, Linux (CLI), iOS/iPadOS, Android, Fire TV, Android TV
Seven simultaneous connections

CyberGhost sits right in the middle of its two sister VPNs ExpressVPN and PIA (parent company Kape Technologies PLC owns all three VPNs) when it comes to price. But in terms of overall value, CyberGhost is far behind.

CyberGhost’s monthly subscription plan costs $13 per month, which is on par with others like ExpressVPN and NordVPN but more expensive than more budget-friendly options like Proton VPN ($11), PIA ($12) and Mullvad ($5). If you want a longer-term subscription, CyberGhost offers two options: A biannual plan at $42 every six months or a two-year plan that costs $57 for the first 28 months, then renews annually at $57.

If you go with the biannual plan, you’ll pay more for half a year with CyberGhost than for a full year for PIA. And if you renew your biannual subscription with CyberGhost, you’ll pay more for one year of CyberGhost than you would for three years of PIA. If you choose the two-year plan, the $57 you’ll pay annually after the initial 28-month term is about what you’d pay for a year of Surfshark or a year of Mullvad, but considerably less than the $100 you’d pay for NordVPN or ExpressVPN.

However, the difference between CyberGhost and any of the other VPNs mentioned above is that the others are all well worth their price.

CyberGhost is a no-frills VPN

If you’re looking for tons of features or unique privacy tools, you won’t find them with CyberGhost. The “Advanced Features” listed in the MacOS app include the adblocker and the Wi-Fi protection settings, which are standard settings offered by many VPNs. CyberGhost’s Windows app provides the most options for customizing your experience, but nothing that sets it apart from the pack.

The Windows app offers quick access to servers optimized for gaming, torrenting and streaming, as well as CyberGhost’s fleet of NoSpy servers -- which are wholly owned and operated by CyberGhost and therefore offer “better speeds and stronger security” according to the company. Confusingly, the NoSpy servers are only accessible on CyberGhost’s other apps if you search for Romania in the server search bar and tap on the arrow to display the list of servers in Romania. The NoSpy servers are only accessible to users who purchase the six-month or two-year plans.   

Overall, I was thoroughly disappointed in GyberGhost’s meager feature set and its shaky app performance -- especially considering how smoothly other VPN apps like NordVPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark perform across platforms. The others are a breeze to use, but I couldn’t wait to get CyberGhost off my devices. 

…its apps are a mess

The apps look cool, but they’re buggy and a pain to use. After extensively testing CyberGhost for several weeks, it was evident how superior all of CNET’s best VPN picks are to CyberGhost’s offering. The app bugginess is perhaps most apparent on the MacOS app, which consistently takes over a minute to launch after clicking the icon in the dock to open the app. I’ve been critical about Surfshak’s app taking some time to connect, but CyberGhost is on another level. The app seems to take forever to connect to a server, and sometimes stalls completely. And when the client stalls, the internet connection on my Mac is totally severed, even after I quit the app. It’s only after I reboot my system that I can regain my internet connection on that machine. As an Apple user, I’m used to a slick, responsive and intuitive interface -- CyberGhost’s MacOS app is the opposite, making for an incredibly frustrating experience.

CyberGhost’s Windows app wasn’t much better. It was marginally more responsive than the MacOS app, but connection times were still sluggish and I encountered a rather bothersome bug while attempting to use the OpenVPN protocol. The Windows app connected just fine when I had set the client to connect via OpenVPN, but when I went to use the internet, I was blocked from accessing any website I tried to visit. I tried multiple servers with the same result. It was only after I disabled the kill switch (a crucial privacy feature) that I could access the internet through OpenVPN on CyberGhost’s Windows app. Every time I clicked on the Send Feedback button to gather connection logs to send to CyberGhost engineers to diagnose the issue, the app completely crashed. I was eventually able to access the internet using OpenVPN on Windows with the kill switch on when I enabled the “Use new OpenVPN network driver” beta feature. CyberGhost told me that engineers are rolling out an update to the Windows app that should resolve the issue by enabling the WinTUN adapter by default.     

During my testing, CyberGhost’s iOS app was the only app that was halfway somewhat OK to use. It’s the only app I had no explicit issue with. CyberGhost’s iOS app routinely connected swiftly and was easy to navigate. Servers were easy to locate, and selecting between standard servers and streaming-optimized servers was convenient. However, other than that, the app is mostly devoid of feature settings. You can pick between WireGuard and IKEv2 protocols and choose whether the app automatically connects or disconnects to secure Wi-Fi or public Wi-Fi, but that’s essentially it.   

Minutes after installing and beginning to use CyberGhost’s Android client, the app became unresponsive, and I couldn’t connect to any server I tried, regardless of which protocol I selected. I had to uninstall and reinstall the app to get it working properly again -- not the end of the world, but quite unsatisfactory nevertheless from a user’s perspective. Once I reinstalled the Android app, I was able to give the app a proper evaluation. Like its iOS counterpart, CyberGhost’s Android app connects quickly (when it’s working) and is simple to navigate. It also has the same Wi-Fi protection feature and a protocol selection feature (WireGuard and OpenVPN), but it has a couple of extras that aren’t included in the iOS app. CyberGhost’s Android app has a split tunneling feature alongside an ad, tracker and malware blocker -- both of which worked as expected during my testing.

Key takeaway: CyberGhost’s streaming performance is its biggest strength and one of the few bright spots with the service. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite make up for the failings of its apps. For a similar price or less than you’d pay for CyberGhost, you can get far superior performance on basically every front and a fuller feature set with any of the VPNs on CNET’s list of the best VPNs. CyberGhost offers a 45-day money-back guarantee, which is more generous than what most other providers offer. But, honestly, you might not need the full 45 days to figure out whether CyberGhost is right for you. 

Continue reading the full review HERE